Why Limestone....????

WINE TALK
41

This would tend to confirm that syrah likes granite, at least in France. You need to plant some syrah around Half Dome instead of messin’ around with pinot in Mendocino :slight_smile:

42

Peter C: “Terroir is real, but its not flavor of soils, its the effect of soil chemistry and physics on the genetic expression of the vine, which translates into vine physical characteristics which translates into flavor.”

+1

43

Your point on the effects, direct and indirect, of calcium as a double-charge cation is interesting and useful, thanks. I’m not sure who you’re arguing with about plants using minerals to promote flavor or terroir conferring the taste of the soil. I think it’s acceptable usage, though, to say plants take up minerals, when talking about nutrients drawn from the soil. Organic nitrogen in decomposers, e.g., is said to be ‘mineralized’ by soil animals (by the processes of digestion and excretion), before plants can get at it; the point is to distinguish organically-bound elements from those available in the soil matrix for cation exchange.

44

Ian, I didn’t mean to sound like I was picking on you, if it did I apologize. I just started with your post because it was last and was a good place to start in trying to explain the relevance of Calcium and nutrient transport from the soil solution into plants for the thread participants. I didn’t mean to pick on you. [cheers.gif]

My main idea was to begin explaining why calcium is so important. It is a very important element in soil physical and chemical properties on up to the chemistry, flavor perception and ageability of wine.

It is important to expose and correct the myth that somehow there is a flavor of minerals in wine, ie. minerality as a soil derived flavor. Understanding of basic horticulture, botany, or plant biology establishes that as myth. But a very persistent myth in the wine world because it has been used for centuries in wine marketing.

I don’t know how many times I have explained the basics of how plants transport ions and nutrients only to be rebutted by, “but centuries of wine history say otherwise and that you can taste minerals in wine.”

To that I say, we can also taste cat pee, horse sweat, fecal compounds, etc., but I don’t think anyone has actually claimed those compounds were in wine, but were instead being used as adjectives, as descriptors, in order to communicate a perception.

I don’t think anyone believes they can taste manure or compost being uptaken by a grapevine, but somehow many believe they can taste limestone.

I think one of the key aspects of Calcium, amongst many, is how important it is in wet growing regions or wet growing seasons such as occur in many regions of Europe such as Burgundy. As I explained above, becuase it cuases a physical change in the distribution of the typically dense clay particles.

Calcium causes clay particles to form into clumps (flocculate) rather than being a uniform densely packed matrix.

In a wet climate calcium is an important aspect of terroir because of its effect on soil water holding capacity, but generally also because it turns a dead anaerobic soil into a living aerobic soil.

It introduces porousity and drainage into a material that is normally dense and closed, it reduces the water holding capacity, but still allows for the clay to have water holding characteristics and retain the high cation exchange capacity the numerous small particles provide.

The above is basic information, and not wine marketing 101 which tries to suggest something else. Soil and plant transport mechanisms are very well understood concepts in agriculture, but when it comes to wine get shrouded in marketing bullshit and mystery. Being misled, mystified and confused is much more romantic.
[worship.gif] [worship.gif] [worship.gif]

45

Thanks, Peter; sorry if I sounded defensive. It’s an interesting subject, and I’d like to learn more about the behavior of the Ca ion in the soil and the plant. I’ve thought cation displacement in the soil matrix occurred because of molecule size, rather than charge strength, though it seems obvious when you write it that a double charge ion would tend to displace a single-charge ion. Anyway, this is the first explanation I’ve read that makes sense of the role abundant soil calcium plays in producing distinctive wines.

If you have a good paper or two on the subject handy, please send me a reference.

46

cant state with certainty and where i read this but i have a decent enough recollection that there is more vine on limestone surface in spain than in France. can you chime in on this?

47

my humble opinion too. soil matters. a lot. but climate trumps that. this opinion is formed by closely observing this with our own vineyards and wine region for 5 years now…

48

great points. i would go ahead and say that it is my strong opinion that chardonnay, then pinot noir then tempranillo are the 3 (in that order) varieties that i believe should be planted on limestone (chalk…) esp chardonnay.

49

and i can think of as many examples of pinot noir grown on slate (ahr valley, germany) that are intensely aromatic. i cant however say that i have had a chardonnay outside of chablis and the known sites in cote d’or that manage to showcase that much to be desired tension…

50

First post here…I’ll ready for the gauntlet.

My instincts suggest higher pH [calcareous] soils translate to higher pH wines, which tend toward heightened anthocyanin expression/ likability.

In regions that covet every last GDD, e.g. Santa Cruz Mtns Cabernet or Ampuis Syrah, limestone/ high pH soil is an ace in the sleeve, especially in cool vintages. No surprise limestone is revered in France, where sunlight and ripening are a shadow of most the new world.

I’d wager warm regions with limestone soils (planted to early varieties) rely greatly on Tartaric additions to achieve wines of “balance”.

