Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Rosado, 6/8/2018

  (Bodegas Olivares Rosado Jumilla) Hello friends. In Europe, there are twin beating hearts of Mourvedre. The first exists in Bandol, a region of Provence on the French side of the Pyreness; the other lays just over 1,000 kilometers away in Jumilla, Spain. These regions are separated by more than just miles—they are also separated by price. We’ve long known that Spanish wines provide the best bang for your buck in the Old World, but Jumilla, where we find ourselves today, is home to some of the best rosés you can find in all of Europe—at a fraction of the cost of their French counterparts.Here at Full Pull, we’ve long loved Bodegas Olivares. They are a winery that shows the brilliance of Spanish wine so exceptionally. In Jumilla, Mourvedre and Grenache can be grown and produced by top notch winemakers at century-old estate vineyards for a fraction of the cost of any equivalent Bandol or Washington rosé. Olivares, for example, has a single vineyard (Finca Hoya de Santa Ana) in Jumilla, with vines as old as 80 years, healthily growing in a sandy moonscape that has never caught a whiff of phylloxera. Places like this simply do not exist in Washington yet—we don’t have the years under our collective belt. And places like this do exist in France—but you can only access those bottles at triple the price. This is what makes it even more exciting that we’re able to get our hands on this type of wine at this cost. Olivares’ rosado is Bandol-inspired, 30% Monastrell (Mourvedre’s Spanish name) and 70% Garnacha from their estate vineyard. While the rest of Jumilla lays closer to sea level, Finca Hoya de Santa Ana sits at considerable elevation (2700ft), allowing for large diurnal shifts and excellent acid retention. A picture perfect place for rosé. This bottle clocks in at 13% alcohol and leads with peaches, strawberries, and wildflowers. Its acidity comes to play with radiating citrus. The palate is downright delicious—summer in a glass even on the spring day we tasted it in Seattle—surging with grapefruit and orange, green herbs and watermelon rind, rocky slopes and mountain minerality. A bottle like this from its twin-location Bandol would likely cost at least $30. While this wine is utterly delightful on its own, this kind of verve and energy is really destined for food pairing. Think of a summer full of grilled calamari with lemon and arugula, Ezell’s fried chicken, avocado eaten by the spoonful, and BBQ’d anything. This is the bottle to have for it all. And as a little bonus reoffer: