I hosted my Every-Other-Tuesday Tasting Group last week. It had been so long since we had been together -- in June -- that I suggested we change our name to the Every-Other-Season Tasting Group. It had been a long summer for all of us.
A horizontal tasting of Calera's single-vineyard pinot noirs was a compelling calling card, and, for the first time, all eight of our group showed up. Perhaps we all showed up not just for the wines but because the venue for the tasting was the new Railyard Restaurant &Saloon. Chef/owner Louis Moskow -- also a member of our tasting group -- set us up with a table for eight in the bar and we happily made ourselves part of one of Santa Fe's best restaurant openings of all time.
Philip de Give provided the samples from his company, Bacchus Wine Patrol; Dan Murray and Aaron De Vault, owners of Boutique Wines; John Payne from Winemark Distributing; Peter Gaugy from Gaugy Gallery; Byron Rudolph, wine buyer at La Casa Sena; and local wine aficionado Jack Johnson.
The Calera Wine Company, found in 1975 by Josh Jensen, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. A Yale graduate, the colorful and erudite Jensen spent a couple of years in the early '70s in Burgundy, working the vineyards and harvests with some of the region's more famous domaines.
When picking a site for his own planting and winery in California, Jensen was convinced -- from his experience in Burgundy -- that limestone soil was essential to producing great pinot noir. After an exhaustive search up and down California's coast, he found a limestone bench at 2,200 feet elevation on Mount Harlan in the Gavilan Mountains east of Monterey.
Time has proven Jensen was onto something special. Caleras wines from Mount Harlan have gained a reputation for being among the most compelling and distinctive pinot noirs in the New World. they are powerful, with a ripeness of fruit, structure, elegance and ability to age that is unrivaled in California.
Our group sat to do a horizontal tasting of all four of Calera's single-vineyard pinot noirs -- Jensen, Mills, Reed and Selleck -- from the 2001 vintage. As a special treat, we would end the tasting with a vertical tasting of three older Pinot Noirs (1994, 1997 and 1999), checking in on how the wines were aging.
We started the tasting with Caleras two white wines from Mount Harlan -- viogner and chardonnay. Jensen is one of the few producers in the New World to grow viogner, a rare white grape from France's northern Rhône Valley. I will always remember Jensen's explanation about how to pronounce "viognier." Hoisting a glass of his golden elixir to a group, he explained it as, "V.O. followed by a Bronx cheer -- ynee!"
The 2003 Calera Mt. Harlan Viognier had a nose of white peaches, tropical fruit and bananas. Its silky texture was a perfect compliment to our opening appetizers of the Railyard's artichoke-crab dip and popcorn calamari. Dan Murray noted and liked the viognier's typical subtle almond finish.
Next up was the 2000 Calera Mt. Harlan Chardonnay. As in Burgundy, Calera's chardonnay from Mount Harlan exhibits a core of minerality obtained from its limestone soil. Philip de Give noted the wine's pear and melon flavors and remarked on it's balanced acidity and lingering finish. It is a rare California chardonnay that can age like Calera's.
Now we were onto serious wines -- the reds. We got to the business of ordering our steaks and chops and poured out the four Calera Mt. Harlan pinot noirs from the 2001 vintage. All four wines had a beautiful Burgundy color -- bright transparent red.
John Payne remarked immediately what was unique about this tasting. Here we had four different wines in our glasses from the same grape(pinot noir) planted in the same place (Mount Harlan) at the same time (1975) and vinified in the same manner -- yet each was different.
What makes these four wines different is that Jensen has parceled his 40 adjacent acres on Mount Harlan into four separate vineyard blocks, each with different exposure to the sun and degree of slope.
He named the vineyards Mills (14.4 acres), Jensen (13.8 acres), Reed (4.4 acres) and Selleck (4.8 acres). Grapes from each of the four vineyards are vinified in the exact same manner -- fermented whole cluster, pressed after 14 days, racked by gravity to barrel and aged without racking for 16 months in Francois Frères barrels (30 percent new).
We started with the 2001 Calera Mt. Harlan Mills Pinot Noir. Though in the same family of color as the others, the Mills was a shade darker because the Mills vineyard is south-facing, translating to more sun and riper grapes. More sun also gives the mills the highest degree of alcohol (14.5 percent) of the four.
Peter Gaugy noted the wine's dark cherry and enticing allspice flavors. A lush finish, the wine was ready to drink though Aaron DeVault thought it would age well for five to 10 more years.
Following the Mills was the 2001 Calera Mt. Harlan Jensen Pinot Noir. Like the other tasters, I found the Jensen the most harmonious on this day -- a well-structured wine with bright acidity, red fruits of raspberry and cherry laced with spicy vanilla from the well-integrated oak.
The 2001 Calera Mt. Harlan Reed Pinot Noir showed the most acidity and brightest red fruits of the quartet. Byron Rudolph noted from our stat sheets that the Jensen vineyard has a north-by-northeast exposure, meaning the grapes get the least sun and coolest growing season. We are talking about the subtle difference of micro-climate here, or as they say in the France, climat.
The Reed also clocked in at the relatively low, for California, alcohol level of 13.5 percents. With plenty of tannin and structure, I thought this wine might age the longest.
Finally, we tasted what Jensen refers to as his "big bomb," the Calera Mt. Harlan Selleck Pinot Noir. The Selleck did have all the stuffing and generous ripeness of fruit from the vineyard's southwest exposure, wrapped around a core of minerality from the limestone soil.
We kept some of the 2001 Selleck in our glasses and poured the other three Selleck vintages (1994, 1997 and 1999) and enjoyed them with the Railyard's dry-aged steaks and lamb chops. All three wines going back event to the 1994, were youthful and still showing primary fruit.
Jensen notes, "The Selleck Vineyard is rockier and contains more limestone than the others; its wine seems to have the greatest aging potential."
Confirmed.
Greg O'Byrne is executive director of the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta.
