Bakersfield, California: It’s a hotbed of agriculture, but it’s light years away from the world of fine wine—and an unlikely place to give rise to one of California’s winemaking masters.

Joey Tensley is a Bakersfield farmboy who grabbed the bottom rung of the wine ladder by taking a $9-an-hour job as a cellar rat at Fess Parker Winery. The first four barrels he ever made were hidden in the back of the cellar there. Fast forward to today: He’s been in the upper echelon of California winemaking for two decades, and he’s at the absolute top of his game right now.

Tensley earned his critical-darling status through off-the-charts quality and rock-steady consistency, becoming a master of Central Coast Rhône wines. With a 100-point score to his name and numerous bottles that won places on Wine Spectator’s Top 100, he makes what Jeb Dunnuck calls “some of the greatest wines out there” for the money.

Tensley's Rhône-style wines have garnered the kind of praise from Wine Advocate that makes collectors brace for stratospheric prices. The winemaker has "flirted with perfection" with "high-end, super-duper wines" that commonly land mid-90s scores—and he’s done it without rocketing through the three-digit price point that now seems run-of-the-mill for such overperforming California wines.

Due to the connections he’s made during his two decades on the Central Coast, he has access to prime vineyard sources that enable him to produce stunningly high-quality wines at fantastic prices. In addition to those “super-duper” bottlings that wear the Tensley label, he wanted to make sure his fans knew that when they buy his value-driven Fundamental wines they will get a bona-fide Tensley bottling. “I put my name on my second label,” he said, not long after he founded his eponymous winery. “I’m proud of it.”

Tensley now owns 18 acres of vines and is widely considered a savant of the Central Coast—but he’s still a Bakersfield farmboy at heart, one whose work ethic, focus, and insistence on quality shows in all his wines.