Calera Winery founder Josh Jensen retained Interactive Resources, Inc. to provide seismic reinforcement of the walls and terraces of his gravity-flow winery in Hollister, California. After tackling challenging structural issues, we designed a series of cascading structures that housed crushers at the top level, descending to the fermentation tank rooms, barrel cellar, warehouse and bottling line. The multi-layered hillside construction allows for the gentlest handling of Calera wines; grapes move through the winemaking process by the natural force of gravity, rather than by mechanical pumping. The barrel cellar uses both earth and evaporative cooling to take advantage of the cool night valley air. The result is energy costs far below average.

Calera’s state-of-the-art winemaking facility also features a top-of-the-line German grape press, and an Italian bottling line.