Vinous

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Washington: Various Shades of Hot (Oct 2017), 10/1/2017 (link)

  (Long Shadows Vintners Collection Merlot Pedestal Washington Red) Subscribe to see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Florida Man, 6/2/2017

  (Long Shadows Pedestal) Hello friends. “Florida Man” is one of my favorite internet memes. It’s basically a riff on how Florida produces the most ridiculous newspaper headlines in the United States. Ten examples: Florida Man Puts Dragon Lizard in His Mouth, Smacks People with It Florida Man Believes Wrestling Event Is Haunted by the Ghost of Macho Man Randy Savage Florida Man Impersonating a Police Officer Pulls Over Real Cops Identical Twin Florida Men Arrested After Getting in Brick Fight 82-Year-Old Florida Man Slashes 88-Year-Old Florida Woman's Tires with an Ice Pick for Taking His Seat at Bingo Florida Man Dressed as Pirate Arrested for Firing Musket at Passing Cars Florida Man Drinks Goat Blood in Ritual Sacrifice, Runs for Senate Florida Man on the Lam Butt Dials 911, Is Arrested Florida Man Crashes Car into Business While Trying to Time Travel Florida Man's Church Loses Tax-Exempt Status Because It's Just a Nightclub Our headline today is a little less salacious; something like “Florida Man Allows Six-Month Long Shadows Allocation Window To Close, Washingtonians Overjoyed” To dig into the substance of the story: Long Shadows had their autumn release last November, and they basically give their out-of-state distributors six months to claim their allocations for that vintage. So when we hit mid-May, any states that did not make full use of their allocations had their bottles released back into the general pool. And no surprise, Long Shadows’ Washington representatives jumped on all that wine. It’s a doubly wise move, because a) these wines have become totally scarce in Washington, sold out the week of release; and b) Long Shadows is apparently not going to release their ‘15s this autumn and is instead considering pushing to a spring 2018 release, so it might be awhile before we have another chance to access these wines. Fortunately, because of our list’s long support of Long Shadows, we have first option on the stash released by Florida Man and a few other states. We have to place our order on June 5, so please do try to get all order requests in by the end of the weekend, and we’ll do our best to fulfill them. Originally offered October 23, 2016. Pedestal is Long Shadows’ Merlot-dominant wine, made in conjunction with Bordeaux-based Michel Rolland, who is probably the most famous consulting winemaker in the world. The 2014 is 81% Merlot (from Conner Lee, Candy Mountain, Weinbau, and Dionysus), the remainder 15% Cabernet Sauvignon from Tapteil on Red Mountain, as well as small amounts of Malbec and Petit Verdot. It spent two years in 85% new French oak. No reviews yet, but to give you a sense of the consistent excellence, this has received 94pt reviews from Wine Advocate (Pierre Rovani, then Jay Miller, then Jeb Dunnuck) in eight of eleven vintages from 2003 to 2013, as well as a 95pt review from Dunnuck for the 2012.