Rocks Into Wine with Geologist Brenna Quigley & Dry German Riesling

Class transcript:

Alright, here we go! Lesson number 50 is very exciting. Our 50th easy right? I was just gonna say that... Ah, happy 50th, I know. Uh, welcome, welcome one and all, it's a pleasure to have you all with us for our golden anniversary, um, nerd wish fulfillment here for yours truly... uh, for the sake of a lesson that, um, I have been excited about doing for a long time... Um, uh, you all have gone back to the Riesling well, uh, with me, with us, over and over again... And we're gonna do one more time... Uh, but we're gonna do things a little differently and uh, hope uh, to begin to unravel one of the great um, you know... mysteries that we all love to explore for the sake of Wine is you know how does this sense of place come about? How do we express the yes that's right I'm in Oakland for the weekend I love I love Oakland, great place. Um, uh, wine, great wine scene, wine bars, et cetera, less, less wine production there though. Um, some urban wineries, I guess that, that definitely qualifies. Yeah. Yeah. There's some fun places opening up and a couple more. And as, as things are opening up in general here, it's fun to kind of explore the Oakland scene as a real, as a real one. Yeah. And, uh, soon enough, we'll all have a chance to get out there ourselves, hopefully. Um, so I just, you know, for the sake of provisioning, uh, for the sake of, uh, class prep, um, rocking flights only, uh, this week. Um, and, uh, thank you to you all for your patience.

Uh, supply chains are, um, hugely disrupted, uh, at the moment. And, uh, we barely got the lines in on time, but, um, thank you all for, for bearing with us. And, uh, I hope, um, that you have, uh, you know, some of the six in front of you. Um, I hope even if you don't that, you know, you're able to, you know, you're able to, you know, you're able to, you know, you're able to, you know, you're able to enjoy, uh, this instructional, um, in terms of the course of action, uh, for the six wines, we're going to work our way from, uh, the loam versus limestone, uh, portion of proceedings. So that's pitting, um, uh, von Binnings, uh, versus Spreitzer. And this truly a murderer's row of, uh, the greatest contemporary German producers of dry Riesling.

Um, then we're going to, uh, switch gears and, uh, tackle slate, um, you know, the most famous, um, most ubiquitous, um, you know, kind of, um, geological form, uh, for dry German Riesling, uh, blue versus red in the Mosel Valley, uh, pitting, uh, Johannes Selbach, love Johannes, um, uh, versus Christoffel, um, an iconic older producer, um, that's, you know, kind of just re-emerging now. And then last but not least, um, uh, none other than, uh, Cornelius Dunhoff, um, another just, you know, huge luminary in the world of, uh, Riesling, um, going up against Jörg Rumpf, um, in the Naha, um, which is,, kind of notable for its geologic diversity, um, within, um, uh, Germany.

Um, you got these like wacky outcroppings of volcanic soil there that don't show up in a lot of other corners of the country that are super fun to explore. So, uh, thank you everyone, um, for, uh, joining us. Oh, so many Sundays. We are thrilled, uh, to celebrate our 50th lesson in fine and appropriately nerdy style. Uh, without further, uh, ado, um, I just want to welcome once more, uh, Brenna Quigley. She's a vineyard, uh, geologist. Uh, I'll be stealing her thunder a bit, uh, introducing some of the more basic geologic concepts. Um, not that she can't be bothered to introduce them. I just think she's better served as a bullpen arm to dive, uh, you know, deeper down this rabbit hole with you all and, uh, explore and explain the things that I could never hope to, uh, myself.

Um, she's going to tackle the nerdiest questions, uh, for us and try to, uh, unlock the typicity of place, the typicity of millions of years of rock formation, uh, in the glass. Uh, Brenna, just out of curiosity, uh, for the folks at home, what, uh, do you do as a vineyard geologist? Yeah, absolutely. So I actually got started doing kind of geology work in the wine industry for working with, uh, sommeliers and, uh, importers and exporters. And so it was kind of just something that I was doing for fun, helping, helping to do really things like that. So helping to kind of educate people about all of these terms that like we're about to embark upon discussing a whole lot of geologic terms.

