JebDunnuck.com

• By Jeb Dunnuck
  Latest Releases from Washington State, 4/5/2018 (link)

  (Temporal Vintners Tempranillo Temporal) Subscribe to see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Last Call Territory, 10/21/2018

  (Temporal Vintners Tempranillo) Hello friends. Last month, our tasting team decided to open a pair of our value private label wines from the 2015 vintage, and my goodness are these two drinking beautifully right now. ’15 is such a charming vintage for early consumption. No surprise: they moved through a bunch of cases, to the point where I’d now put each of these into last call territory:Originally offered Dec 4, 2017, and never featured in a reoffer since, which is a bit of an oversight on my part, but the truth is: this wine is always the subject of reorder requests, even without overtly reminding our list members of its existence. Here’s one review that came through since that original offer: International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “Sourced from the Dineen Vineyard, this wine was aged for 21 months in a combination of new and used oak prior to bottling. Wonderfully earthy on the nose, the wine mingles red fruits with the sagebrush and damp earth elements. The mouthfeel is lovely as well as the bright acidity. Red cherries, pipe tobacco and crushed wet gravel flavors await, leading to the strong, mineral and red fruit driven finish. This outstanding wine will likely be best enjoyed in its youth. Drink 2018-2024. 90pts.” And here are excerpts from the original: Unlike some of our other private label offerings, we decided not to keep this winemaker a secret. Our list is full of smart, savvy wine-lovers who all know that if we’re partnering with a winemaker to make Washington Tempranillo, there’s only one person it could be—Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars and Idilico. We began talking with Javier about Tempranillo in March 2016. He had some 2014 juice, all single-vineyard (Dineen in Yakima Valley), all Tinta del Pais clone (the clone used predominantly in Ribera del Duero). In his first e-mail, Javier said that “this clone and site produces Ribera del Duero styled wine with a high tannin content contributing structure and length,” and asked if we’d be interested in tasting the wine. The answer was a resounding, “Yes!” In 2015, Javier again sourced wholly from Dineen vineyard: Tempranillo from his Tinta del Pais clone with addition of a clone of Tinta de Toro. Both plantings run about an acre each and were planted exclusively for Javier’s use. This clocks in at 14.8% alc and begins with savory, earthy nose, full of black fruit and smoke. Tobacco leaf and potting soil; black plum and black cherry; warmed wood and vanilla. This vintage is much more savory than the fruit-forward ‘14—a wine that’s of the earth. What hasn’t changed is that the palate still easily outperforms $15-expectation. This is not the soft side of Tempranillo; this is burly, muscular, powerful Tempranillo. This is Tempranillo with Cabernet structure—full of polished, fine-grained tannins that offer a texture to perfectly complement all sorts of meals throughout the winter. Tempranillo is the wine for braising weather: for days indoors slow-cooking a tough piece of protein into something supple and delicious. Pot roasts and short ribs and oxtails. Big messes of root veggies and potatoes.

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

  (Temporal Vintners Tempranillo) 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.Originally offered Dec 4, 2017, and never featured in a reoffer since, which is a bit of an oversight on my part, but the truth is: this wine is always the subject of reorder requests, even without overtly reminding our list members of its existence. Here’s one review that came through since that original offer: International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “Sourced from the Dineen Vineyard, this wine was aged for 21 months in a combination of new and used oak prior to bottling. Wonderfully earthy on the nose, the wine mingles red fruits with the sagebrush and damp earth elements. The mouthfeel is lovely as well as the bright acidity. Red cherries, pipe tobacco and crushed wet gravel flavors await, leading to the strong, mineral and red fruit driven finish. This outstanding wine will likely be best enjoyed in its youth. Drink 2018-2024. 90pts.” And here are excerpts from the original: Unlike some of our other private label offerings, we decided not to keep this winemaker a secret. Our list is full of smart, savvy wine-lovers who all know that if we’re partnering with a winemaker to make Washington Tempranillo, there’s only one person it could be—Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars and Idilico. We began talking with Javier about Tempranillo in March 2016. He had some 2014 juice, all single-vineyard (Dineen in Yakima Valley), all Tinta del Pais clone (the clone used predominantly in Ribera del Duero). In his first e-mail, Javier said that “this clone and site produces Ribera del Duero styled wine with a high tannin content contributing structure and length,” and asked if we’d be interested in tasting the wine. The answer was a resounding, “Yes!” In 2015, Javier again sourced wholly from Dineen vineyard: Tempranillo from his Tinta del Pais clone with addition of a clone of Tinta de Toro. Both plantings run about an acre each and were planted exclusively for Javier’s use. This clocks in at 14.8% alc and begins with savory, earthy nose, full of black fruit and smoke. Tobacco leaf and potting soil; black plum and black cherry; warmed wood and vanilla. This vintage is much more savory than the fruit-forward ‘14—a wine that’s of the earth. What hasn’t changed is that the palate still easily outperforms $15-expectation. This is not the soft side of Tempranillo; this is burly, muscular, powerful Tempranillo. This is Tempranillo with Cabernet structure—full of polished, fine-grained tannins that offer a texture to perfectly complement all sorts of meals throughout the winter. Tempranillo is the wine for braising weather: for days indoors slow-cooking a tough piece of protein into something supple and delicious. Pot roasts and short ribs and oxtails. Big messes of root veggies and potatoes.

