2013 Foxen Winery Chardonnay Tinaquaic Vineyard Santa Maria Valley 750 ml

The Foxen Boys’ Dry-Farmed Tinaquaic Vineyard

There’s one common denominator shared by the highest-rated 2013 Chardonnays of Sonoma Coast and Russian River. All were drawn off low-yielding, dry-farmed vineyards where BB-sized berries were nursed to extreme maturity. Steve Kistler, Peter Michael, Luc Morlet, and Mark Aubert crafted brilliant single-vineyard Chardonnays, each infused with terrific lemon-curd intensity yet finishing with bracing acidity.

At our New York City taste-off, just one Santa Barbara entry stood toe-to-toe with Aubert’s 97-pointer and Kistler’s Dutton Ranch. Despite its modest price tag, Bill Wathen and Dick Doré’s 2013 Foxen Chardonnay, drawn off their deep-rooted, dry-farmed Tinaquaic Vineyard, ranked among the top releases of the year.

The planting of Foxen’s 10-acre Tinaquaic Vineyard is the stuff of local legend. In the spring of 1989, Wathen and Doré gathered up canes from already-pruned Santa Maria Valley cuttings during the evening hours and loaded them into Dick’s old orange pickup truck. (It’s for this reason that the Tinaquaic cane-collection method is affectionately referred to as “Volar de Noche” or “fly by night.”) They planted those canes on a hillside vineyard with soils comprised of clay and sand and resolved to tend their vines without a drop of irrigation.

Twenty-four years later, Wathen and Doré were rewarded with one of the more remarkable growing seasons on the coast. The winter and spring were quite dry, leading to an unusually regular and bountiful fruit set. While summer temperatures were warm, the steady breezes off the Pacific that gust through this east-west transverse valley helped take the bite out of the summer sun. There were no significant or prolonged heat spikes, allowing the Tinaquaic Chardonnay to fully ripen without risk of blistering or desiccation. The call to harvest came quite early, in the last weeks of August — under perfect conditions.

Brilliant straw-yellow in color. Pungent aromas of ripe citrus, apricot, and white peach, gently touched with new-wood vanilla. Rich, intensely concentrated, dense, and weighty, filled with a luscious mix of lemon confit, lemon oil, sweet peach, and dried apricot, finishing with excellent length, precision, and intensity. Drink now-2022.