I’ve decided a tasting of wines from volcanic terroirs would be fun, and so am trying to assemble a list of regions/districts/appellations that might be included.
To be specific, I’m looking for soils from eruptive activity, not uplifted plutonic igneous rocks and the like (granite is a plutonic igneous rock for example, but not what I’m interested in). No age limit, can be heavily eroded, as long as the surface soil is volcanic; can be anything from basaltic to rhyolitic.
The easy ones:
Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria
Sicily
Greece
Madeira
The Canaries
Some research has also turned up:
Macayamus Mountains
Columbia River Gorge
Auvergne (near the Middle Loire)
Waiheke island in New Zealand can make world clas wine and has quite a bit of volcanic derived soils. You’ll probably need to figure out which vineyards are on the right soils for what you’re looking for:
I’m no geologist, so go easy. The gabbro soils on the western end of the Loire are volcanic origin on which several producers grow Melon de Bourgogne. Also the porphyric soils in the Alto Piemonte, in particular Boca, are volcanic. I suspect however these may fall into your non-volcanic/volcanic category.
Ryan – A great idea. It reminds me of Keith Levenberg’s quest to taste all things ungrafted.
As you probably know, among Sicilian wines, those from Mt. Etna, in particular, are on volcanic soils. There’s one vineyard that was nearly wiped out by lava flows in recent times.
In California, Sonoma Mountain, near Mayacamas, is volcanic.
On the other side of the state, in the foothills, Clos Saron has partly volcanic soils: http://clossaron.com/
One place you might not happen on otherwise is the Kaiserstuhl in Baden, near Freiburg, on the Rhine. The mountain rises out of nowhere in the Rhine plain. Its steep slopes and mild climate produce some very good wines:
You don’t see a lot of Kaiserstuhl bottles here, but Dr. Heger is a good producer whose wines can be found in the U.S.
Quite a few places on the Sierra foothills have volcanic soil. There is granite there as well and find the Sarah’s grown on volcanic a to be a bit more red fruited and lighter, but my sample size is way too small.
Cool idea. I’ve always wanted to do this tasting. I was going to say, besides Campania and Sicily, the Mayacamas especially Mt. Veeder. Also, for something a little more specific, do a comparison of Monte Rosso (red soil) to Obsidian Vineyard in Knight’s Valley (black soil).
It varies a lot, but you’d find more volcanic soil in Amador County though there’s also some in El Dorado and elsewhere in the Sierra Foothills. As has already been noted, Lake County is another area in California with a good deal of volcanic soil.
Most of Soave Classico is volcanic, apparently. A Canadian journalist is writing a book about volcanic soils for wine, don’t know when it’s coming out.
I recall visiting a small winery in Napa a few years back called Lava Vine. The whole premise was that they would contract to buy grapes grown in volcanic soil. To be honest, I don’t recall much about the wines except maybe a Viognier, but I knew much less about wine back in those days.
