2012 Henry Earl Estates Cabernet Sauvignon

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Red Mountain Cabernet Dibs (+Shipping UPDATE), 3/2/2018

  (Henry Earl Estates Cabernet Sauvignon) Shipping UPDATE: We expect our spring shipping window to open in the next few weeks, and we’ll begin sending out shipments as different areas of the country reach appropriate temperatures. Here are some reminders for our shipping list members: 1. During our open shipping window, *we ship wine as it is confirmed (in 12-bottle increments)* as long as those shipments do not lead to delivery-date conflicts with dates blocked off in the Shipping Calendar tab of your online account. 2. Please check your shipping address. Please make sure the shipping address in your Full Pull account is correct, and it’s an address where an adult will be present to sign for your packages. 3. Please update your shipping calendar. The Shipping Calendar tab is part of your online account. Within that tab, you can block off any dates where you *do not* wish to receive shipments. ---- Hello friends. We have retail dibs today on an incredible value in Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon.First let’s take care of the logistics side of things. This winery is new to the Seattle market (they’ve previously been selling direct through the cellar door and tasting room only). This particular wine landed in Seattle in mid-February, and as I mentioned above, our list members have first right of refusal on as much wine as we like. After we grab our share, the wine will be released broad-market, and then all bets are off. I’ve promised we’ll place our order on Monday March 5 for delivery Tuesday March 6, so please try to submit all order requests by the end of Sunday. We’ll endeavor to build in a buffer for latecomer orders, but no promises on that front. When I tasted this wine a few weeks ago, I was blown away. It had everything I love about Red Mountain Cab: power and structure and rich, delicious fruit. It drank like a baby version of Charlie Hoppes’ $50 RM Cabs for Fidelitas (and sure enough, Charlie consults for this winery, although it seems Victor Palencia was the lead winemaker for this bottling). The nose combines blackcurrant fruit with savory beetroot, earthy soil tones with dustings of cocoa powder and exotic suggestions of orange peel. “Honest RM Cab” is my first palate note: this attacks with plush Red Mountain fruit, but you quickly see that it is supported by a scaffolding of structure, mostly in the form of signature Red Mountain tannins, robust but fine-grained and polished, helped along I’m certain by the extra bottle age here. The best reference point for my Red Mountain drinking history is Tapteil Vineyard; this seemed to have that same small-berry charm, where you just know the skin-to-juice ratio was off the charts, and where you know this is a wine with decades left in its run. The research after that fact supported that narrative. Henry Earl Estates is a newish winery (2012 was the inaugural vintage, and the winery was launched in 2014), but it is owned and run by folks with deep roots on Red Mountain. Essentially, Henry Earl is the estate winery for Shaw Vineyard, and this particular bottling is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, entirely from Shaw North. As you can see here, this site is at the far northwest corner of Red Mountain, and its closest neighbor is… wait for it… Tapteil. Dick Shaw and Wendy West Shaw are important players in Washington vineyards. I believe they now own and farm north of 2000 acres of vines, with about a quarter of that on Red Mountain. The winery name honors Dick’s father (Henry Shaw) and Wendy’s father (Earl West). And this bottling seems to honor any Washington wine lover who has been fascinated by Red Mountain Cab but who shivers a little at the oft-exorbitant pricing. As a gateway bottling into what makes this tiny piece of Washington special for Bordeaux varieties, I’m hard pressed to think of a more compelling example, especially coming as it does from such a special vintage. It spent 16 months in neutral barrels and has now had another three-plus years to come together in bottle.