Just thinking today on the train (always dangerous) about different wine growing regions and noted one thing that many have in common - the presence of rivers. Often, we even name the region by the river - Mosel, Rhine, Saar, Ruwer, Loire, Rhone, Left Bank, Right Bank, Napa Valley, Bekaa Valley. The Tanaro River seems to run through the Piedmonte vineyards. Yes, I know the Saone is nearby in Burgundy, but the vineyards are offset from the river. I wonder whether it is the soil deposits from the river, the glaciers or land thrusts that defined the river flow, moderation of climate in the winter, or something obvious, like ease of transportation or irrigation.There are exceptions, obviously. I don’t recall so much as a dry stream bed driving through the vineyards in Tuscany, and the Arno mostly skirts the Tuscan vineyards.
I was actually thinking about other places throughout the world where great vineyards could be planted, but no one has figured them out yet. However, that seemed like a boring thread title, so I went with Burgundy instead.
While the rivers make a difference in the German wine regions (as I understand it sun reflects off them to help ripen the grape), my guess is that in a lot of regions like Bordeaux the main thing the rivers did is help establish the region by helping get the wines to market.
That’s exactly right. In fact, early on, they didn’t do much grape growing in Bordeaux, it was simply a port. The Romans used it and then later the English used it. They brought wine from farther inland. Remember that railroads and nice paved roads are relatively recent inventions and that for centuries the only reliable transportation was a river. Loading a number of barrels on a cart was an inefficient means of transportation for long distances.
The rivers in some areas - Tokaj, Barsac, the Loire, contributes to the formation of botrytis. In Germany the rivers add a few degrees of warmth, but there’s no absolute need for a river today when there are other transportation options.
I looked at a topographical map before I posted this thread and noted the lack of elevation changes. My suspicion is that local know how in grape growing regions and risk aversion in non-grape growing regions may be the most significant factor in the lack of further dispersion of high quality grape growing.
The Tanaro isn’t that close to the bulk of the Barolo territory. Verduno and La Morra aren’t too far from it, but because of the topography they aren’t really very connected to the river. Castiglione, Barolo, Monforte and Serralunga are at some distance, and at much higher elevations.
There isn’t any river to speak of in Chianti or Montalcino, either.
And it’s a bit of a mischaracterization to say the Medoc is on a river. La Gironde is an inlet and the Left Bank and Right Bank refer to that, I think.
Because of the latitude, German vines generally are planted on steep slopes, which pretty much guarantees that they’ll be along a river.
What about Sonoma? There’s the Russian River, of course, and Dry Creek and Sonoma Creek, but they’re hardly major rivers.
The reason that so many famous wine regions are on rivers is because of commerce. Prior to canals and trains, overland transportation was extremely expensive for a heavy product such as wine. Vineyards near a ship-navigable port were much more likely to be profitable ventures.
The Cote d’Or is a notable exception and to understand why it exists as an exception requires looking all the way back to the pre-Roman Gauls. One of the most important political centers of that world was a city/fortress named Bibracte that was built by the Aedui tribe. When the Romans conquered Gaul and made it part of the Roman Empire they built their own capital city in the same general area because the Aedui were one of the key Roman allies during the war. This city was important enough that it was honored by naming it after the emperor Augustus: Augustodunum (now Autun).
Wine was supremely important during the Roman Empire and commercial villa and town based vineyards were planted everywhere there was a market for wine. The closest place to Augustodunum that seemed to grow really kickass wine was what we now know as the Cote d’Or. It was also close enough another major population center in Lyon. By the 4th century it was a renowned winegrowing region that was well known even in Rome.
After the fall of the Roman Empire the Cote d"Or region maintained important political status. First among the post Roman Germanic tribes such the Burgundians and the Franks and later the various Dukes of Burgundy and important Monastic centers. One of the most powerful diplomatic tools of the times was fine wine and the Cote d’Or continued to maintain a high reputation. The Burgundian Dukes and the Burgundy-centered monastic orders were arguably the center of the western world politically at the time and both institutions were heavy invested in Cote d’Or region vineyards. The Cote d’Or region gained particular renown when the papacy had to move out of Italy and base itself out of the Rhone region. The wines of Burgundy were very much respected and sought after by the cardinals and other social elite in the area. One pope even joked that he was having a hard time moving the papacy back to Italy because the cardinals wouldn’t accept losing their access to Burgundy wine.
