Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Four decades of experience shine on this Josh Jensen bottling, which mixes luxuriously ripe wild berries, raspberries and cola with the sharper spice of sweet clove and dried violet. It's bright with acidity, picking up licorice in the midpalate and finishing on a tart, slightly bitter note of crushed cranberry. This will sip well for a few years but is amazing now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2011 Pinot Noir Mills comes all from the limestone soils of the Mills Vineyard. Seeing 100% whole cluster inclusion during fermentation, and then aged 18 months in 30% new French oak, it’s a medium-bodied, elegant effort that has notions of Asian spices, dried flowers, sappy underbrush and ripe cherries all emerging from the glass. Showing more rose petal and minerality with time in the glass, it has nicely integrated acidity and a seamless, pure profile that’s ideal for drinking over the coming 5-7 years or more.
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.