Calera Jensen Vineyard Pinot Noir (375ML half-bottle) 2008
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: How many of us have had the pleasure of tasting a wine with some bottle age? I have been fortunate in my years in the wine industry and have tried quite a few older wines. The 2008 Calera Jensen Vineyard is an amazing wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine starts and never stops. Its aromas and flavors of red fruit, fresh dirt, forest floor, and other nuances make it a perfect choice with aged Epoisses cheese accented with marc. (Tasted: September 10, 2018, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Pinot Noir Jensen Vineyard bursts onto the palate with a rush of intensely perfumed fruit. It shows fabulous balance of fruit, structure and acidity as it covers the palate with dazzling purity and breathtaking sense of balance. A soft, caressing finish rounds things out in style. This is a super-refined showing from Josh Jensen. Anticipated maturity: 2013-2023.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sweet and jammy in youth, with robust flavors of raspberry and cherry jam. The sweetness is balanced by crisp acidity and firm tannins, as well as a minerality that must come from the terroir. A feminine wine, Calera's '08 Jensen should gain in the bottle over the next eight years or so.
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In 1975, legendary vintner and American wine pioneer Josh Jensen founded Calera (Spanish for “lime kiln”) high in the remote Gavilan Mountains of California’s windswept Central Coast. There, in Mt. Harlan’s low-yielding, limestone-rich soils and cool, arid climate, he began planting what would ultimately become six small estate vineyards. Today, these vineyards are recognized as some of the New World’s most revered Pinot Noir sites.
Calera is a vision, and Calera’s wines truly express the sense of place. Rather than follow the recommended path, Josh Jensen became a pioneer in American Pinot Noir. Taking his cue from the great domaines of Burgundy, which have grown grapes in limestone soil for centuries, he set out in search of the perfect spot in California to create wines unique to the world but in the style of the greatest wines of France. Site selection was vital as he ventured off the grid to plant on the site of an old limekiln in the Gavilan Mountains of California's Central Coast.
Under the stewardship of Winemaker Mike Waller, each vineyard is renowned for producing singular wines of uncommon purity, elegance and aging potential. In addition to its beloved single-vineyard wines, Calera partners with some of the top vineyards on California’s majestic Central Coast to make Calera’s beautiful Central Coast wines, including a Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
At elevations reaching well over 2,000 feet, the Mt. Harlan AVA in the Gabilan Range is an anomaly among its surrounding Central Coast appellations. Recognizing the splendor of the area and its ideal limestone-rich soils, Josh Jensen chose Mt. Harlan as the home of his Calera Wine Company in the 1970s. Awarded his own AVA in 1990, Calera is the only commercial winery in the appellation.