Celebrating our story: The story before the story
by Rob Jensen, Testarossa Proprietor

One of the most common questions we get asked is “so what caused you to start a winery, were your families in the wine business before you?” 

The simple answer is that we were just like tens of thousands of other regular young adults working our way up the corporate ladder, when we discovered the joy of fine food and wine.  Pretty soon, we were going to winemaker dinners and staying at Bed and Breakfasts in the wine country.  We loved these weekend getaways.  We would ride our bikes in the morning, wine taste in the afternoon and enjoy a fantastic dinner at some wine focused restaurant in the evening.  It wasn’t long before our interest in our food and wine turned into an obsession.  A turning point was when Doug Tanner introduced us to the (very expensive) world of fine Red Burgundies. Oh what a life changing, (and did we say expensive) experience that was! Our first Burgundy was a 1985 Domaine Pousse d’Or Pommard.  From that day forward, “Pinot Noir” and “obsession” were regularly used in the same sentence.   

As we strived to learn more about this amazingly tasty and intriguing fermented grape juice, Diana and I volunteered at a local winery (Cinnabar) and we both took extension courses from the world famous winemaking school at University of California at Davis. Our obsession continued to grow. We planted vines in the front yard of our Silicon Valley tract home and we started to make wine in our garage.  This further lead us to restore a 900 vine Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vineyard in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains. We will forever owe a huge debt of gratitude to our family and friends for helping us restore this vineyard.  

Each month and year, thereafter, new challenges and new opportunities landed in our laps.  Pretty soon, we were making commercial wines that were receiving rave reviews from all of the top wine critics. 

So no, our families weren’t in the wine industry.  We simply followed our passion and, voila, Testarossa was born. Its success is a result of passion, hard work and the support of countless friends and family.  We did not necessarily plan to start a real winery, it just happened to us!  Our obsession spun our “little” hobby into something bigger than we ever imagined.

Testarossa really did just happen...

Diana and I vividly remember our first “winemaker dinner” at the Grand Award winning Plumed Horse Restaurant in Saratoga, California. We were giddy as we had just received our ninth 90+ point Outstanding score on our wines from our first two vintages.   In the middle of the dinner, one of the guests asked us if our business plan anticipated such tremendous success so quickly.  The question stunned both of us. We had never actually gotten around to putting together a real business plan, despite the fact that we had started making Testarossa wine in our Bay Area garage four years earlier, and ran our business from a make shift office in the corner of our bedroom.