50 years of Calera: Josh Jensen and the backbone of California Pinot Noir

When the subject is California Pinot Noir, 10 out of 10 wine drinkers would probably name Sonoma, Santa Barbara, maybe Anderson Valley, or just about anywhere else before San Benito County even crosses their mind.

And, chances are, some people don’t realise that it is a prime wine-growing area at all — a particular kind of shame, once you learn that it has been home for half a century to one of California’s most influential Pinot pioneers: Calera.

A terroir convert

Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, Calera is the late Josh Jensen’s dream come true and exists mainly because of his vision and determination. The broad strokes are well known: Jensen, California-born, Yale and Oxford-educated, worked harvests in Burgundy at both Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Dujac before returning home to track down the best corner in California for Pinot Noir.

Fresh back from France, that meant limestone.

He became a full convert to French terroir — a concept still obscure, if not entirely unknown, in California at the time.

His two-year search led him to Mt Harlan in the Gabilan Mountains, a high-elevation ridge (at 2,200ft or 670m) shaped by the cooling Monterey Bay winds and, most importantly, the limestone soils he’d been hunting.

And Jensen didn’t arrive empty-handed…