Josh Jensen, who, after a single-minded quest within the Nineteen Seventies to search out the right web site in California to develop the pinot noir grape, turned the primary producer of constantly glorious American pinot noir by his Calera Wine Company, inspiring a brand new era of West Coast winemakers, died on Saturday at his dwelling in San Francisco. He was 78.
The trigger was a number of well being points, his daughter Silvie Jensen mentioned.
Good American pinot noir was not often seen in 1972, when Mr. Jensen, enamored with the Burgundy area of France, the supply of the world’s nice pinot noirs and chardonnays, got down to produce his personal model in California. With just a few exceptions, most American pinot noir on the time was at finest easy and fruity; extra typically it was stewed stuff from the recent Central Valley.
However Mr. Jensen had a distinct thought. He had labored briefly in Burgundy and noticed firsthand pinot noir’s affinity for limestone, the area’s bedrock. He was satisfied that if he might discover limestone in California, the place it was uncommon, he might make nice wines with the complexity and skill to age that was typical of excellent Burgundy.
It took him a stable two years of monkish devotion — poring over geology charts and mining surveys, scouring the countryside for the mixture of limestone and delicate local weather which may give him the good wine he envisioned.
In 1974, he discovered his web site, 2,200 ft excessive on the distant slopes of Mount Harlan within the Gabilan Vary in San Benito County, two hours southeast of San Francisco. By no means thoughts the isolation, or the dearth of paved roads, electrical energy and operating water, or the truth that, as Mr. Jensen later put it, the positioning was “a Frisbee toss” from the San Andreas Fault. His imaginative and prescient outshined the potential pitfalls.
He purchased the parcel, on which he discovered a well-preserved previous limekiln. Quickly after, dwelling in a trailer along with his spouse, Jeanne Newman, and her small little one, he started to plant his first three vineyards — Jensen (named after his father), Selleck (for a mentor) and Reed (for an investor) — circumscribing the mountain, every with totally different exposures to the solar. In 1975, Calera Wine Firm was born, taking its title from the Spanish phrase for limekiln.
The primary small crop arrived in 1978, a yr after Mr. Jensen purchased extra land 1,000 ft down the mountain to construct a vineyard, a makeshift facility that was largely uncovered to the weather.
“The isolation of Calera was hanging,” mentioned Ted Lemon, who labored briefly with Mr. Jensen within the early Eighties earlier than working in Burgundy and establishing Littorai in Sonoma County, Calif., the place he continues to make noteworthy pinot noirs and chardonnays. “There was no winemaking neighborhood, nobody down the highway to borrow tools from if one thing broke. Nevertheless, that additionally contributed to the sense of journey and to the pioneering spirit.”
In distinction to the prevailing strategies in California, Mr. Jensen used the ambient yeast on the grapes for fermentation somewhat than inoculating the grapes with business yeast. He didn’t filter the wines. Early on, he wanted to complement his personal manufacturing, shopping for zinfandel grapes in order that he had sufficient wine to promote to pay the payments.
Quickly sufficient, within the mid-Eighties, the Calera pinot noirs started to obtain discover. They had been classically styled within the Burgundy custom, not straightforward to take pleasure in younger but structured to age nicely, with the extraordinary fruit flavors that come from California sunshine.
Every of the vineyards appeared to supply its personal singular expression. Most essential, the Calera pinot noirs had been constantly good yr after yr, in contrast to the one-off pinot noir triumphs that had sometimes tantalized different producers however that they had been unable to breed.
Over time, Mr. Jensen added three extra vineyards, Mills, Ryan and de Villiers, to the unique 24 acres, planted with pinot noir, chardonnay, aligoté and viognier. The Calera vineyards finally totaled 85 acres.
“It’s straightforward to neglect how few outstanding pinot noir producers there have been in California within the Eighties and the way few had been capable of keep and enhance high quality over the a long time that adopted,” Mr. Lemon mentioned. “Calera did that. In that alone, Josh achieved a rare feat.”
Mr. Jensen didn’t simply make distinctive wines. His success impressed others to attempt their hand with pinot noir. New vineyards had been quickly planted in different distant areas of California, just like the Sonoma Coast, the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County, the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Rita Hills, within the western extremes of the Santa Ynez valley in Santa Barbara County. But no one else ventured out to Mount Harlan, which the federal authorities accredited as an American Viticultural Space in 1990.
“Josh’s full dedication and keenness to take something to the restrict to realize high quality turned an inspiration for a lot of who adopted,” Mr. Lemon mentioned. “Few had the braveness to strike out into such an intimidating, distant location, however many had been impressed by his work.”
Jonathan Eddy Jensen was born on Feb. 11, 1944, in Seattle to Dr. Stephen Jensen, a dentist, and Jasmine (Eddy) Jensen, a homemaker. He grew up in Orinda, Calif., the place he was nicknamed Josh; the nickname caught. He later legally modified his title to Josh Edison Jensen, taking his center title from the inventor, with whom he shared a birthday.
He graduated from Yale College, the place he majored in historical past and rowed crew. He then spent two years at New School on the College of Oxford in England, the place he obtained a grasp’s diploma in anthropology and continued to row, collaborating in a race in 1967 wherein Oxford beat Cambridge, its archrival.
Mr. Jensen had been launched to wine by a good friend of his father’s. After getting his diploma, he went to France in 1970 to work the harvest at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the famed Burgundy property in Vosne-Romanée. He fell in love with Burgundy and spent components of the following few years there, together with at Domaine Dujac, then a fledgling property in Morey-St.-Denis and now one of many area’s most esteemed producers.
When he wasn’t working in Burgundy, his son, Duggan, mentioned, he crisscrossed Europe and the Center East in an previous Volkswagen van, typically sleeping within the again, a foretaste of his California hunt.
Mr. Jensen’s marriage to Ms. Newman led to divorce. Along with his son and his daughter Silvie, he’s survived by one other daughter, Chloe Jensen; a stepdaughter, Melissa Jensen; two sisters, Thea Engesser and Stephenie Ward; and 5 grandchildren.
Calera pinot noirs had been thought-about amongst America’s finest by the Nineties and into the 2000s. Mr. Jensen’s license plate learn “Mr Pinot,” as he had been nicknamed in Burgundy, the place he was thought-about an honorary Burgundian. He typically returned there to bicycle along with his pals.
Mr. Jensen was a mentor to youthful pinot noir producers like Andy Peay, an proprietor of Peay Vineyards on the Sonoma Coast.
“He was not merely a lover of pinot noir however of books, garments, tradition, and banter — that’s what drew me to him,” Mr. Peay mentioned on Monday. “He was strong-minded, open-minded, and didn’t push his agenda on you.”
As pinot noir turned widespread in the USA within the late Nineties, the prevailing model started to alter. As a substitute of the tense, structured but restrained wines that Mr. Jensen most well-liked, critics lauded plush, powerfully fruity pinot noirs that had been excessive in alcohol content material. Mr. Jensen was not a fan.
“These huge, top-heavy fruit bombs, as a substitute of getting extra depth, they only get softer and develop into flabby,” he mentioned in 2009.
Nonetheless, the alcohol content material of his personal wines started to rise with time, which he attributed to local weather change and drought.
In 2017, Mr. Jensen, whose youngsters weren’t all for carrying on his work on Mount Harlan, bought Calera to Duckhorn Portfolio, which owns a number of outstanding California wineries.
Mr. Jensen, whom the California winemaker Randall Grahm lately referred to as “the Werner Herzog of vignerons,” by no means wavered in his devotion to the mixture of limestone and pinot noir.
“I’m a real believer,” he mentioned.