And, um, I heard once, I think when I was in grad school and I've never like fact-checked this, but I repeat it all the time, but I heard once that the, the technical vocabulary for geology has, is the largest technical vocabulary second only to like the medical field. So like basically we use a lot of words and we use a lot of words. And, um, for us, like for our purposes, we use them very specifically. And you should only say, you know, like we were talking about before, like you should only say slate when you mean slate and you should only say fillet when you mean fillet. Uh, but those aren't always really easily accessible things for the wine community.

So the first and foremost thing that I do and that I really love to do is try to try to make it so that wine professionals and wine consumers can kind of harness the field of geology in order to speak about things like terroir, um, and speak about things like, you know, site specificity accurately, and also confidently, and so that they don't kind of get tripped up right away. So that's, that's my main goal. Um, I started doing that for a few years and then eventually got into more and more direct vineyard work. And so now I work with different vineyards, uh, you know, specifically, usually right now they're all very long-term projects. And so the goal is to sort of take things from the very technical to the marketable.

So we'll, we will map out the vineyard. We'll take soil samples. We'll take rock samples. We'll do a lot of like complicated, scientific analyses on them, measure all sorts of different things. And then it'll be about conversations with the viticulture people and with the, um, winemaking team all the way to the marketing team. So like, how can we put all of this information together so that we can, again, talk about it in a way where we all feel comfortable and excited about it. That's awesome. I actually heard that you were working with DC's own Carl McCoy, uh, out of Dallas. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Heights has been a great, great group to work with. Super cool. Um, well, we're thrilled to have you.

Uh, I wanted to give a special shout out for the sake of our, um, uh, golden anniversary, uh, to one Zoe Nystrom, uh, as well. Say hello to the people, Zoe. Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. Um, Zoe's, uh, last day with us, uh, as a paid employee, uh, conventional, uh, payment, mind you, not payment, uh, you know, uh, in, in form, um, uh, was, uh, last November, last December. Um, and, uh, and she, she's missed, um, but I am just, you know, incredibly honored that she continues to, uh, want to be a part of, uh, these regular lessons and this, you know, journey, uh, certainly Zoe would have been the same without you. So thank you. Um, uh, all right.

Uh, and, uh, of course, um, you know, we will raise glasses eventually, uh, uh, at lesson's end, but just want to, um, you know, thank you all for continuing, uh, to sustain this community of, of unapologetic, uh, wine nerds, um, for well over, um, a year and just making it the highlight of, um, this pandemic moment that it has been for me. Um, little verse to kick things off. And, uh, one of my favorite poets, we started this whole adventure with a poem from, uh, Jared Manley Hopkins, um, probably a gay Jesuit, um, uh, his sexuality, uh, up in the air, um, among many scholars, but neither here nor there. Um, amazing poet, one of my favorite poets, we read, um, Pied Beauty, uh, to kick things off.

This is, um, a very religious poem. He actually, uh, dedicates it to JC. I didn't include the dedication, uh, because for me, you know, the, the poem itself is more about the wonder and glory of creation. And, um, it's called The Window. Uh, I caught this morning, morning's minion kingdom of daylight stop and dapple John drawn Falcon in his writing of the rolling level underneath them, steady air and striding high there, how he rung upon the rain of a wimpling wing in his ecstasy, then off, off forth on swing. As the skates heel sweeps smooth on a valve end, the hurl and gliding rebuffed the big wind, my heart in hiding stirred for bird, the achieve of the mastery of the thing group beauty and valor and act.

Oh, air pride plume here, buckle and the fire that breaks from there, then a billion times told lovely or more dangerous. Oh, my shovel. Yay. No wonder of it. Sheer plod makes plot down silly and shine and blue bleak embers. Oh, my dear fall, gall themselves and gash gold for me lead. Uh, Hopkins is a tongue twister. Um, a sprung rhyme, uh, you know, taking, um, inspiration from the Welsh language and English, but, um, no one deploys words like him and no one evokes natural beauty, uh, like him. And, and for me, you know, uh, wine is an expression of that natural beauty. Um, uh, he's also a lover, esoteric vocab for those of you, uh, who, uh, you know, uh, glazed over at silly, and shine great turn of phrase.

