Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Last Call Territory, 6/3/2018

  (Full Pull & Friends CVBDX (FPF-21)) Hello friends. Thanks to consistent reorder requests and brisk sales through our tasting room, we’re getting down to last-call territory on one of the most popular Full Pull & Friends bottlings we’ve ever had. Which is kind of crazy, since I purchased a parcel intended to last us for two full years, and we’re currently at one year, twenty-nine days since original offer:International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “This wine had a lengthy, unknown stay in 50% new French oak and is also a mysterious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec sourced from unknown vineyards in the Columbia Valley. This densely colored wine begins with aromas of sweet pipe tobacco, leather, cassis and wild blackberry cobbler. Dense and decadent, this wine shows off creme de cassis, mocha, tar, sagebrush and crushed mint. The plush mouthfeel impresses and the wine becomes even more silky after one to two hours in the decanter. This beautiful bottling will cellar well for another decade. Drink 2017-2027. 92pts.” Yeah, this was our largest-production FP&F bottling to date, right around the same as our inaugural bottling (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon) and the legendary 2012 Bacchus Vineyard Cab. But still not large enough, apparently. We’ve sold through about 90% of our original stash, and usually when we get down to about 10% remaining, we’re into last call territory. Originally offered May 5, 2017, and here are excerpts from the original: One point worth remembering: this is a special bottle, exclusive to our list members. Outside of the Full Pull list and tasting room, there is no place else to source these. They are one-off treats for our list members. In some cases with Full Pull & Friends, we’re able to include the name of the winery involved, and in others (like today’s offer) we’re not. I understand the wineries that don’t want their names revealed. They have brand equity to protect, and they don’t want to see their name splashed on a bottle that costs less than half of their own. What I can say is: this comes from a winery partner we’ve deemed “Winery Alpha.” They were the partner for our first ever FP&F wine (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon), and they were the partner for the 2007 vintage of CVBDX. This is a winery partner we’ve been working with since early 2010, and we’ve offered dozens of their wines over the years. This particular wine spent a good long time in French oak, about 50% new. The fruit comes from outstanding vineyards (which by agreement must remain nameless), and it is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Malbec (no precise percentages, but the varieties are in order of their proportion in the blend). And of course what makes this CVBDX exciting is what made the original exciting: age. It is rare indeed to access well-made Washington wines at eight years past vintage [now nine!], a special window into how wines from our region evolve and unfurl over time. This one clocks in at 14.9% alc and begins with a nose combining black fruit, both fresh and dried (plums, blackberries, cassis), with espresso and cedar and deep loamy soil notes. The palate is pillowy-smooth: silky, supple, and seamless, any rough edges long ago sanded down by the power of bottle age. The remaining tannins, those that haven’t integrated yet, are fine-grained and lovely, providing a finish redolent of English breakfast tea and suggesting a wine in early peak drinking, with another five to ten happy peak years ahead.

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Instant Gratification 8 of 8: Ring Out (Final Offer of 2017), 12/23/2017