In the early modern period there began a rise of urbanism that created for the first time a mass market for wine. Prior to this area in western Europe, wine was a beverage mostly for the upper classes but increasingly wine was mass produced with an eye more towards quantity than quality. Even this “bulk wine” was considered far superior to the beer and cider of the time and wine certainly carried with it a social importance that made its consumption appealing. It was areas of Burgundy like the lands near Chablis, Chalon and then a bit later Beaujolais that had good river access that exploded with vines and wine production. The Cote d’Or with it’s shitty river access was forced to focus upscale and focus on premium style wine because otherwise it was simply not economically feasible to maintain a wine industry there and compete on price due to transportation costs. The Burgundian political and economic ties to the low countries made that area an especially important market for the wines. The political importance of the Cote d’Or region motivated the local powers to market their wine as a luxury item. If the Cote d"Or didn’t have this political and social context its pretty unlikely that it would we would even known about it as a wine region today.
The most important wine historian in the 20th century was a Frenchman named Roger Dion and he had a very well argued thesis that would be somewhat controversial on this wine board: that economic and social issues were the most important factors in deciding if a region would become famous or not. That would seem to be a strongly anti-terroir message but the way I interpret it is that in almost any geographical area there are going to be specific sub-regions that can potentially create world class wines when matched with the right grape varieties, capital and marketing machinery. Fashion and reputation are critically important when it comes to where the social elite look to buy their wine from. From the earliest days wine was important symbolically in communicating social status and this is no less true today.
The Saone runs through/by Burgundy. Geologically it’s history and influence were significant. There’s a massive sediment filled valley that runs right up to the feet of the Cote d’ Or. The river looks tiny today…but that was not the case during and shortly after the ice ages. The river deposits extend 12 - 20 miles wide from the current Saone to the feet of places like Gevrey-Chambertin and MSD. If there were 100 - 150 more feet of sediment…goodbye most of the Burgundy vineyards that we know today…although they may simply have been bumped up slope.
The river itself didn’t have much influence on Burgundy (Cote d’Or) soils but weather is a major player (microclimates) and that huge flat adjacent river valley plays a significant role.
There are really two types of river valley (this is a gross overgeneralization, but bear with me). One, where the river created the valley through erosion. The other, where the geology put the river at that spot - either because the valley was much more easily erodible than adjacent area or because of tectonics. There are a lot more of the latter than the former, though there are plenty of examples of each.
Burgundy is where it is because the Cote d’Or is the edge of a wide graben - aka a downdropped block. The Saone flows there because rivers will flow at the lowest elevation, and a big downdropped valley is, well, low. Over time a big downdropped valley will fill with, well, “fill” (aka alluvium), as has happened in Burgundy.
It is most accurate to say that Burgundy is where it is, and the Saone flows where it flows, because of a fairly significant fault that down-dropped the valley, exposing outcrops of marine sediment that had been fractured just so and had just the right situation relative to the sun to create an ideal environment for growing grapes. Also, significantly, the geology is relatively simple (at least compared to, for example, the Cote Chalonnaise), which helps in scaling up production for long-distance trade; much like the homogenous gravels of the Medoc facilitated industrial scale winemaking, but obviously not to the same degree.
Napa is, for what it’s worth, not entirely different. Napa is also an extensional basin - in that case a “transtensional pull-apart basin”. Mechanics not that important, but key is that the valley itself was downdropped and the filled with fill/alluvium, which includes the benches which are so felicitous for viticulture.
I mean, it was at some point the shore of something, since it is marine limestone and marl and now it is on land, and to get from the sea to the land, at some point, that spot must almost definitionally have been a shoreline, if only briefly, but the same is true of Mount Everest, most of continental Europe, most of the lower 48 states, etc etc.
I’m not sure that has any meaning.
The rock of the Cote d’ Or is quite ordinary marine sediment (except where it’s been (arguably?) metamorphosed into marble in Comblanchien). For reasons beyond the scope of this post, Jurassic limey sediment is one of the most common types of sedimentary rock in Europe and North America, and perhaps the world.