The Earth Story

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A Toast from a Volcano for the New Year…

It’s hard to find “good news” associated with the destruction of one of the earth’s most promising ancient civilizations, but the Santorini volcano that devastated the Minoans in ~1600 BCE also bequeathed us of one of the world’s exceptional terroirs (the environment of soil and climate essential for viticulture).

Unlike human populations, wine soils do nothing but benefit from the contribution of volcanoes.

For a great wine, soil needs a texture that is friable without being sticky – grapevines detest (as Tim Dixon of Miami University states) “wet feet.” The gentle slopes of volcanic flows aid natural drainage through soils of rubbly fragments of lava and tuff with a loose texture supporting root growth. Within the rubble are vesicular-rich lavas and perlite that retain enough moisture for nurturing without drowning those roots. Santorini volcanic soils are devoid of clay minerals, and it is said that these make them immune to phylloxera, a nasty microscopic bug that destroyed all the native wine stocks of Europe ~100 years ago. Santorini vines survived the phylloxera epidemic, and some producing rootstocks are thought to be hundreds of years in age.

Volcanic sources provide great soil nutrients for vineyards. Lavas are generally basic, neither too alkalic nor acidic; elsewhere in the world carbonate rocks (ie limestone) must be added to soils to reduce their acidity. Obsidian and metastable volcanic minerals breaks down at relatively rapid geologic rates (say on decades to century scale) to release the richness of iron and magnesium, the relatively rare phosphorous and potassium, a touch of sulfur, a hint of zinc -- nutrients that are essential for world-class wine.

Soil colors, generally dark grey, black, or brown on Santorini, absorb sunlight, enhancing the breakdown of rocks and releasing nutrients into the waters, retaining heat in the cooler months.

In the past here on The Earth Story, we've extolled the virtues of the terroir essential for champagne (goo.gl/SL06Ob), but as an exercise for the reader we’re leaving it to you to taste and compare: try a fine champagne to toast in the New Year, then taste some of the brilliant wines of Santorini to establish that geological connection between “just plain wine” and the wine of the gods.

Στην υγεία σου! Annie R

Image: Young vines in Santorini. Photo by Antonios Kapetanios Read also: http://www.hinsdalecellars.com/vintelligence/when-life-gives-you-volcanoes-make-wine-2/ http://www.vinetowinecircle.com/en/terroir-2/the-influence-of-soil-on-wine-quality/ http://cascademineralsnw.com/blog/2013/01/fine-wine-starts-with-mineral-rich-volcanic-soil/

WHEN YOU DRINK YOUR CHAMPAGNE FOR NEW YEAR'S…

Give a toast to the remarkable geographic, geologic, climatic and soil conditions without which your champagne would be … flat.

Champagne, the province where the bubbly was born. The “father” of the bubbly was Dom Perignom, a monk actually, who in the 17th century put together the knowledge-base required to make a good wine with the special fermentation, special mixture of grapes, and brilliant addition of sugar to create sparkling wine. The sugar is essential for dissolving the carbonate gas in the wine, and once this gas is in it, the wine needs something special to hold the fizz inside the bottle, so he apparently also invented using a cork as a bottle stopper.

The Earth of Champagne… Why is it so special? --At the 49th parallel, this is one of the most northern of the world’s major wine producing areas. This gives it an advantage of longer days in the summer when the sun is all important to the vine. --The average rainfall is about 50 cm, ooh la la, perfect! --The average temperature, even in the summer, is a tad low at 18C in July. However, only at such cooler temperatures are high acidic levels reached in a grape, and this acidity makes for a perfect sparkling wine. --The forests in the area are an essential part of the wine environment, stabilizing temperatures and soil moisture, prolonging the ripening season despite what would be “too cold”. --The geology… oh, you were expecting I’d get into the geology of the province, weren't you?

The bedrock of the wine district is chalk. Chalk is a limestone sediment made of the remains of the tiniest of oceanic microfossils, highly compressed – after all, you can write on a blackboard with it. At Champagne, the chalk was deposited in the Cretaceous, in a tropical sea closer to the equator than present day France, and apparently a lot of small squid-like creatures called belemnites also were incorporated into the deposits. With the incessant drifting of tectonic plates, the region slowly moved towards the north, then, about 30 million years ago, was uplifted to surface, fracturing the solid chalk into soil-friendly sizes, then again about 11 million years ago when the chalks were raised to form the welcoming landscape that would make the wine country. The convergence of the weather conditions with these uplifts created a two-tier chalks geology: the substrata is solid chalk, some of which provides the optimal settings for wine cellars, while the surface is made of the tectonically and erosionally broken rubble of chalk, especially those belemnite fossils, that apparently work their way up through the chalk like a splinter from your finger.

