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Greetings, Ken and Alan,
In an indirect way, Yes, higher pH soils yield higher pH wine.
With sufficient soil moisture in higher pH environment, macronutrients are more available to the vines. Higher metabolization of Potassium increases pH of juice.
Alas, something intuitive about vine chemistry and uptake…
Here I’m quickly out of my element.
Kurt
Edit: Thanks for your remarks, Tom. Monkton’s welcome to call for samples!
I guess it depends upon which pH range we are talking about here. Soils with free carbonates are buffered to pH values of 8.2 (or above), at which Iron, Copper, and Manganese may be deficient. Most vineyards are on soils with pH values from 5 to 7.5 or so.
A few years back we had to perform a soil investigation for a wealthy landowner who had planted a vineyard along an arm of the Chesapeake Bay in Anne Arundel County, MD. The subsoil contained about 20-40% glauconite, a clay mineral which has so much Potassium that it used to be mined in the area as Potassium fertilizer. The vineyard manager was out in the field with us and he turned white when we explained that the Potassium uptake in his vines would be basically off the chart. I can’t remember which grape variety was plated there (maybe Cab Franc), but I suspect their wines may have ended up tasting like Port.
I tasted tablas esprit blind(can’t remember the yr) but it made me think clos des papes
Nothing overripe
Peter’s explanation above is excellent. With climatic factors such as temperature, humidity and wind notwithstanding, generally high pH soils create a lower pH in grapes as calcium preferentially knocks potassium off the soil particle, thereby allowing potassium to leach from the soil during winter rainfall.
Slate is certainly influential in many of the finest German Rieslings.
I haven t been on this site for a while. It is refreshing to know that posts about Rudy are now approaching hte one billion mark and will soon pass the number of Big Macs sold in Visalia.
The obsession with soil types has always amused me. I remember how Dick Graff was obsessed with it until he made wine from Edna valley fruit and the wine turned out well.
Limestone is well known for having food drainage and this works well inFrance. On the other hand I have been to baseball games with Josh Jensen, who knows the movie Manon des Sources by heart.
Many many moons ago (maynard Amerine wrote about this study and he retired sometime in the '70s, I think) somebody did some research here and noted that the cooler the ripening conditions the smaller the berries and the more intense the fruit…up to the point where the grapes don’t ripen. I did not think about this study until I was in Burgundy and somebody noted that flowering was beginning in santenay. What about the Cote de Nuits, I asked…The answer was that it would start there in another week.
Hmm, I said, so that means it is warmer in the southern part of the Cote de beaune than in the Cote de Nuits. I learned then that harvest also begins earlier in the Cote de Beaune than in the Cote de Nuits. The only time i was in Burgundy at harvest time --1981–there wasn’t much of one.
Isn’t this Burgundy in a nutshell? The wines get darker and more intense as you move north until they are only ripe enough for rose, as in Marsannay before global warming.
So how many of you have read books about Burgundy in which the minutest details of soils and subsoils are discussed for forty pages and then the weather is dismissed in three paragraphs?? Or the discussion of weather is about readings taken in Dijon?
No aspect of winemaking is unimportant and this discussion of soils is quite fascinating.
I love this chart! This leads me to think about soils composed of granite that tend to be lower pH’s say around low 5’s and how the resulting wines show tons of iron or blood aspects.
Intuitive logic does not help decipher processes that are counter-intuitive, until you understand the underlying processes. I’ll try to rustle some time to explain when I’m near my laptop. So much above that is not correct and based on not understanding other relationships. Seeing one side without the other steps, like understanding to some extent the soil science, but not how plants uptake nutrients from the soil solution or how that affects plant biology, then the actual effects on wine chemistry. It’s a big picture. You can’t focus on one part and extrapolate to others unless you have actually seen that the relationships don’t work intuitively. Still grasping for myths…
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?
Rasoul - several reasons for that. First of all, there is more surface area planted to vines in Spain than in France. Spain has more land under vine than any other country, and it’s about 20% more land under vine than France, which is third, although in terms of wine production, they switch places - France produces more wine than Spain. The reason is that while there’s a lot of land under vine in Spain, much of it is sparsely planted.
Second reason is that the largest wine area in Spain, in La Mancha, is largely limestone.
My instincts suggest higher pH [calcareous] soils translate to higher pH wines, which tend toward heightened anthocyanin expression/ likability.
I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think it’s actually the opposite.
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.
As far as Tempranillo growing on limestone - the Sierra Cantabria mountains in Rioja provide a lot of different soil types. There are alluvial soils near the river, granite and limestone in the hills, and and then you have sandstone and eroded run-off coming down the valleys. The colors range from red to brown to white. Same in Ribera del Duero, where the soils are alluvial with sand and clay near the river and then in the west are gypsum, limestone and marl, where in the east there’s more clay. In Peñafiel there’s sandier soil and in Burgos the soils are sandy with alluvial deposits and again, marl.
I think the reason for “why limestone” is that much of Europe was formed by uplifting an ancient seabed and consequently, much of the soil in France and Spain is limestone. But as many others have pointed out, there’s granite and volcanic soil as well. In Tokaj, which is the first place to have classified vineyards as far as I know, you can see great differences from one vineyard to the next - there’s loess, run-off from the mountains, granite, volcanic soil, and uplift from an ancient shallow sea, all providing different colors and styles of soil.
BTW guys - great thread but the one thing nobody has mentioned yet is that we’re usually not growing Merlot or Chardonnay or Pinot Noir on their own roots. They’re on rootstock that may have a completely different uptake and soil preference than the scion.
BTW - Mel and Peter - great posts. While it is interesting to hear about soil types, what makes or breaks a vintage is always the weather. And of course, that and harvest decisions probably have more to to with acidity in wine than anything else.
Wine production is a complex process, its results are affected by a number of factors and processes. Vintner/grower matters, weather (vintage) matters, exposure matters, soil composition matters, cultivar and yeast strain matters. Considering this variety, as well as the potential for feedback relationships, identifying a single, dominant input, or even a hierarchy of causes, doesn’t really give a satisfying explanation of the qualitative differences and nuances of the many wines bottled in a region like Burgundy. Something like principle component analysis or statistical network analysis might lead in the right direction. But anyone who relishes the flavors of Chablis, for example, knows that it’s silly to disregard soil when seeking to understand a wine’s character.