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Temporal, 12/4/2017

  (Temporal Vintners Tempranillo) Hello friends. Today, we celebrate taking chances. Last year, we launched a new project that we called Full Pull’s first “pop-up wine.” Inspired by the idea of pop-up restaurants—ephemeral spaces that can be experimental, edgy, and decidedly worthwhile—we took a chance on a stunner of a bottle sourced fully from Dineen Vineyard and made by one of our long-time favorite winemakers.  This was the dark-horse candidate of last year’s private label offerings—a wine that we knew we wanted to sell but weren’t exactly sure what the reception would be. $15 dollar Washington Tempranillo is a rarity around these parts. So, we decided to offer said wine for one vintage, with the option to extend if all went well. Lucky for us all, it proved equally successful with list members and critics alike, gaining a 93pt review from Wine Advocate. Today, we’re back for year number two.Originally offered Dec 4, 2017, and never featured in a reoffer since, which is a bit of an oversight on my part, but the truth is: this wine is always the subject of reorder requests, even without overtly reminding our list members of its existence. Here’s one review that came through since that original offer: International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “Sourced from the Dineen Vineyard, this wine was aged for 21 months in a combination of new and used oak prior to bottling. Wonderfully earthy on the nose, the wine mingles red fruits with the sagebrush and damp earth elements. The mouthfeel is lovely as well as the bright acidity. Red cherries, pipe tobacco and crushed wet gravel flavors await, leading to the strong, mineral and red fruit driven finish. This outstanding wine will likely be best enjoyed in its youth. Drink 2018-2024. 90pts.” And here are excerpts from the original: Unlike some of our other private label offerings, we decided not to keep this winemaker a secret. Our list is full of smart, savvy wine-lovers who all know that if we’re partnering with a winemaker to make Washington Tempranillo, there’s only one person it could be—Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars and Idilico. We began talking with Javier about Tempranillo in March 2016. He had some 2014 juice, all single-vineyard (Dineen in Yakima Valley), all Tinta del Pais clone (the clone used predominantly in Ribera del Duero). In his first e-mail, Javier said that “this clone and site produces Ribera del Duero styled wine with a high tannin content contributing structure and length,” and asked if we’d be interested in tasting the wine. The answer was a resounding, “Yes!” In 2015, Javier again sourced wholly from Dineen vineyard: Tempranillo from his Tinta del Pais clone with addition of a clone of Tinta de Toro. Both plantings run about an acre each and were planted exclusively for Javier’s use. This clocks in at 14.8% alc and begins with savory, earthy nose, full of black fruit and smoke. Tobacco leaf and potting soil; black plum and black cherry; warmed wood and vanilla. This vintage is much more savory than the fruit-forward ‘14—a wine that’s of the earth. What hasn’t changed is that the palate still easily outperforms $15-expectation. This is not the soft side of Tempranillo; this is burly, muscular, powerful Tempranillo. This is Tempranillo with Cabernet structure—full of polished, fine-grained tannins that offer a texture to perfectly complement all sorts of meals throughout the winter. Tempranillo is the wine for braising weather: for days indoors slow-cooking a tough piece of protein into something supple and delicious. Pot roasts and short ribs and oxtails. Big messes of root veggies and potatoes.