Wines & Vines

January 2018 Unified Symposium Issue

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WINEMAKER INTERVIEW 132 WINES&VINES January 2018 W orld-class Pinot Noir from California seemed an improbable goal back in 1975, when Josh Jensen planted his first vine- yards at Calera Wine Co. Jensen, a Cali- fornia native, had spent a couple of harvests in Burgundy in the early 1970s, and the place and its wines were a revelation to him. So when he returned home with the intention of pro- ducing his own wines, he looked for something familiar to all Burgundians: limestone. Jensen found it in the hills outside Hollister, in San Benito County, Calif., and estab- lished Calera. Over the years, Calera gained a reputation for the dis- tinctive single-vineyard Pinots produced from the winery's estate vineyards on Mt. Harlan, which became an American Viticultural Area in 1990. Jensen himself gained a reputa- tion as a pioneer and a visionary. So the announcement in August 2017 that Calera was being sold to Duckhorn Wine Co. came as a shock to many. But Jensen had been considering a sale for several years because, he says, his three kids weren't interested in the business. He says he didn't want any of "the giants" to buy it, and if the right buyer didn't come along, he wouldn't sell. "A legacy is very important to me," he adds. Jensen had been friends with Duckhorn's founders, Dan and Margaret Duckhorn, and even though the company is now owned by private-equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, he thinks "it's a wonderful fit." Jen- sen plans to stay on at the winery for four more years. Q You famously s t u d i e d g e o - logic maps to find limestone soils in Cal- ifornia for your vine- yard. Do you still think that soils were the most important thing? What about the influence of climate? Josh Jensen: I would have to say that planting downhill from a limestone deposit is the icing on the cake. It is a factor that can raise Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from good to great. But cli- mate is the most important thing. If your growing conditions are too hot, or not warm enough, you can't make great Pinot Noir. In the early years, people thought Hollister was too hot for Pinot Noir. I heard this so often that I actually purchased the University of California, Berkeley's annual book that records the 30-year temperature records for every town in the entire state. Using these records and a pocket calculator, I made a chart and compared Hollister to four other towns: St. Helena, Healdsburg, Napa and Sonoma. Using temperatures going back 20 years, I averaged each day for the growing season from April through October and ranked them by which was coolest in terms of nighttime temperatures. Hollister was the coolest. Hollister also had the lowest daytime maximum temperatures. From where I sit in my office, I look out on the Diablo mountain range. This range, which goes from Mount Diablo deep into Southern California, separates the cool coastal air on the ocean side of the mountains from the hot air of the San Joaquin Valley. This climate is a key factor in lifting a Pinot Noir from the ordinary to the sublime. Q How would you say that your wines have changed, stylisti- cally or otherwise, over the years? Jensen: I once asked a friend in the International Wine Academy, in which I am a member, what the dif- f e r e n c e i s b e t w e e n shallow-rooted vines a n d o l d e r, d e e p - rooted vines. He said that the wines from shallow roots express the variety, while the w i n e s f r o m d e e p - rooted vines express the terroir. He said that the deepest vines he had ever seen were approxi- mately 25 meters in a vine- yard in the Loire. I wondered how he could know that, since you can't dig down that far to measure. It turns out it was a vineyard on a hill with A CONVERSATION WITH Josh Jensen After selling winery to Duckhorn, a Pinot pioneer reflects By Laurie Daniel

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