The other day, someone called us “winemaking veterans” and we had to do a double take to see who they were talking to. It just doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that we started by making a barrel of wine in our Sunnyvale garage. However, we are now in the middle of our 11th harvest here at the Historic Novitiate Winery and our 15th vintage overall.  When we started Testarossa, there were only about 600 wineries in California, now there are nearly four times that many!

One fun way of gauging the longevity of how long we have making Testarossa wine is by our son, Nick. He was born the same year we started making wine in our garage in 1993.  Both Nick and the winery learned to crawl and take their first baby steps together. When he ventured out into the world of formal education entering first grade, the winery was venturing out into the world of selling our wines to other states for the first time.  As Nick matured from grade school to junior high, the winery was also growing up and just becoming profitable for the first time.  Now, that Nick has finished Junior High and has started high school, the winery is also maturing to young adulthood.   Both Nick and Testarossa are growing up together, a journey we are both enjoying immensely.  (Of interest, Nick just started at the same high school from which both Rob and Bill Brosseau are graduates, Saint Francis High School in Mountain View.)

It is very rewarding to see that the plans we put in place back in 1995, to only focus on making great wines and to grow slowly while never deviating from this focus, continue to come to fruition.  We have the pleasure of working with a talented, dedicated and fun staff and we have partnered with an array of the most amazing quality focused vineyards and wine professionals in the world.  Additionally, we had some very special people who believed in us when times were tough. These people were instrumental in helping us not only get through the challenging economic storm of the last six years, but they also helped us thrive while coming out of it. 

We are so excited to apply the lessons we’ve learned from the past fifteen vintages to the next fifteen. We know that the quality of wine and the Testarossa experience for each and every Testarossa wine lover will most certainly get better and better as we continue this amazing journey together!

 Thanks for being along for the ride!

Rob & Diana Jensen
Proprietors

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