Sillian is essentially, um, earth. Um, so silly and shine is a reference to, um, plowing, uh, the earth making, uh, the, uh, you know, dry earth, uh, shine, um, in, you know, it's, you know, more kind of fertile, um, boy, um, switching gears here. Um, we are going to bang through, um, some basic tenants of geology and German wine classification, uh, because we want to spend the bulk of our time, uh, with Brenna and, you know, I don't want to mansplain things that she is better equipped, uh, to speak to. So, uh, we're talking terroir here. We're talking rocks, uh, as they whisper in wine. Terroir, uh, for those of you who don't remember, uh, I love Hugh Johnson's, uh, definition, the whole ecology of the vineyard, every aspect of its surroundings from bedrock, uh, which is what we're supposed to be on today, to lake frost, to autumn mist, not excluding the way the vineyard is tending, not even the soul of the very vineyard on him or herself.

Uh, so, you know, you have this intersection here of, uh, you know, millions of years of earth formation and, uh, human, uh, intervention and innovation, uh, for the sake of agriculture, uh, and, uh, viticulture. Um, you know, if we are talking, um, you know, rocks, you know, as Brenna said, uh, we should try to be, um, you know, a little more precise about how we deploy, uh, that language. So, uh, our earth, uh, formed out of the remnants of, uh, um, you know, interstellar, um, explosions, uh, some 4.5 billion years ago. Uh, as I said in the mail, a flowering plant submerged many, many billions of years later, 125 million years later. Um, uh, and all this time, um, continents are shifting, you know, tectonic plates are churning.

Uh, the earth is, uh, making and remaking itself in ways that, uh, have this profound impact on, uh, the, um, you know, kind of, uh, constituent, um, you know, uh, minerals, um, and, uh, soil types that ultimately determine what goes into our glass. So we're going to start with rocks as such. And I think an important distinction to make is, um, uh, vines do not grow on rocks. Uh, they grow in soil. Um, even if it looks like there is no soil, there's soil, uh, because, uh, vines need organic matter. So three types of rocks for those of you, um, uh, paying along at home and, um, you know, maybe you remember this, maybe you don't, uh, flashback, uh, to, uh, you know, freshman year.

Um, we've got your sedimentary, uh, deposited, uh, over, uh, millions of years. Um, one of my favorite quotes, a million years worth of ancient seashells, uh, you know, need to be sedimented, uh, for about 10 meters of, of limestone. But, um, you know, these are, um, you know, through the compaction of settlements and various types of settlements, um, you know, the, you know, kind of easily, uh, kind of crumbled, you know, more fragile rocks. And then you've got your igneous rocks. Those are volcanic rocks. Those are the fun ones. Magma, liquid hot, be it emerging on the earth's surface or inside the earth. And then metamorphic, uh, those are the rocks transformed, um, through heat and pressure over time. Now, uh, I named dropped soil. Um, soil is different than rocks.

Vines, uh, grow in soil. Soil can be variously deep or shallow. Vines unique among plants in that they tolerate incredibly thin bands of soil that they can grow in. Soil is composed of one, two, three types of particle sizes. You've got your sand, the biggest. You've got your silt, much smaller. You've got clay, even smaller still. The smaller the particles, typically the more water-attentive the soil and, uh, the more, uh, nutrient-rich it is and the more, uh, nutrients it can easily exchange. And we'll come back to that, uh, at a later point in time. Uh, now the soil itself is composed of those particle sizes in mineral form. So minerals are, um, essentially, uh, physically weathered rock, um, be it through chemical processes or, you know, uh, the action of, um, you know, the wind, um, you know, all sorts of other geological forces, uh, physically over time.

About 45% of soil constituted by these broken down rock fragments in mineral form. Um, 5% is that secret sauce, that organic material. That's, you know, the life that gives birth to, uh, additional life in, uh, grape and wine form. And then the remainder, water and air. So, um, you know, you're talking, uh, um, you know, soil that's composed of about 50% of things and then 50% of stuff that we don't usually think of as part of soil. But water and air are hugely important, um, uh, ingredients. Now, um, why are we talking Riesling, um, in the context of all of these, uh, geological, um, you know, terms? Well, Riesling is a fabulous grape. It is incredibly terroir expressive. Riesling emerged on the scene, the scion of Guay Blanc, which we've covered in other lessons, peasant's grape, um, in an unknown, uh, the pan.

