Calera Pinot Noir Jensen Vineyard – A Journey Through Time 1978-2013

Since his debut vintage in 1978, Josh Jensen has shown he has the magic touch with Pinot Noir. This once-in-a-lifetime tasting traced the arc of Jensen’s brilliant career through a series of remarkable Pinots that set the bar for what is possible in California.

A native of the Bay Area, Jensen attended high school on the East Coast and then pursued graduate studies in England. While Jensen’s friends flocked to careers in finance, law and banking after school, Jensen had caught the wine bug thanks to George Selleck, a collector and close friend of his father's. In 1970, Jensen worked the harvest at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. An internship at Domaine Dujac followed in 1971. Later that fall Jensen returned to California with a mission: to find a site rich in the limestone he had been trained in Burgundy to covet. There was only one problem – neither Napa Valley or Sonoma has vineyards planted on limestone.

After consulting with geologists Jensen found the limestone he was searching for in San Benito County and specifically on Mt. Harlan, which is located in the Gavilan Mountain range, south of San Francisco. Even today, Mt. Harlan is extremely rugged and remote. Water has to be trucked up to the vineyards and there is pretty much nothing but the barest essentials at the top of the mountain. It’s hard to imagine what things must have been like 40 years ago.