Summary:

In this webinar I will address some of the intriguing questions you submitted. Varied they were, but many had a common thread: what is it about a particular soil that is so important for certain wines? I will look at some general ideas about such claims, and then consider some specific examples, such as slate in the Moselle and Priorat, granite and diorite in Beaujolais.

What exactly is the difference between granite and gneiss, and what does it mean for wines, say in South Africa’s Cape region, and in France’s Muscadet? And what about limestone? How does it lead to wines with finesse and edginess; how can its alkaline soils yield wines with marked acidity? (Ah, but do they?) How do chalk and marl fit in, and what are they exactly? Is it true that most of the world’s limestone is around the Mediterranean?

In addressing such questions in the webinar I hope to provide plenty of food for thought, and to shed some light on the wondrous world of wine and soil.

Presenter: Professor Alex Maltman

Alex Maltman is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University, in Wales, U.K., with a long and decorated career in university teaching and research.

In addition, for over forty years Alex has grown vines and made wine, his scientific curiosity prompting questions about why things were done in certain ways and, inevitably, to the much- mentioned relationship between wine and vineyard geology.

This has led to numerous publications, in both the popular press and academic journals, and to international lectures.

Alex has advised on the geological content of a number of wine books, including the Oxford Companion to Wine and the forthcoming 8th edition of the World Atlas of Wine.

He is the author of the much acclaimed “Vineyards, Rocks and Soils, a Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology” (Oxford, 2018).