Pinot Noir proves a real taste of the Californian dream (From The Oxford Times)

Pinot Noir proves a real taste of the Californian dream

6:30am Thursday 15th July 2010 in

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It’s been a bad week; I’ve had to acknowledge that in addition to being a bit of a grump I am also old. Some chirpy, youthful young thing was in the house a couple of days ago, attempting to get me enthused about the American hit TV show, Glee. I was immovable; far too many saccharin smiles, jolly sing-a-longs and noise for me.

Oh, I’m just kidding . . . but really, a little of it goes quite a long way don’t you think? I want to take an altogether gentler, more caressing route to happiness.

The good news is that I am finding an increasing number of American wines that do just that.

I had my first-ever taste of the Californian, Josh Jensen’s Pinot Noir wines a few weeks ago and fell head-over-heels in love. The truth is that I’d never heard of Mr Jensen despite the organisers of the tasting describing him as a ‘wine legend’.

He has ties with Oxford, having gained a Masters degree in Anthropology from the university in the late 1960s. He was a rowing blue and a member of the team that beat Cambridge in the Boat Race of 1966.

From a wine perspective it was what he did next that was more important; heading to the vineyards of Burgundy to spend time working the harvests at the legendary vineyards of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Dujac. It was during this time that he established his view that the best Pinot Noir comes from limestone vineyards and he thus returned to California with a fixed view of what he wanted from a vineyard there.

Eventually he found Mount Harlan, an hour or so south of San Francisco where the property sits on a three million ton limestone deposit. Limestone had been commercially quarried at Mount Harlan a hundred years earlier, and to this day there stands a magnificently well-preserved 30-foot tall masonry limekiln which is what gives the estate its Calera name, which is the Spanish for limekiln.

His Pinot Noir wines are, without question, among the wines I have most enjoyed so far in 2010 and of the four that I tried, all achieved 17.5/20 or above, which given my typically harsh scoring is nothing short of a miracle.

De Villiers is a relatively new vineyard to the Calera estate and, as such, has younger vines. Despite this the de Villiers 2007 is a perfectly-balanced, aromatic and elegantly-spiced Pinot with lovely length.

Ryan Pinot Noir 2006 (another single vineyard) has more minerality than the de Villiers and the fruit is smokier and more herbal though still generous and sumptuous; absolutely beautiful.

It seems a little mean to tell you about the two wines from the 2000 vintage that I tried — the Mills and the Jensen — primarily because they are not available in the UK. But let me tell you that if you are in California this summer, try to track down either; they have the complexity of age you’d expect and still a lovely vibrancy of fruit.

A modest selection of the Calera Pinot Noir wines is available from Bibendum (www.bibendum-wine.co.uk) and you can expect to pay from just under £20 a bottle. They certainly left me very, very happy indeed.