Pinot Vision Realized: Calera Passes the Test of Time

Say the name “Calera” to California wine insiders and they’ll likely think you’re talking about a grapevine clone. In the current discussion around pinot noir vineyards, the Calera clone is frequently mentioned along other heritage clones like Swan, Mt. Eden and Pommard.

Winemakers and wine drinkers are revisiting these grapevine clones to make some of the highest-rated wines on the West Coast. But let’s not forget where the Calera clone came from – the Calera winery in California’s Central Coast region, planted in 1975 by the founder of the winery, Josh Jensen.

The winery celebrated its 50th anniversary by staging for media members a vertical tasting of Calera pinot noir from 1985 to the current 2022 release. Sommeliers poured six wines each from two original single vineyards belonging to the Calera estate in the Mt. Harlan appellation: Reed Vineyard and Jensen Vineyard.

The highlights were very high, including a mature, complex, intricate Calera Pinot Noir Mt. Harlan Jensen Vineyard 1985 that is still vibrant, fresh and structured, full of tart cherry and black tea flavors. It tied as my favorite wine of the 12.

Equally brilliant was the Calera Pinot Noir Mt. Harlan Reed Vineyard 1996, prompting similar tasting notes about balance and precision, but with brighter fruit, rose petal and balsamic flavors. It’s an entirely elegant and poised offering.

Very few lowlights interrupted the fascinating, eye-opening trip back in time. The 1985 and 2008 bottles of Reed were enjoyable yet showing more age and earthiness than the rest.

Calera winemaker Mike Waller has worked on-site for almost 20 years, including many vintages alongside Jensen before he sold the property and brand to the Duckhorn Wine Group in 2017. Jensen died in 2022.

James and I first met Jensen when Calera pinot noir and chardonnay (there is also a Calera chardonnay clone) were among the first in California to approach the quality and presumed longevity of great Burgundy wines. Chalone, Hanzell, David Bruce, Mt. Eden and Joseph Swan were among the few others that were promising in the 1970s.

The recent vertical tasting of Calera pinots confirmed that, yes, they are ageworthy, and provoked a discussion of how unorthodox Jensen’s approach was in the 1970s.

Waller explained that then and now, all the estate-grown pinot noir is fermented as whole clusters, stems included, allowing native yeast to work their magic. The vines are rooted in limestone-laced soil at 1,800 to 2,200 feet elevation in a mountainous, semi-desert environment about 30 miles inland from the coastal city of Monterey.

The Mt. Harlan American Viticultural Area is a sort of island wine district and a monopole, Calera being the only winery in it. Calera’s 100 acres of vines are part of a much larger, uncultivated property.

Waller said the low-nutrition, limestone-based soil, steep slopes and the nature of the Calera pinot noir clone combine to restrict yields. Calera pinot grapes grow in small clusters with grapes loosely arranged. One ton to 1.5 tons per acre is the average crop size. The Jensen and Reed vineyards are both planted to a density of 726 vines per acre, with spacing of six feet by 10 feet.

These factors account for the wines’ firm structures, as small grape berries and thick skins add extra tannin to the wine, and a cool microclimate keeps the acidity strong over a long growing season.

In fact, firm structure – call it mouthfeel or texture – was one big take away from the tasting. The Jensen vineyard wines in particular were vibrant, acid-driven, riven with fine-grained tannins and nervy fruit flavors.

A great example of this structure is the Calera Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir Jensen Vineyard 2014, a spectacular wine that has shown little evolution so far. Potent sour-cherry, black-currant and floral flavors are accented by stony, ironlike notes. It’s exciting to drink now and will only improve with more time.

The six Jensen wines earned about two points higher on average  than the Reed wines. Waller said that tannin is typically elevated in the Jensen pinot noir: “Well, I mean honestly – the tannin in the 2014 was insane,” he added.

More ripeness and focus to the fruit flavors were evident, too, in most of the Jensens.

The Reed wines, in contrast, leaned toward cranberry and rhubarb flavors, with savory herb and green olive complexity.

Waller said the Reed vineyard is shaped like an amphitheater, basically facing north away from the sun to keep it relatively cool, but with exposures in all directions.

In the 1970s, noting single-vineyard locations on bottles of California wine was unusual. But Jensen had worked in the vineyard at Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée Conti and was familiar with Domaine Dujac.

“He had a vision,” Waller said. “He learned something from the greatest Burgundies in the world and he saw what they were doing there and he first of all wanted to make sure that he had true pinot noir.” A big chunk of the supposed pinot noir vines in the state turned out later to be gamay.

So Jensen brought back cuttings from Burgundy to propagate in California when he decided to start Calera. Legend has it that the cuttings came from DRC, but I never heard Jensen confirm this.

Jensen isolated the Calera clone from the pinot noir selections he brought back with him.

But it wasn’t just the clone, the stems and the native yeast that made his approach so different. It was also the vineyard designations on Calera labels identifying the exact sites where they were grown.

Waller explained: “So when Josh went out to the markets in New York, or wherever he's trying to sell these wines, he would get some pushback like, why are you selling me three different pinot noirs? Josh learned from Burgundy that site matters and it mattered so much.

“He could have easily said, 'I'm just going to blend all these together and see if I can sell them.' But Josh stuck with his guns and wanted to sell the Americans on site-specific wines.”

The tasting proved out Jensen’s vision. Site-specific, estate-grown Calera pinot noir is elegant, singular and absolutely worth aging.

When buying a young Calera vintage, you’re not going to see the whole picture of the wine for many years. That’s not to say it’s wrong to drink them young. Not everyone has the space to buy and store them or the credit card limit to pick a well-aged Calera wine from a restaurant list.

But these pinot noirs have passed the test of time in a remarkable way, and it was inspiring to witness their history first-hand.

– Jim Gordon, Editor-at-Large

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. You can sort the wines by vintage and score. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.