Nova Ridge is named for a porch light -- a single bulb that glowed on the ridge across the way, visible from the Holstein family vineyard every night of Jackson Holstein's childhood. In 2023 he bought the ridge. This is the first Chardonnay to come off it. Jackson grew up in Willamette Valley vines -- his father planted and managed hundreds of acres during the region's founding years -- and he now farms organically and without irrigation on the fractured volcanic basalt that defines the Dundee Hills. The cellar approach is plain and confident: native fermentation in French oak, partial malolactic, unfined and unfiltered. Oregon Chardonnay at its best is a taut, stony, high-tension wine rather than a buttery one, and this lands squarely in that camp. A debut worth catching.