Most true lovers of pinot noir have made a pilgrimage to Calera Winery in Hollister, the place that firmly established North America’s ability to produce “the heartbreak grape.”
Calera Wine Company, established in 1975 in the remote hills of San Benito County, was the beautiful and exhausting dream of Josh Jensen, born in Seattle and raised in Orinda. His father, a dentist, had a good friend, Dr. George Selleck, who was a wine collector and connoisseur. The two had met during World War Two. It was Selleck who turned Jensen on to wine.
After graduating with a liberal arts degree from Yale, Jensen headed to Oxford for a Masters in social anthropology. Along the way, he discovered for himself the true pleasures of life in France, and fell in love with Burgundy, the wine and the place.
He knocked on the door at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, one of the world’s premier vineyard estates, founded in 1869, looking for a job. Figuring he could speak English to the UK tourists, they hired him. He loved everything about it.
The next summer, he returned to work at another top Burgundy house, Domaine Dujac. Armed with a powerful secret from the French, he went in search of limestone soils in the New World.
Geological maps guided him to potential sites up and down the west coast, but his search yielded naught.
Everyone thought he was tilting at invisible windmills, until that flash of white caught his eye in the Hollister hills. Limestone. Three million tons of it. And a quarry, along with an old lime kiln.
That was 1974, the year Jensen first purchased land on Mt. Harlan, with the help of three investors: Dr. Selleck, Bill Reed (another long-time friend) and Josh’s father, all of whom would have vineyards named for them.
Those vineyards and the iconic brand that sprang forth from them, Calera, which is Spanish for lime kiln, created a legacy that has endured for 50 years.
In recognition of the occasion, Calera winemaker, Mike Waller, led a special tasting at Crave Wine Bar in Hollister, paired with food prepared by local Hollister Chef David Jamrock, to commemorate the planting of those first three vineyards.
The five-acre Selleck Vineyard is undergoing a replant, but the Reed Vineyard, also five acres, is hanging in there, as is the 14-acre Jensen Vineyard, named for Josh’s father. While those vineyards put down roots in the limestone soils at 2,200 to 2,400 feet, Jensen, in 1977, purchased a 100-acre parcel lower down the mountain where the winery and tasting room now sit.
A former rock crusher was used as the basis for the gravity fed winery.
Convinced he had found what he was looking for, Jensen purchased an additional 300 acres of limestone land on Mt. Harlan, where he planted Viognier, in 1982. He subsequently planted Chardonnay, in 1984, and four more vineyards, again named for people of significance in his life.
Planted in 1984, the Mills Vineyard was named for Everett Mills, a salty Cienega resident who became a friend of Jensen’s. It, too, was recently pulled out for replanting. The 16-acre DeVilliers Vineyard is the largest, and was planted on the eastern flank of Mt. Harlan in 1997.
It lies between the two original plantings, Jensen and Mills. DeVilliers is named for Marq DeVilliers, a South African born writer who chronicled the Calera story in The Heartbreak Grape.
The last vineyard to be planted, in 1998, is named for longtime vineyard manager, Jim Ryan, and is the highest of the group at 2,500 feet. It faces west, and produces wines that are a bit more accessible early in their development. The 2021 Ryan Vineyard pinot noir was named the 29th best wine in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list for 2024.
For all the vineyards, Jensen used cuttings from vines in Chalone, Napa and suitcase clones he had smuggled in from his sources in France. Over the decades, these vines have morphed to become what is called the Calera clone: highly prized for their small clusters and intense flavors. They taste different in each vineyard in which they are planted, which is the point Jensen was making by bottling vineyard designates.
Waller says that all the wines are made the same way: whole cluster, native yeast and barrel fermentation. He uses 30% new French oak, mostly Francois Freres Medium toast, three-year air dried, plus some Alliers and Vosges barrels.
We tasted the elegant 2019 Mt. Harlan Chardonnay, splendidly balanced between sweet orchard fruit and a bowl of citrus. The oak is so well integrated, it’s like lemon bars melting in your mouth. This was followed by the 2020 Mills Vineyard Pinot Noir, deeply complex, and ever-evolving, starting with earthy, meaty aromas, then unfolding with cherry, cranberry, orange peel and baking spice.
Waller then poured us the 2020 DeVilliers Vineyard Pinot Noir, dark and stormy, with aromas of salt, earth and mint, and grippy tannins, juicy acid and flavors of graphite and blackberry. Definitely needs time to unfold.
From the oldest of all the vineyards tasted, the 2020 Jensen Pinot Noir exhibits the most complexity. Very herbal, with earth and iron filings in the nose, the wine explodes with fantastic acid and a spirited pace, packed with punchy pomegranate and an almost chocolatey roundness.
The 2019 Ryan Vineyard Pinot Noir shows its smooth and satiny self, flowing with strawberry and dark spiced cherry, and charged with energy and staying power.
Waller took a moment to talk about Josh Jensen, the man who shaped so many lives and perceptions of pinot noir in California.
Notoriously mercurial, true to his Scottish roots, Jensen was also very much a study in sartorial shock value. He loved wearing a wild Versace tie with a corduroy jacket and suede shoes. At one point when Jensen was moving from San Francisco back to the Calera property, he brought in all kinds of clothing and household items, and dumped them into the courtyard outside the tasting room to have a rummage sale.
“He had all these worn out old T-shirts with holes that he was charging a dollar for,” says Waller. “There was a nice Kitchen Aid mixer I bid $25 on, and when nobody else bid higher, Josh crossed out the bid and wrote $50! He knew I wanted it.”
At the same time, says Waller, “He had all these beautiful, expensive watches, some costing $2,000 or more. And he just started giving them away.”
Jensen sold Calera to Duckhorn in 2017, later moving to San Francisco to live with his daughter and grandchildren. He passed away in 2022, but his spirit lives on in those old vines he planted 50 years ago.
