Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62522
GRAPE GRO WING the few things that can be treasured for its origin and the soil from which it came. Highlights • Wine remains one of the few things that can be treasured for its origin and the soil from which it came. • Mendocino County is identifying its top 10 viticultural soils and will use this information as both a marketing tool and a planning tool. • The winegrowing industry has made great strides in valuing soils as an important part of its production package. shallow soil couldn't feed my grandfather's young family, so they packed up and emi- grated to North America. In those days, most people in the world were locavores by default, so their principal mineral stream was right off their local real estate. Our modern supermarkets, with their vast arrays of numerous products available any season for very reasonable prices, have changed all that. Yet wine remains one of Ranch-WV-031511.pdf Soil and the cosmos Soil does have an extraordinary cosmic connection in that its origins are outside this solar system. Our sun can only gen- erate hydrogen and helium, which leaves about 90 other elements that have their origins from the cosmos. We are literally stardust, as Joni Mitchell and William Bry- ant Logan (author of "Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth") have asserted. The Earth coalesced from blown apart stars some 4 billion years ago, and it has taken a long time for our ecosystem to evolve and thrive. You are made up of elements that have been recycled many times. Soil is the substrate on which life itself is converted from the inanimate and dark to the living when light and warmth are provided. Our ancestors were in awe of this, and they celebrated the cycle of life emerging and returning from the earth in spring, flour- ishing in the summer and then retreating once again into darkness and cold. 3/16/11 4:50:21 PM Soil, a key ingredient of terroir As someone trained in soil science, I am happy that I work with an industry that recognizes the soil as an important influ- ence on the quality and flavor of wine. As winegrowers, we often choose places to plant our vines that other agriculturists have no interest in. Soil can be a natu- rally regulating system for vine balance and fruit quality. We cherish the locations where the climate is right, the vines grow enough to ripen modest amounts of fruit and the fruit ripens without stress pro- ducing balanced wines that need little intervention on their way to the bottle. Places like the Cote d'Or in Burgundy (a calcareous, rocky slope in a sea of clay), the gravelly soils of Bordeaux (low-fer- tility but deep gravel coated with clay), Mendocino's Red Vine soils (weathered sand stones that are low fertility, but fri- able with good water-holding capacity) and New Zealand's Hawkes Bay Gimlet gravels (gravelly and deep like Bordeaux, but not particularly fertile) are examples of soils that help self-regulate the vines to produce superior fruit and world- class wines. Planted to the right variet- ies, tended by knowledgeable winegrow- ers and processed by caring winemakers, these spots create the kind of wines that we treasure and look forward to drinking year after year. Everything you need to make your very best wine. CRUSH | WINEMAKING | BARREL & BULK STORAGE | BOTTLING 707.963.4520 RANCHWINERY.COM SAINT HELENA, CA, NAPA VALLEY Wines & Vines DeCeMBeR 2011 53