As others have mentioned, there must be some mention of climate to fairly address this topic.

Cheers mates, and lovely discussion, Mr Hill.

Kurt

51

For tension in white wines (or reds for that matter) look for rocky soils. There is an extremely high correlation. This is evident even in the differences between Burgundy’s crus.

52

Kevin by tension do you mean a balance of otherwise competing factors a kind of equilibrium?

53

Andrew,
Tension and minerality are closely related and both are hard to describe. To experience “tension”, I would recommend some of the rockier Chablis sites (like Sechets or most of the Grand Crus). Also you might want to try St. Aubins such as Chateniere or en Remilly from producers like Lamy or Prudhon. Many Rieslings from the better sites also have a lot of tension.

54

Welcome Kurt! Does the pH of the soil actually translate to potential pH in the finished wine? That sounds a little like the argument that soil minerality translates to the taste sensation of minerality in wine.
Cheers

55

Yes, welcome Kurt! Good to see you posting here. My main direct experience with vines in calcareous soils is from Nebbiolo we get at Harrington from two vineyards on the Westside of Paso Robles, and those always have very low pH and not a lot of color. Of course Nebbiolo is a late ripener…

56

I am a soil scientist, with many years of experience…and I live in a limestone area, with limestone-derived soils.

Soil does NOT trump climate in grape production. Here in Central Kentucky, small wineries are springing up like mushrooms. The wine produced here is mediocre at best, and often downright awful. We simply have too much rain, too much humidity, too much heat, and too much fungal disease pressure here during the growing season, for Vinis vinifera grapes to thrive properly. It’s a fool’s errand.

On the other hand, when grapes are properly grown in a proper climate, the stone underlying the soil does show through. I can taste limestone, schist, granite, basalt, andesite, etc in the various wines (mostly French and Spanish, the Californians haven’t quite figured Terroir out yet) from classic regions. Oenologists may claim that there is no scientific basis for Terroir, but my palate disagrees.

57

Also, let me interject an educated guess into this discussion. I’m not an oenologist, but here is a conjecture for what it’s worth.

It may be instructive to compare soils derived from acid felsic crystalline rocks (gneiss, schist, granite) to those derived from carbonate rocks (limestone, chalk, dolomite). Both are used for wine grape production.

Soils derived from carbonate rocks (in regions dry enough for efficient wine grape production) will normally have Calcium or Magnesium in abundance, present on the exchange sites of soil colloids. As divalent cations, both of them preferentially displace Potassium from exchange sites. So in the case of those soils, in the absence of Potassium fertilization we would expect Calcium and/or Magnesium to be more available to the grape root than Potassium, simply as a percentage of available cations. Bear in mind though that Potassium, being lighter and monovalent, is much more mobile in the soil-water solution than Calcium or Magnesium.

In soils derived from acid felsic crystalline rocks, the substrate is primarily various Potassium-Aluminum-Silicate minerals, meaning that Potassium will generally be both more abundant, and more available, than Calcium or Magnesium (assuming the absence of liming).

Potassium fills many roles in plant metabolism, but one of the principal ones is in the production and transport of sugars. There is a general correlation between the availability of Potassium, and the production of carbohydrates in a plant; this is why you put a lot of Potassium on the potato plants in your garden.

I suspect that where Potassium is relatively more abundant than competing nutrient cations, sugar content in grapes will be higher, relative to organic acid content, than would be the case if other cations were more abundant. (And is is probably sugar storage, more than raw production, that is at issue, as simple sugars are the precursors to organic acids.) As we know, in order for a wine to have much aging potential, it needs a relatively high acid content compared to the sugar (or alcohol) content. Thus, there might be a natural advantage accruing to carbonate-derived soils, as sites for vineyards, as they would tend to produce relatively more acidic wines (not less, as has been suggested above), with more aging potential.

58

Ouch!!!
Tom

59

Good to see you here, Kurt. Lots of interesting discussions here on WB (sometimes, anyway).

For those who don’t recognize his name, Kurt (& his brother, Derek) is the winemaker for Boheme wines
(primarily a Pinot focus) and BodegaRancho (primarily a Rhone focus). The BodegaRancho Syrah from AlRago’s
QueSyrah vnyd is one of the top Syrahs in Calif. But they’re clueless in Monktown as to that fact.
Tom

60

I did not mean that statement to be as pejorative as it may have appeared to you. California produces terrific wines (and Lord knows I drink my share of them), but generally I do not find them to express bedrock characteristics as well as French and Spanish wines of comparable quality, and I do not believe that this is due simply to the more fruit-forward character of many California wines.

I’m certainly willing to be proved wrong on this if you have wines you want me to sample for comparison purposes. PM me for my address if you would like to ship me some in order to make an argument (especially if you think that Shafer does a better job of it than the Frenchies… [wink.gif] )