Jennie Murphy
Owner & Winemaker

Jennie’s love for winemaking started as an accidental discovery. As a chemistry major at UC Davis, Jennie had plans to go into forensics after graduation. She had helped with a forensic research project in a lab at Davis and spent her summers interning at a Biotechnology company that specialized in forensic test kits. Her plans changed after attending a presentation put on by a winery where the role of a chemist in the landscape of the wine industry was discussed. She decided to do an internship at Korbel Champagne Cellars. Jennie was immediately taken with how winemaking melded art, science, nature and humanity together - she was hooked.  

 

Her next opportunity came in the form of an Enologist position at Paul Hobbs Winery, where she was tasked with updating the lab protocols and instruments. As she grew from lab to winemaking roles, she absorbed every lesson and focused on every detail. She was allowed the space to be creative and to really understand the nuances of each vineyard, clone and vintage. Every wine had its own personality and voice; she was there to help the wines tell their stories. It was an amazing opportunity to work with world class vineyards and craft multiple wines that garnered 100-point scores from critics. She departed from her role as Director of Winemaking for Paul Hobbs in 2022, after a twelve-year career with the winery, in order to focus on the OG Oxlee Graham Wines.

 

With her new label, Jennie hopes to continue to explore varietals and winemaking areas that exemplify a creative and individualistic spirit. 

Jennie is a native of San Jose, California but is very proud to now call Santa Rosa home.  She spends her free time exploring the bounty of Sonoma County with friends and is a proud dog mom to her Scottish Terrier, Oxley (whom is not the namesake of the winery, but we won’t tell him that).  

Joelle has loved art and design for as long as she can remember. That creative spirit brought her to the University of Oregon where she double majored in both fine art and digital art. After graduating with her Bachelor’s degree, Joelle started working for Harry Ritchie’s, a jewelry store with 30 locations, doing both visual merchandising and store design.  Her desire to continue learning about retail merchandising brought her to the Academy of Art in San Francisco where she got a Master’s degree in fashion merchandising. While at school, she also gained real-life marketing experience by completing internships at the established beauty brand Sephora and a small start-up leatherwear goods company Hlaska.  

 

With her Master’s degree in hand, Joelle began working as a visual merchandiser and stylist first for Macy’s and later for Gap. Her most recent role was a Senior Brand Manager position at Meyer Corporation. Here, she marketed cookware brands like Cake Boss, Farberware and Circulon. Joelle was in charge of packaging design, marketing campaigns, managing internal catalogs, designing plan-o-grams and putting together presentations to assist the sales team. The products were targeted at major retailers like Target, Walmart  and Bed Bath and Beyond. Joelle is very excited to be working on a small start-up like Oxlee Graham. Her years of experience in marketing and merchandising are instrumental to getting us off the ground.  

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Joelle resides in Novato, California with her husband, three kids, two cats and a dog (also a hamster, two leopard geckos, a hermit crab…we could go on). When she isn’t chasing after the kids and pets, she is often found working on home improvement projects or helping at her kids’ schools.