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…

The suitcase story

As the story goes, Jensen brought Pinot Noir cuttings back from Burgundy. He first planted them at Chalone before propagating them atop Mt Harlan, where they became the foundation of Calera’s vineyards.

It’s hard to say precisely what happened and what Jensen might have smuggled back in his suitcase — he passed away in 2022, and he kept the specifics close.

Beyond Jensen’s well-known journey, what often slips beneath the surface is just how much of California’s Pinot Noir history now traces back to him and to Calera.

The Burgundian cuttings, the original Mt Harlan vineyards, and a winemaking approach that helped establish benchmarks for ageworthy California Pinot Noir are all part of his legacy.

‘You can’t talk about California Pinot without talking about Calera,’ says Justin Ennis, winemaker at Joseph Phelps Freestone. who farms 29.5 acres (11.5ha) of Calera selection on the Sonoma Coast.

A California clone

It turns out that in the 1980s, budwood from Calera was widely spread across vineyards throughout the state, from the Sonoma Coast to the Russian River to Santa Barbara and beyond.

‘While Josh was carefully growing his estate, he was also very generous with giving cuttings out. Larry Hyde and Steve Kistler, for example, came in and got cuttings from us, and then, you know, now they’re everywhere,’ says Mike Waller, Calera’s winemaker.

The Calera clone, as we know today, didn’t simply replicate itself in perfect little carbon copies across California. Pinot Noir never behaves that way, viticulturists like to say.

Over the years, through many different propagations and in new soils, the material evolved and adapted to California’s climate, becoming distinct enough that UC Davis Foundation Plant Services has registered it.

‘If you’re trying to make one of the finest wines possible, Calera is really solid material to start with,’ says Ennis.

‘There’s this overall elegance you get from Calera because of the complexity in the clusters, the different berry sizes, the different fruit set timing, the way it all comes together. It’s less about fruit and more about savoury elements,’ adds Jeff Mangahas, winemaker at Williams Selyem, who farms six acres of Calera clone Pinot Noir (2.4ha), noting how recognisable the clone’s structural identity can be.

An approach marked by elegance

Jensen’s push to redefine what California Pinot Noir could achieve also touched his winemaking and philosophy on native fermentations, minimal interference, no filtration, and his core belief in terroir.

Waller, who worked alongside Jensen for 12 years, says: ‘Josh had no technical background. He had a vision. He learned something from the greatest Burgundies in the world and brought that over. He made wines in a very specific, hands-off way, and those risks made the wines even more special.’

Within the world of sommeliers and winemakers, Calera carries a cult-like reverence. Old bottles, especially from the original vineyards — Jensen, Reed, and Selleck — have a collectable status comparable to top Pinot Noirs around the world.

Daniel Alday, sommelier and beverage director at Verjus in San Francisco, says: ‘Josh was instrumental in proving that California Pinots can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best Burgundy has to offer. Over the years, I’ve tasted several different Calera bottlings across vintages and vineyard sites, and the wines are always shocking in how much fresh red fruit and electric acidity remain after 30 or 40 years.’

Truly timeless

Outside that circle, in the broader wine world, though, Calera remains ‘under the radar.’ Being the sole commercial winery on the remote Mt Harlan AVA probably doesn’t help.

‘Sometimes we do get overlooked because there are so many Pinot producers and so many hot regions,’ says Waller. ‘But people find Calera along their wine journeys. Eventually, they realise we were one of the classics.’

Calera’s place in California wine history isn’t really up for debate, but it’s another thing entirely to taste through a comprehensive lineup and let the wines make the argument themselves.

At a recent retrospective, bottles stretching back 40 years from the Jensen and Reed vineyards didn’t feel like relics lost to time; the younger wines still had the familiar Calera nerve, structure, and freshness.

Taken together, they tell a surprisingly cohesive story and make it seem as if the next 50 years might be more of a continuation than a reinvention.

‘I’m carrying on Josh’s tradition. The winemaking hasn’t changed at all,’ says Waller.

Classic Calera: A look at California Pinot history

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