Kelley Fox ‘Maresh Vineyard’ Skin Contact Pinot Gris 2016

Kelley Fox Wines is a small winery created in 2007 along with my father, Gerson “Gus” Stearns. Kelley has lived in the Willamette Valley since the late 80’s. The first vintage (2007) started with just over 100 cases. The annual case production is now around 5500 cases, from vineyards including the historic Maresh Vineyard (1970-1991 vine ages), Hyland Vineyard (through 2019), Freedom Hill Vineyard, Weber Vineyard (1983 and 1988 Pinot), Durant Vineyard (Chardonnay, Pinot gris, and starting in 2022, Pinot noir), Dux Vineyard (Chardonnay), Carter Vineyard (1983 old vine), and Canary Hill Vineyard.

Full-time, year-round, on-the-floor Oregon Pinot noir winemaker since 2000. My education includes a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Biology from Texas AM University. I graduated Magna Cum Laude with dual degrees in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University and was admitted to the PhD program in Biochemistry. Her winemaking experience includes Torii Mor, Hamacher, The Eyrie Vineyards, and ten years as winemaker at Scott Paul Wines (August 2005 to about mid-April 2015). Since then, I have happily worked for my own winery exclusively. Starting with the harvest of 2018, I have been producing my wines at the winery of dear, longtime friends, Ann and Dean Fisher of ADEA Wine Company. The 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 hopefully, they are wines specifically of their vineyards. That said, the wines are not really “made” at all.

“There is both the fruit and the good kind of green that is that of something living and fresh. It is rather minerally and saline, too, and this is certainly not a fruit forward, tooty fruity fruit bomb by a long stretch. In the mouth, the fruit is there, but the frame can sometimes deliver a sucker punch, depending on one’s palate and sensibilities. I seem to notice this a lot more than anyone who has tried it so far. In six months or so, the fruit will emerge more fully from behind the frame, the minerals, and the slight salinity. The texture is classically Maresh Vineyard silky, and the finish is long. It is best served chilled”  Kelley Fox

Depending on the lighting, the colour is either deep pink or medium peachy-pink like a sunset. It is very clear and light-reflecting, bordering on effulgent. At this time (July 2017), it smells like peaches and peach skins.

Greg Sherwood MW

Kelley Fox ‘Maresh Vineyard’ Skin Contact Pinot Gris 2017 – 93+ / 100 Points

A fascinating copper blood orange tinted Pinot Gris produced from the fruit of vines planted on their own rootstock in 1991 in the northeast corner of the Maresh Vineyard. The wine saw 14 to 16 days of skin contact and elevage in a concrete amphora tank for 5 months with malolactic completed. The bouquet is loaded with dusty minerality of volcanic basalt, wet slate and crushed rocks complexed by pithy strawberry, red cherry skin aromatics, ripe quince and sweet ripe figs. Beautifully fresh, vibrant and light on its feet, the wine tiptoes across the palate with smokey sappy spice, resinous blood orange nuances, quince purée and wet river pebble minerality. There are delicate pithy phenolics from a fortnight of skin contact but also such a bright purity and crisp linearity. More complex and vinous than a lookalike Rose wine, this is a wonderful creation with an earthy savoury salinity that finishes with a long lasting complexity and intrigue. Lovely wine.

– Greg Sherwood MW