Hollister’s Calera Wine Company receiving national
recognitions
Life has been good to Josh Jensen lately.
A native Californian who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area,
Jensen started the Calera Wine Company in Hollister in the mid
1970s after studying winemaking in Burgundy, France. Calera has
since grown to include four single vineyard pinot noir sites as
well as viognier and chardonnay grapes planted in his Mt. Harlan
vineyard. His wines have been well received by wine critics both in
America and abroad, his Pinot Noir was honored by Food and Wine
magazine and most recently, Jensen was named 2007’s Winemaker of
the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hollister’s Calera Wine Company receiving national recognitions
Life has been good to Josh Jensen lately.
A native Californian who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jensen started the Calera Wine Company in Hollister in the mid 1970s after studying winemaking in Burgundy, France. Calera has since grown to include four single vineyard pinot noir sites as well as viognier and chardonnay grapes planted in his Mt. Harlan vineyard. His wines have been well received by wine critics both in America and abroad, his Pinot Noir was honored by Food and Wine magazine and most recently, Jensen was named 2007’s Winemaker of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle.
But even with the accolades coming in, Jensen is not about to sit back and take it easy.
“This is a feast or famine business, and just five years ago it was very much famine,” Jensen said. “There was a recession in winemaking that most have forgotten about now, but I never will. Many friends went out of business, and others went down and dirty and sold to Gallo or other large companies. There have been some really tough times.”
With Americans beginning to develop a passion for fine wine, Calera’s recognition is coming at the perfect time, Jensen said.
“Over the years, this is probably the biggest honor we’ve ever had,” he said. “It feels great; it’s a pat on the back. I view it as an honor for the whole company. And I think it may mean I won’t have to hear quite as often if I’m located in Napa. It’s just a validation of our whole history and putting down roots here in the remote Gabilan Mountains.”
Jensen’s history
Jensen tasted his first fine wines at an early age, thanks George Selleck, a family friend after whom Jensen later named one of Calera’s vineyards.
As most young people often do, Jensen went to college not really sure about what he wanted to do with his life, but he attended Yale University, graduating with his bachelor’s degree in history in 1966. A year later, he enrolled at Oxford University in England, eventually earning his Master’s degree in anthropology.
After graduating from Oxford, Jensen moved to France, living there for several years while becoming fluent in French and learning about French wines. He made trips to Bordeaux, Alsace, Champagne and Burgundy, and it was while in Burgundy Jensen decided to pursue a career in winemaking.
“I love wines,” he said. “It just got to the point that I had to decide what I wanted to do, and wine was what I was passionate about.”
Jensen spent the next two years working grape harvests in Burgundy, first at Domaine de la Romanee-Conti and in 1971 at Domain Dujac. He tasted, watched and listened, jotting down his observations in a worn notebook. One of his most important observations: the eastern-facing slopes of the Cote d’Or were planted according to the layered ribbons of limestone found in the earth’s soil.
“The greatest wines are made from grapes grown in limestone,” Jensen said.
In 1971, Jensen returned to the United States, settling in California with the intent to start his own winery. But while France’s soil may be filled with limestone, California’s soil was not. Jensen studied topographical maps and mineral surveys from the Bureau of Mines, searching for available land rich in limestone. If he found a potential site, Jensen would walk over it, using hydrochloric acid to see if it reacted with any alkaline chalk present in the soil. He eventually found 324 acres in the Gabilan Mountains, where a former limestone quarry had been located. Jensen was thrilled to learn that the land boasted a limestone deposit of several million tons. He purchased the property in 1974, and made the first vintage of the winery he would name Calera from purchased zinfandel grapes.
Now single, Jensen and his former wife had three children – Silvie, Duggan and Chloe – all of whom now own a 25 percent share of Calera. “They now own more than I do,” he said. None of the three are actively working at the winery at the moment, but Jensen said that could change.
“One might, or maybe all three could decide they want to work here,” he said. “But even if they don’t, they will inherit it all someday and they can just have the staff manage it for them.”
The vineyard’s history
In 1974, Jensen purchased the property on which he would build Calera Wine Company. This property, high up in the Gabilan Mountain range, was a former quarry owned by the S.H. Cowell Foundation, which managed the holdings of a family whose fortune had been made in lime mining.