These chalky soils are heaven on earth for the grapes of Champagne: their light color is said to reflect much of the too-hot sun in the summer, while retaining the heat in the winter: their ability to retain moisture in fragments such as those in the belemnite fossil rubble is essential, while being broken-up they drain excess waters easily. And their chemistry – we’ve done this before, I think: calcium carbonate plus acidic water (or wine) reacts to release carbon dioxide: Voila! The Bubbly!

New Years’s Eve is not the time to debate whether the wines of Champagne really are the most superb on Earth: surely you have some favorites from California, from New Zealand, from Crete and Santorini, and there’s a bubbly from Rhodes that’s, well, truly decadent. And I hope you’ve had the opportunity to taste wines from all over the earth and discover that yes, there does seem to be a distinct “taste” that varies with the lands that produce the wine. Indeed, the extraordinary geology of wine producing areas has developed into a new specialty field over the last few decades.

Wine and Champagne and “bubblies” in particular are the very flavor of the Earth that produces them.

Cheers! and Happy New Year! Annie R.

The photo was downloaded from: http://www.russellgehlingwines.com.au/champagne-france-c-27.html and it is available as a screen saver from: http://m.wallpapers-catalog.com/panoramic-view-of-vineyards-champagne-france-wallpapers.1600x1200.download.html

If you haven’t been sipping too much of that sparkling wine allready, try reading: http://suite101.com/article/the-origin-of-chalk-in-the-champagne-region-a130806#ixzz2GXtWShjY http://www.dartblog.com/data/2010/11/009215.php http://www.partnerswine.com/#!champagne-france/co30 https://www.champagnegallery.com.au/champagne-science/viticulture/soil---the-magic-of-chalk/

http://bit.ly/1kuxzbp

One, more, at least for now. Credit: Callan Bentley.  Previous maps:

Europe The USA

Wine a bit, you’ll feel better!

This is a photo of some vineyards in the midst of a desert in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. It is a popular wine-making region near Augrabies Falls National Park, where the Orange River supplies accessible water to the surrounding area.

While you might think this area is not suitable for crops, carefully cultivated grapes can actually thrive in semi-arid conditions. Water requirements for wine production are low in comparison to other alcoholic beverages. It takes 240 litres of water, mainly for irrigation, to make one lovely cup of wine. Comparably it takes 500 litres of water to grow one pound of wheat.

So, in the interest of water conservation; drink wine, not beer!

-Jean

For wine enthusiasts: The area predominantly cultivates white grapes, but some red is also grown. The wine grape varieties grown here are Chenin Blanc, Colombard, Chardonnay, Pinotage, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Tannat, Muscadel (both red and white) and Muscat d'Alexandrie.

A Toast from a Volcano for the New Year… It’s hard to find “good news” associated with the destruction of one of the earth’s most promising ancient civilizations, but the Santorini volcano that devastated the Minoans in ~1600 BCE also bequeathed us of one of the world’s exceptional terroirs (the environment of soil and climate essential for viticulture). Unlike human populations, wine soils do nothing but benefit from the contribution of volcanoes. For a great wine, soil needs a texture that is friable without being sticky – grapevines detest (as Tim Dixon of Miami University states) “wet feet.” The gentle slopes of volcanic flows aid natural drainage through soils of rubbly fragments of lava and tuff with a loose texture supporting root growth. Within the rubble are vesicular-rich lavas and perlite that retain enough moisture for nurturing without drowning those roots. Santorini volcanic soils are devoid of clay minerals, and it is said that these make them immune to phylloxera, a nasty microscopic bug that destroyed all the native wine stocks of Europe ~100 years ago. Santorini vines survived the phylloxera epidemic, and some producing rootstocks are thought to be hundreds of years in age. Volcanic sources provide great soil nutrients for vineyards. Lavas are generally basic, neither too alkalic nor acidic; elsewhere in the world carbonate rocks (ie limestone) must be added to soils to reduce their acidity. Obsidian and metastable volcanic minerals breaks down at relatively rapid geologic rates (say on decades to century scale) to release the richness of iron and magnesium, the relatively rare phosphorous and potassium, a touch of sulfur, a hint of zinc -- nutrients that are essential for world-class wine. Soil colors, generally dark grey, black, or brown on Santorini, absorb sunlight, enhancing the breakdown of rocks and releasing nutrients into the waters, retaining heat in the cooler months.  In the past here on The Earth Story, we've extolled the virtues of the terroir essential for champagne (goo.gl/SL06Ob), but as an exercise for the reader we’re leaving it to you to taste and compare: try a fine champagne to toast in the New Year, then taste some of the brilliant wines of Santorini to establish that geological connection between “just plain wine” and the wine of the gods. Στην υγεία σου! Annie R Image: Young vines in Santorini. Photo by Antonios Kapetanios  Read also: http://www.hinsdalecellars.com/vintelligence/when-life-gives-you-volcanoes-make-wine-2/ http://www.vinetowinecircle.com/en/terroir-2/the-influence-of-soil-on-wine-quality/ http://cascademineralsnw.com/blog/2013/01/fine-wine-starts-with-mineral-rich-volcanic-soil/