In 1998 Joey Tensley launched Tensley Wines with one hundred cases and one single goal – to make wines that let the unique and little-known vineyards of Santa Barbara County speak for themselves. Eight years later Tensley Wines is a 3,300 case a year, family run business with Joey’s wife, Jennifer, and even their three-year-old son, Oliver, pitching in. The wines Joey once sold from his truck are now distributed in cities from Las Vegas to Manhattan and are featured on some of the most prestigious restaurant wine lists in the country.
Joey’s first experience with wine took place when he was just twelve years old. While taking part in a soccer tournament in Bordeaux, his team toured a winery. Joey vividly recalls the chill of the old caves and the aromas of wines fermenting in barrel. From that moment on he knew what he wanted to do with his life – make wine. “Which pretty much made me the only kid growing up in Bakersfield, California, with that particular dream,” Joey says. “We spent a lot of time racing go-carts and most of my friends wanted to be race car drivers.”
Ten years later, in 1993, Joey got his start in the wine business, first as “cellar rat” then as bottling line supervisor at Fess Parker Winery in Santa Barbara County. After only three years he became the assistant winemaker at Babcock Vineyards. There Joey came to truly appreciate the importance of the vineyard and the grower; he understood that great wine could only come from great grapes. He also came to appreciate the uniqueness of Santa Barbara County as a growing region. “We’re one of the only places in the world to have a mountain range that runs east-west. That gives us many different microclimates in a relatively small area. Closer to the ocean we can grow great Chardonnay and Pinot Noir while further inland we have an ideal growing situation for Rhone varietals such as Viognier, Grenache, and Syrah.”
In 1998 Joey moved on to become the assistant winemaker at Beckmen Vineyards which specializes in Rhone varietals. There he was offered space to launch his own label. He decided to produce only vineyard designated Syrahs. He also decided that those Syrahs would all be priced the same and made in the same fashion. He used 30% whole cluster fermentation, three times daily hand punch-downs, and very little or no new oak. In other words, he let the vineyard speak for itself.
By 2001 Tensley Wines’ original 100 cases had grown to 750 cases, and Joey had moved into his own winery in Buellton, California. Tensley began appearing on the wine lists of restaurants such as Manhattan’s Gotham Bar and Grill, Chicago’s Bin 36, Picasso in Las Vegas, and Napa Valley’s Bistro Jeanty.
The wine press also began to take note of Tensley around that time. Matt Kramer of The Wine Spectator named two of Tensley’s 2001 Syrahs to his list of Top Ten Wines in the World and described them as, “elegant, characterful wines with the grace of a ballroom dancer.” In his Wine Advocate Robert Parker described the Tensley wines as, “…serious, hand-crafted efforts. Complex, rich, full-bodied and long.” Parker’s scores for Tensley’s 2001 to 2004 vintages have ranged between 90 and 95 points.
In 2002 Joey met freelance television and film writer Jennifer Beck whose interest in wine also went back to a time she spent in France when she was twelve. She lived in Paris for a year with her mother who was a wine importer at the time. Jennifer and Joey were married less than a year after meeting, and son, Oliver Gunnar Tensley, came along in 2003. “Talk about being raised in the wine business. This kid is in the vineyard with Jennifer and me taking sugar samples, tasting grapes, riding around the winery on his tricycle while we’re washing barrels. He even teethed on corks.”
Also in 2002 Joey met David Hardee and became the winemaker for David’s brand, Carina Cellars. While Carina’s program involves more varities than Tensley’s original, Syrah-only program, it is also a terroir driven winery focused solely on Rhone varietals.
Today Tensley continues to grow. Production is up to 3,300 cases; Tensley has its own tasting room in Los Olivos, California; and Jennifer has even launched her own brand, Lea Wines, which produces small quantities of hand-crafted Syrah Rose and Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara County. Tensley has introduced a white Rhone blend, the Tensley Blanc (65% Grenache Blanc; 35% Roussanne), and a Grenache-Syrah blend named for Joey’s niece, but otherwise, the line-up remains the same: only vineyard designated Syrahs made in exactly the same fashion and all priced the same. In other words, Tensley continues to let the vineyard speak for itself.