Winemaker Notes
Our 2017 vintage of Fox Den is an especially expressive interpretation of the vineyard, giving us a little more of everything we love in this site. The wound up energy of the wine shows right away in the saturated red raspberry, strawberry jam, and berry blossom nose. There’s a lifted quality and great liveliness to the aromas that keeps your nose diving back into the glass. With time, savory rhubarb notes reveal themselves, adding extra depth. Luscious high-toned strawberry spreads across your palate, filling your mouth with its candied richness. As always, the fine grained tannin's carry this fruit on a silky ride to a lip-smacking finish. This texture begs for similarly silky foods to accompany it, such as slow-cooked salmon, braised chicken, and scalloped sweet potatoes, or cheeses like burrata or Havarti. Food Pairing Any fish with a matching silky texture would make an excellent pairing, such as a mustard-crusted branzino, olive oil poached salmon, or steamed sea bass, as would a creamy cheese like Humboldt Fog.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Tones of grapefruit, strawberry and red cherry kick off this immensely textured, expressive wine from a site along Stoetz Ridge above Occidental. Warm spice dots the landscape of lively freshness and supple tannins, with depths of flavor and balanced richness.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Dutton Goldfield Fox Den Vineyard Pinot Noir shows excellent New World fruitiness, with a shade of Old World rusticity. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits energy from start to finish. Its lovely aromas and flavors of active red fruits and earthy notes should pair it well with duck confit. (Tasted: September 9, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are the mainstays of the Dutton-Goldfield production. Using fruit from carefully chosen vineyards, Dan Goldfield produces wine that reflects the natural tendencies of the area: crisp, well-structured wines that display the complexity, balance and intensity that the partners believe are key to world-class wines.
Dutton-Goldfield Winery's first releases were a Dutton Ranch Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the 1998 vintage. Today Dan and Steve continue to produce Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from Dutton Ranch plantings, numerous vineyard-designated wines, as well as small lots of old vine Zinfandel and hillside Syrah. The Dutton-Goldfield wines are crafted using traditional techniques such as barrel and malolactic fermentation for the Chardonnay, and open top fermentation for the Pinot Noir.
The winery is a partnership of friends, colleagues, neighbors and families. The wines reflect this spectacular part of Northern California where the grapes are grown, the superb quality of fruit from perfectly placed and planted vineyards, and the work of an appreciative winemaker.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Situated on the foggier and colder western edge of the Russian River Valley, almost abutting the Sonoma Coast appellation, Green Valley is one of California’s most reputable Chardonnay and Pinot noir producing regions. It is also a wonderful source of sparkling wines made from these varieties.
Goldridge soils abound throughout the Green Valley appellation. This fine, dark, sandy loam and fractured sandstone is derived from the remains of ancient inland seabeds dating back three to five million years. It is valuable for high quality grape growing because of its excellent drainage and low fertility.