Kelley Fox Wines
Kelley Fox Wines was founded in 2007, together with her father, Gerson “Gus” Stearns, producing about 100 cases or so. Today, Kelley has grown production to about 3000 cases per year. Grapes sourced from the historic Maresh Vineyard, the Demeter-certified biodynamic Momtazi Vineyard along with Hyland, Freedom Hill, Weber, and Durant Vineyard. Kelley has been immersed with her full-time pursuit of making Fine Wines since 2000. In fact, literally Kelley is submerged into her wines. One of the many winemaking decisions a winemaker contends with is Pigéage, a French word meaning to “punch down.” Punching down refers to a winemaking process, during the early stage of fermentation, where skin, stems and seeds start to float on top of the fermentation vat. In order to have a proper extraction of phenolics, the grape skins must be in the liquid, not floating on the top, so “Cap Management Techniques” are required and can involve various methods, “punching down” being one. Kelley actually enters the vat, with her body, and performs the punch down. Visit her website and you will see a picture of her in a vat, working!!
Her wines are just beautiful, and magnificent, as you will see when you read my review below. However, I have a major complaint about her wines. Kelley, spends a great deal of effort, and money, in growing and hand producing her wines, but for a few extra cents, falls short on making the wine free of potential contaminants. The wine is sold with an “exposed cork!” See the picture of bottle showing exposed cork that has her mysterious “earwig” (also gracing the label), a persistent little creature that sometimes dwell between the berries inside the grape clusters. Because of the “exposed cork,” I will NOT purchase Kelley’s wines, this was a decision I made even before Covid-19!
Kelley Fox Wines has a “Wine Club” and offering some unique limited quantity wines. If you do not care about wine cork protection, I recommend you check out this link “WineClubLink” to join her club! Keep checking back with SippingFineWine.com as I continue to report on my wine discoveries and will report when Kelley Fox will protect the corks!
A very nice small production Pinot with only 662 cases made. The 2017 has grapes from all six blocks at Maresh, recently I had another bottle, last tasted 10 months ago. Very Light Ruby (lightest Pinot I ever had and it’s something special), with floral and fruit aromas, very light almost has a crispness to the wine. On the palate flavors of Bing cherry and fresh strawberry with elegant spice and a gentle touch of oak. Fine tannins, long ending with fruit, refined spice and mineral notes. Great drinking now, will age a few years and bring out more complexity. Nice, but please Kelley, Protect the Cork, so I can purchase your Fine Wines!
Cheers!
One Comment
Jim Anderson
Not sure what the issue is with bottles without capsules. Lots and lots of wineries have gone this direction (mine included a decade ago) and amongst wine buyers I know and interact with on the internet it is far preferred to capsules bottles. You know that Covid-19 cannot get through a cork. I would imagine you do but if not here is a relatively recent article from Decanter Magazine that talks about how air does not permeate a cork, https://www.decanterchina.com/en/knowledge/trivia/wine-doesn-t-breathe-through-the-cork. Even it did, capsules are not airtight anyway so the effect would be the same. If you don’t like the look of a bottle without an expensive, for decoration only, wasteful and largely not recycled item on its neck there are plenty of options. However, if you value what’s inside you and everyone else out there should not fear the capsule-less bottles. More and more wineries are doing it and more and more will in the years to come.
While this may sound jerk-y it is not intended to be so. My winery was probably among the first to abandon capsules, starting in the 2011. We have had little to no push back especially as the years have gone on. I would hope that you reevaluate your stance on this given the major downsides to capsules and the lack of upside to them.