  (Full Pull & Friends CVBDX (FPF-21)) Holiday Pickup Schedule REMINDER: Please take note of our schedule below for the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018: Dec 23 (TODAY): Open 11am-7pm Dec 28-30: CLOSED Jan 4-6: CLOSED Jan 11-13: Open 11am-7pm ---- Hello friends. This is our final offer of 2017. We’ll plan to stay out of your inboxes until about January 7, when you can expect our first offer of 2018. In the meantime, after our open hours today (Saturday; 11am-7pm) we are CLOSED for pickups for the next few weeks, and our first TPU pickup day in 2017 will be Thursday January 11. Today’s offer will mostly focus on reflections from a busy 2017. At the end of the offer we’ll include reorder links for a handful of our in-house favorites; and at the beginning we’ll do what we’ve done every year since 2009: excerpt Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more, Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. I love quoting these particular stanzas, because they speak to the cleansing grace of the end of a year, the power of first remembering and then letting go. One memory that stands out to me from 2017 was our team’s September trip with Morgan Lee to visit all the vineyards we work with for our in-house winery, Block Wines. This was the first year that we were able to bring nearly our entire team on that eastern Washington swing, and it led to all sorts of interesting conversations, several of them sober even. And I remember Pat making the point – after seeing all these pristine, carefully-tended vineyards and tasting all these perfect grape berries ripening on the vine – that the raw materials we start with in the Pacific Northwest are truly beautiful, and that the role of the winemakers is to convey that beauty in the finished wines. Our job at Full Pull is to suss out the winemakers who are achieving the honest expression of this rigorous farming, and to shield our list members from all the rest. I see our role as that of the curator/matchmaker: the curator side tasting broadly so that you don’t have to; the matchmaker side connecting the best winemakers in the northwest (and a few in the rest of the world) to a group of people who care about the beverages they consume. And that’s what always strikes me about our list members. In a world where cool detachment seems to be in the ascendancy, our list members are a countercultural group who choose to *care* about something. In this case, it’s wine, but it’s the caring itself that’s telling of the kind of folks who populate our list. Our Full Pull team feels very fortunate to have such a thoughtful, engaged, kind group of people as our list members. Thank you all for such robust support in 2017. Now then, let’s do this quixotic thing we do – attempting to use language to convey sensory experience – one more time, and then let’s close the door on 2017.International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “This wine had a lengthy, unknown stay in 50% new French oak and is also a mysterious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec sourced from unknown vineyards in the Columbia Valley. This densely colored wine begins with aromas of sweet pipe tobacco, leather, cassis and wild blackberry cobbler. Dense and decadent, this wine shows off creme de cassis, mocha, tar, sagebrush and crushed mint. The plush mouthfeel impresses and the wine becomes even more silky after one to two hours in the decanter. This beautiful bottling will cellar well for another decade. Drink 2017-2027. 92pts.” Yeah, this was our largest-production FP&F bottling to date, right around the same as our inaugural bottling (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon) and the legendary 2012 Bacchus Vineyard Cab. But still not large enough, apparently. We’ve sold through about 90% of our original stash, and usually when we get down to about 10% remaining, we’re into last call territory. Originally offered May 5, 2017, and here are excerpts from the original: One point worth remembering: this is a special bottle, exclusive to our list members. Outside of the Full Pull list and tasting room, there is no place else to source these. They are one-off treats for our list members. In some cases with Full Pull & Friends, we’re able to include the name of the winery involved, and in others (like today’s offer) we’re not. I understand the wineries that don’t want their names revealed. They have brand equity to protect, and they don’t want to see their name splashed on a bottle that costs less than half of their own. What I can say is: this comes from a winery partner we’ve deemed “Winery Alpha.” They were the partner for our first ever FP&F wine (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon), and they were the partner for the 2007 vintage of CVBDX. This is a winery partner we’ve been working with since early 2010, and we’ve offered dozens of their wines over the years. This particular wine spent a good long time in French oak, about 50% new. The fruit comes from outstanding vineyards (which by agreement must remain nameless), and it is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Malbec (no precise percentages, but the varieties are in order of their proportion in the blend). And of course what makes this CVBDX exciting is what made the original exciting: age. It is rare indeed to access well-made Washington wines at eight years past vintage [now nine!], a special window into how wines from our region evolve and unfurl over time. This one clocks in at 14.9% alc and begins with a nose combining black fruit, both fresh and dried (plums, blackberries, cassis), with espresso and cedar and deep loamy soil notes. The palate is pillowy-smooth: silky, supple, and seamless, any rough edges long ago sanded down by the power of bottle age. The remaining tannins, those that haven’t integrated yet, are fine-grained and lovely, providing a finish redolent of English breakfast tea and suggesting a wine in early peak drinking, with another five to ten happy peak years ahead.

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull and Friends (+Pickup Schedule UPDATE), 11/9/2017

  (Full Pull & Friends CVBDX (FPF-21)) Pickup Schedule UPDATE: Next week, we will be closed for the entirety of Thanksgiving weekend to give our team time to celebrate with friends and family. ----- Hello friends. It has been a relatively quiet year on the Full Pull & Friends front. Just three releases, and no more in the hopper for the remainder of 2017. One of those three (the Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature) has been sold out since August. The other two have received positive press of late, giving us a good opportunity to reoffer them. If you need a reminder on the FP&F program, and how it differs from Block Wines, this page has the details (the short version: Block Wines is a winery within Full Pull, going from grape to bottle; FP&F is more of a classic negociant model, purchasing barrels or blank bottles of finished wine and putting our own label on them). That page also shows the entire history of the FP&F program. At this point, we’re sold out of 19 of the 22 wines we’ve developed. The trio with remaining inventory are the pair we’re reoffering today, along with the 2014 Klipsun Merlot, which is getting down to its last handful of cases. To say that our list members have enthusiastically embraced Full Pull & Friends would be a bit of an understatement.International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “This wine had a lengthy, unknown stay in 50% new French oak and is also a mysterious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec sourced from unknown vineyards in the Columbia Valley. This densely colored wine begins with aromas of sweet pipe tobacco, leather, cassis and wild blackberry cobbler. Dense and decadent, this wine shows off creme de cassis, mocha, tar, sagebrush and crushed mint. The plush mouthfeel impresses and the wine becomes even more silky after one to two hours in the decanter. This beautiful bottling will cellar well for another decade. Drink 2017-2027. 92pts.” Yeah, this was our largest-production FP&F bottling to date, right around the same as our inaugural bottling (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon) and the legendary 2012 Bacchus Vineyard Cab. But still not large enough, apparently. We’ve sold through about 90% of our original stash, and usually when we get down to about 10% remaining, we’re into last call territory. Originally offered May 5, 2017, and here are excerpts from the original: One point worth remembering: this is a special bottle, exclusive to our list members. Outside of the Full Pull list and tasting room, there is no place else to source these. They are one-off treats for our list members. In some cases with Full Pull & Friends, we’re able to include the name of the winery involved, and in others (like today’s offer) we’re not. I understand the wineries that don’t want their names revealed. They have brand equity to protect, and they don’t want to see their name splashed on a bottle that costs less than half of their own. What I can say is: this comes from a winery partner we’ve deemed “Winery Alpha.” They were the partner for our first ever FP&F wine (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon), and they were the partner for the 2007 vintage of CVBDX. This is a winery partner we’ve been working with since early 2010, and we’ve offered dozens of their wines over the years. This particular wine spent a good long time in French oak, about 50% new. The fruit comes from outstanding vineyards (which by agreement must remain nameless), and it is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Malbec (no precise percentages, but the varieties are in order of their proportion in the blend). And of course what makes this CVBDX exciting is what made the original exciting: age. It is rare indeed to access well-made Washington wines at eight years past vintage [now nine!], a special window into how wines from our region evolve and unfurl over time. This one clocks in at 14.9% alc and begins with a nose combining black fruit, both fresh and dried (plums, blackberries, cassis), with espresso and cedar and deep loamy soil notes. The palate is pillowy-smooth: silky, supple, and seamless, any rough edges long ago sanded down by the power of bottle age. The remaining tannins, those that haven’t integrated yet, are fine-grained and lovely, providing a finish redolent of English breakfast tea and suggesting a wine in early peak drinking, with another five to ten happy peak years ahead.

