Kelley Fox Willamette Valley Chardonnay 2024

Full-bodied yet carrying a medium-bodied, fruity elegance, this unoaked Willamette Valley Chardonnay wafts up with minty freshness, blending white flowers with nuances of ginger, flint and slate. The palate is soothingly round, with a pretty inner sweetness and supreme balance as lemon mingles with apricot and a saline mineral tinge. Chablis like. Amazing energy and tension in the glass puckers the cheeks, while mouthwatering acidity and a salty flourish linger. Like a beautiful raindrop shaped by our Earth’s gravity. The value here is unparalleled.

With fruit from two of Oregon's great Chardonnay vineyards, Durant Vineyard and Freedom Hill Vineyard (about 50% each), and split between aging in neutral barrel (65%) and concrete amphora (35%), this Chardonnay is unadorned with new wood but still benefits from oak tree energy and the cool minerality of concrete amphora tanks. 704 cases produced.

Having been a full-time, year-round Oregon Pinot noir winemaker since 2000, Kelley Fox started her small winery with her father in 2007. Fox has a B.S. in Psychology and minor in Biology from Texas A&M University and graduated Magna Cum Laude with dual degrees in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University. Shortly after being admitted to the PhD program in Biochemistry, she caught the wine bug and left to pursue winemaking. She learned not from a classroom or textbooks but directly from Oregon winemakers who had put in some serious time.

Fox's wines are made to reflect the land, the vines, the fruit of the vines, the year and everything else unknown and unseen that comes with those things. They are Oregon wines, and they are wines specifically of their vineyards, carrying the essence of the fruit from each block, and the essence of the earth that bore it, along with the details of the year (the weather, the stars, and the planets, etc.).

The label art depicting a snowy owl about to light onto a Western hemlock branch was drawn by Fox's younger daughter, Violet.