Limestone had been mined on the property in the 1870s, and a 30-foot high kiln, almost perfectly preserved, still stands next to what is now Jensen’s viognier vineyard. Jensen fell in love with the land, and the kiln, and even chose to name his winery Calera, which is the Spanish word for kiln.
Calera’s elevation is 2,200 feet above sea level, making it one of the highest, and coldest, vineyards in the state. That, along with the limestone-rich soil, made the property perfect for the pinot noir wines Jensen loved. A year after buying Calera, Jensen planted 24 acres of pinot noir grapes in three parcels. In Burgundy, where Jensen learned his trade, parcels are individually named to emphasize the differences between each wine. Jensen followed this tradition, naming the parcels Selleck (after the family friend who helped foster Jensen’s love of wine), Reed and Jensen. These vineyards produced their first crops in 1978.
In 1982, Jensen bought an additional 300 acres on the mountain, planting some of the first viognier grapes in California. Two years later, Jensen planted his first chardonnay vineyard, and his fourth pinot noir parcel, which he named the Mills Vineyard.
About 13 years later, Jensen planted 13 more acres of pinot noir grapes and in 1998 another 10 acres of pinot noir as well as five acres of chardonnay.
“All of our vineyards are pretty far away, about a half hour drive from here on all dirt roads,” Jensen said, as he sat at a large conference table in Calera’s business office. “There is no electricity out there, no phones, no paved roads. It’s very remote, but very beautiful.”
Today, Calera includes a total of 83.6 planted acres and a 30,000 square foot winery with a newly added tasting room.
“I think this is a good size for us,” Jensen said. “We can keep an eye on each batch, keep quality our focus. Here near the winery, we have 30 acres that have never been planted and eventually, someday, I want to do so.”
The Calera way
The 100-acre property on which the actual winery sits is on Cienega Road, halfway between Hollister and Calera’s vineyards. More than 1,000 feet lower in elevation than the vineyards, the winery’s property includes many must haves – paved roads, electrical power and telephone service.
But even more enticing to Jensen, who purchased the property in 1977, was the multi-level rock crushing facility that had been built on the site in the 1950s.
“It had never been used,” Jensen said, referring to the large cement building built into the hillside which today houses Calera’s gravity-flow winery. “It was perfect for what I had in mind.”
What Jensen had in mind was making great wines in the gentlest possible way. It took years of renovation and seismic retrofitting – the San Andreas Fault is just 100 yards away, and the barrel room, filled with dozens of 500-pound wine filled oak barrels, is “probably the last place you’d want to be in an earthquake,” Jensen said – but today, the winery includes additional warehouse space, an underground wine library, offices, a laboratory, a German grape press and an Italian bottling line.
But what makes Calera unique is how its wines are made. Harvested grapes are put through the winemaking process naturally, through gravity flow, rather than the use of electric pumps.
“Pumps can actually cause a lot of thrashing, and they tend to whip the wine a bit,” Jensen said. “Our wines are better for not going through that. We can make a wine without ever pumping it at all.”
Calera has a unique, seven-level gravity flow winery built into the side of a mountain. Immediately after being picked, grapes are brought to the winery and taken to the grape receiving level, which is the highest of the seven levels. There, they are put into a type of large funnel and dropped into huge metal barrels on the next level, called the fermentation level. While the white chardonnay grapes are moved immediately to the pressroom and then the storage level, the red pinot noir and viognier varieties spend two weeks in the pinot noir fermentation barrels on the fermentation level. Pinot noir and viognier grapes need to ferment with their skins on to allow the skin’s pigment to create the wine’s color. This is called whole cluster fermentation.
After fermentation, the juice of the grapes is slowly moved from the storage area to two different barrel levels for aging. The lowest level of the winery includes the lower barrel cellar, the warehouse, bottling tanks and the bottling line and the shipping area.
In keeping with his minimalist approach, fermentation at Calera is also done naturally, as Jensen insists on using only yeast native to his vineyards to ferment his wine.
“We don’t buy commercial yeasts, ever,” he said. “Whatever is native to this region is what we use. That is the way the greatest wines in the world are made. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Calera’s future
On a chilly December Monday, Jensen sat in the business offices of Calera, looking out large plate-glass windows at the beauty of the Gabilan Mountains just across the way. He has been asked about the future of Calera, and what he hopes these recent awards and recognitions will mean to his winemaking.