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull CVBDX (+Spring Release REMINDER), 5/5/2017

  (Full Pull & Friends CVBDX (FPF-21)) Spring Release Event REMINDER: We’re debuting several new wines at a spring release event on Saturday May 6. Our partner winemaker in Block Wines, Morgan Lee, will be in the house from 11am to 3pm, pouring alongside Paul Z. They’ll be pouring the new vintage of Chenin Blanc, the debut of Discovery Vineyard Block 1 Cabernet Sauvignon, and the recently-released Full Pull & Friends sparkling wine. Probably a few other goodies too. You’re certainly welcome to come down after 3pm as well. We’ll be open until 7pm, with our usual band of merry Full Pullers behind the bar from 3-7pm. We're expecting an extra-busy day, so if you’re planning to come down and pick up wine, *please do make an appointment using our online module.* ---- Hello friends. We have a new vintage of one of our most popular Full Pull & Friends wines to date: CVBDX. We’ve only offered it once before – the 2007 vintage, back in May 2014 – and it sold out soon thereafter. This is also notable because – barring something very unexpected – it will be the only red wine we release under the FP&F banner this year. International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “This wine had a lengthy, unknown stay in 50% new French oak and is also a mysterious blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec sourced from unknown vineyards in the Columbia Valley. This densely colored wine begins with aromas of sweet pipe tobacco, leather, cassis and wild blackberry cobbler. Dense and decadent, this wine shows off creme de cassis, mocha, tar, sagebrush and crushed mint. The plush mouthfeel impresses and the wine becomes even more silky after one to two hours in the decanter. This beautiful bottling will cellar well for another decade. Drink 2017-2027. 92pts.” Yeah, this was our largest-production FP&F bottling to date, right around the same as our inaugural bottling (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon) and the legendary 2012 Bacchus Vineyard Cab. But still not large enough, apparently. We’ve sold through about 90% of our original stash, and usually when we get down to about 10% remaining, we’re into last call territory. Originally offered May 5, 2017, and here are excerpts from the original: One point worth remembering: this is a special bottle, exclusive to our list members. Outside of the Full Pull list and tasting room, there is no place else to source these. They are one-off treats for our list members. In some cases with Full Pull & Friends, we’re able to include the name of the winery involved, and in others (like today’s offer) we’re not. I understand the wineries that don’t want their names revealed. They have brand equity to protect, and they don’t want to see their name splashed on a bottle that costs less than half of their own. What I can say is: this comes from a winery partner we’ve deemed “Winery Alpha.” They were the partner for our first ever FP&F wine (2007 Cabernet Sauvignon), and they were the partner for the 2007 vintage of CVBDX. This is a winery partner we’ve been working with since early 2010, and we’ve offered dozens of their wines over the years. This particular wine spent a good long time in French oak, about 50% new. The fruit comes from outstanding vineyards (which by agreement must remain nameless), and it is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Malbec (no precise percentages, but the varieties are in order of their proportion in the blend). And of course what makes this CVBDX exciting is what made the original exciting: age. It is rare indeed to access well-made Washington wines at eight years past vintage [now nine!], a special window into how wines from our region evolve and unfurl over time. This one clocks in at 14.9% alc and begins with a nose combining black fruit, both fresh and dried (plums, blackberries, cassis), with espresso and cedar and deep loamy soil notes. The palate is pillowy-smooth: silky, supple, and seamless, any rough edges long ago sanded down by the power of bottle age. The remaining tannins, those that haven’t integrated yet, are fine-grained and lovely, providing a finish redolent of English breakfast tea and suggesting a wine in early peak drinking, with another five to ten happy peak years ahead.