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.
He is most absolutely correct.
On this wine board and many others, people talk about Bordeaux and Burgundy, with a nod once in a while to Piedmont and the entire country of Germany. The ONLY reason those two regions are so famous is not because they’re the best wine-growing areas on the planet, which would be a stupid assertion since most of the planet has not known wine grapes, but because of the British connection and several world wars.
There are places far more ancient and in past centuries more highly regarded that today are sometimes given a condescending smile. And that’s because of political events that don’t affect dirt, grapes, or climate, but that affect the people in those regions, cutting them off or thrusting them forward into the larger world.
In days gone by, rivers mattered a lot more than they do now. Today, political boundaries seem to be of greater importance.
The original question here was where could great vineyards be planted. I think the same places on the Black Sea where hazelnuts grow could be excellent for pinot noir.
Barry, for a guy who goes around sucking the sap out of Bourbon barrels, you are pretty smart. Roger Dion’s book should be available in English.
I feel I need to make a clarification before I develop a reputation as a barrel vampire. There was a tiny drop of sap hanging off the bottom of a 15 year old barrel in suspended animation. I couldn’t resist the urge to discover what such a phenomenon might taste like and retrieved the drop with my finger and placed it in my mouth.
I don’t remember who said it, perhaps Terry Theise in the interview on I’ll Drink to That? Anyway, the river in the Mosel doesn’t increase the ripening of the grapes significantly, but the steepness of the hills does. Further north equals lower sun in the fall and thus steep hills with the right exposure leads to more sun on the grapes. (*)
Otherwise I agree completely. The placement of quality wine growing regions has mostly to do with economics. Rivers leads to market (Rhône lost major market shares after the railroad came) and Piemonte and Tuscany are simply next to rich areas that wanted and could pay for quality wine.
Tuscany’s history is one of most fascinatingly connected to economic history. The fact that the Medici invented government bonds lead to a surge in available cash which lead to a surge in wine growing, which in turn led to counterfeiting Chianti - and thus the first DOC-like system was created in Chianti.
(*) This is from a memory that isn’t too clear so large parts of it might be wrong. Please correct me if you know it to be so.
So you’re violently agreeing with me but arguing for the sake of arguing.
200 million years ago – The region was a tropical sea, full of shellfish and other tiny animals that were deposited layer upon layer – for millennia – on the sea bed. Animals that can easily be seen today in the limestone rocks in the vineyards.
30-5 million years ago – The sea had retreated, and during this geologically unstable epoch the large mountain ranges of Europe were formed. Not just the Alps, but also the Jura, the hills of Beaujolais and the hills of the Côte d’Or.
20,000 years ago – Europe has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000 and 100,000 year time cycles, in-between with temperate, even tropical periods. The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago and was responsible for dramatically re shaping the peaks and valleys of Europe which we see today.
10,000 years ago – As the glaciers retreated, the land warmed. Slowly, save for the tree-line of the mountains and above, Europe became a giant forest.
My understanding is that rivers can also be important because they often run to the ocean and the same channel that carries the river to the ocean can bring cooling ocean breezes to the vineyard.
However, that’s not the only way to get cooling ocean breezes to a vineyard, which may be why rivers are sometimes important and sometimes less so.
In California this is very much true. There are relatively cool sections of the Lodi AVA that exist because of this phenomenon. The other day it was 88 degrees in the area that Mike references above but 92 in Sacramento.
In the foothills nighttime cool temps can happen from cool air tumbling down from the Sierras.
It’s the other way around in CA - the geology opens up the gaps to the oceans, and then the rivers find the gaps. If there were no rivers, San Francisco Bay and Napa and Sonoma would all still be there.
Did you reply to the wrong post? I wasn’t talking about geology. We are discussing how cold ocean air flows up rivers inland and cools the temperature.
Right. Cool air doesn’t flow up rivers. It flows up valleys, which in CA are driven by tectonics. Rivers tend to flow in those same valleys, but they are dependent upon where the tectonics put the gaps in the mountains.
Re the Mosel/Saar/Ruwer and the steep hillsides: it used to be said that the solar rays bounced off the water onto the vines…this always sounded lame to me, but who knows.Certainly the steep hillsides give the vines better exposure.
Hugh Johnson whittled Roger Dion down to a single sentence: the market makes the wine.
There is viticulture near San Francisco because the Catholic Church needed it for mass and there were lots of Italians to drink it.
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