He talked about the economy “The housing market is a dog, but overall, I think the economy is OK. People are uncertain about what the new year will bring, but the American economy seems to be rolling along just fine,” the colleagues who have sold their small wineries to larger, commercial companies “I think it is a real pity” and his desire to keep Calera a family-run business “Calera is positively not ever going to be for sale.”
He mentions the recognitions such as the Winemaker of the Year award, the increased sales both nationally and overseas (Jensen’s wines are distributed in 47 states and 22 countries, including Japan, Vietnam and South Korea) and the American Viticultural Area designation Calera received in 1990. And in spite of the uncertainty that is part of any business that relies on the kindness of Mother Nature, Jensen radiates confidence when talking about Calera’s future.
“I feel really lucky,” he said. “I get to get up and look out at this view, relish it and drink it in all the time. I get to do something I love every day. Hopefully, we’ll continue to make wines that just get better and better. That is our goal, our ambition.”
A parent’s dilemma
Winemakers hate picking a favorite among their wines
Ask a mother which one of her children is her favorite, and she’ll say she couldn’t possibly choose between them.
Evidently, asking a winemaker which one of his wines is his favorite results in pretty much the same response.
“Our wines are like our children and in the same way a parent can’t have a favorite among their children a winemaker can’t have a favorite wine,” said Josh Jensen, proprietor and winemaker of Calera Wine Co. in Hollister. “If you really wanted to take a guess at our favorites, you’d have to look for clues. The clues would be the prices. Our most expensive wines are the ones we feel are our best produced.”
Using this helpful hint, there are a few wines Jensen would most likely consider “favorites.” The first would be the 1997 Reed Vineyard Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir, bottled on Feb. 23, 1999. Pinot noir is a red wine grape, grown for making wines similar to those made in Burgundy, France, where Jensen studied winemaking for two years. This particular Calera pinot noir sells for $71 a bottle or $766 a case, and is described on the Calera Web site as being “intense yet nuanced, powerful while at the same time showing great harmony and balance.”
A second choice could be the 1995 Mt. Harlan Chardonnay, bottled on May 15, 1996. This particular vintage was reviewed by Wine Spectator in 1998 as “smooth, ripe, rich and concentrated, with a focused core of spicy pear, hazelnut, fig, melon and light toasty oak. Complex and inviting, finishing with a spicy flavor and fine length.” This wine is priced at $49 a bottle or $529 a case.
Both of the above wines are available on Calera’s Web site by clicking on the site’s wine library link. This link features mostly older vintage wines available in limited quantities, although there is a 2002 Viognier Mt. Harlan wine featured for $36 a bottle.
One wine which would surely make Jensen’s list is the 2000 Mills Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir. At $51 a bottle ($551 a case), this particular pinot noir is the most expensive of the current releases featured on this link, but it was also reviewed in 2003 by Robert Parker (the well-known wine critic, not the well-known mystery writer) as being a “medium ruby-colored pinot offering a big, sweet nose of strawberries, cherries, spice box and cloves. It should drink well for 10-15 years.”
Choices among the paler wines would include the 2006 Mt. Harlan Dessert Viognier (viognier is a variety of white grape originally planted in the Rhone Valley of France and now gaining popularity in California vineyards) and the 2006 Chardonnay Mt. Harlan.
The viognier sells for $30 a bottle and is described on Calera’s site as being a “golden-yellow dessert wine” with a “perfumed aroma, reminiscent of sun-ripened peaches and sweet pineapple, with floral notes of honeysuckle and citrus blossoms.” The chardonnay is priced at $25 a bottle ($270 a case) and is described on the site as having “a bit of everything – alluring aromas of apples, mandarin essence and vanilla, along with a very creamy, unctuous texture.”
When pressed to choose a favorite, Jensen selected one not found on his Web site in individual bottles, a Jensen Vineyard Pinot Noir. A half-bottle of a 2004 Jensen Vineyard pinot is available in a $145 sampler pack, which previews vintages that will be sold in 2008. Other varieties in the sampler include half-bottles of the 2004 Selleck, Reed, Ryan and Mills Pinots and 2005 Mt. Harlan Chardonnay.
Calera’s wines are available at the winery, online at www.calerawine.com and Lynn’s Liquors in downtown Hollister.
