Many 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 master’s 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.
After two summers working at premier vineyard estates—Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Dujac—he set off to the New World in search of limestone soils. 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 brand that sprang forth from them—Calera, which is Spanish for lime kiln—created a legacy that has endured for 50 years.
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.
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.
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.
Calera winemaker Mike 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 François Frère medium toast, three-year air dried, plus some Alliers and Vosges barrels.
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.