It emerged in the early, uh, Middle Ages, uh, first mentioned, um, uh, in German text 1435. Uh, it really, um, kind of, uh, starts to take over the vineyards of Germany, um, in the 17th and 18th century. Um, and by the 19th century is the noble grape of Germany, which is somewhat ironic because, uh, Riesling, uh, is, uh, kind of very late to bud, hugely late to ripen, which can be problematic in a cold, uh, environment. Such as Germany, uh, but it has a lot going for it. It's a donkey, incredibly stress tolerant. Um, it's wonderfully aromatic, but not so aromatic as to be off-putting like the Muscats and Gewurzes of the world. Um, raging acid, especially tartaric acid, um, and a long ripening window.

So, um, it takes a lot of, uh, information, um, from the growing season and transmits it into, uh, its fruit. And then lastly, Riesling is a grape that is rarely, um, manipulated, uh, as such. So there's rarely a strong cellar imprint from, uh, the best producers. They're trying to make something that is purely expressive of place itself. And, uh, we are running roughshod over the notion of sweet Riesling to concentrate on dry Rieslings, which since the Drachenweil, the dry wave of the eighties and nineties dominates the German, uh, marketplace, the greatest German wines are these dry Rieslings. And we're going to talk about them today, which takes us back to one, uh, Brenna Quigley, uh, for the sake of our first set of wines here. Um, Brenna, uh, what should we know about Germany?

Um, for the sake of its geological history. Yeah, absolutely. So I will try to keep this as brief as possible, but seeing as we're starting a little over 420 million years ago, uh, you know, we'll see how many, how many hundreds of millions of years we can, we can wrap up in like two hours, two hours later, and then 250 million years ago. Yeah, exactly. Um, but so for the most part, when we're talking about Germany and we're talking about Riesling, the like two like keywords that you have to keep in mind all the time are basically Devonian slate. Uh, so Devonian particularly refers or specifically refers to a time period. Uh, so that is about 419 to 359 million years ago. So literally anything that happened between 419 and 359 million years ago is called Devonian.

So it's not, um, it doesn't have to be, um, it doesn't have to be, um, it doesn't have to be slate. Uh, but basically before this time, there was, uh, a, you know, proliferation of, uh, oceanic sediments all over. Oh, great. Beautiful. Um, of ocean sediments. So there was, uh, these very deep ocean basins that were depositing a lot of clay and mudstone and things like that, that were then later metamorphosed and preserved as slate. Uh, so when we're talking Devonian, we're talking actually, pre-Pangea. So, not something everybody knows is that, you know, maybe you're familiar with the concept of Pangaea, that before the continents were in their present day location, they were actually all in one coherent supercontinent called Pangaea. Um, hopefully you're familiar with that.

But one thing not everyone knows is that before that there were other supercontinents. And so, you know, Pangaea existed around, um, started breaking up around, I think 250 million years ago. And so there's, you know, another three and a half billion years of planetary actions where the plates on Earth's surface were essentially breaking apart from each other, crashing back into each other, creating supercontinents and then breaking apart and crashing into each other, et cetera, et cetera. So in the Devonian, we're talking pre-Pangea. Um, and where most of these rock sediments formed during really the formation of Gondwana, which I think was just on that slide you showed. Um, and then which is one of the supercontinents that one of the early mini-supercontinents that then crashed into each other to form Pangea.

Um, and so essentially during this time, you know, we have sharks evolve and kind of start to dominate the seas, uh, tetrapods first to begin to walk on land. So this is the first time that we're really getting like, um, they were kind of like fishes with stiff fins that were kind of like walking around the sea, wobbling around on land. Um, and these same rocks formed that then later produced the wines that we're drinking right now. So skip forward a little bit, a few million years later, uh, after Pangea fully forms and begins to break up, sea level is higher. Um, the climate is warmer and all of these, all of this continent that was one breaks apart and you get all of these shallow, we call them like epicontinental seas.

So basically it's like the continents are flooded with shallow, warm water. Coral reefs are forming all over the world. It's kind of like most of the world looks like, uh, you know, looked, looked like, uh, the great barrier reef, kind of warm, tropical, lots of things living. And this is exactly what creates most of the limestones that we see, um, a little bit of in Germany, but primarily when, when we're talking about French wine regions like the Paris basin, Burgundy, Champagne, that's when all of these rocks form. And they, what the important thing to remember is that they form on top of this, what we call like metamorphic crystalline basement. So you get hard rock below softer sedimentary rock above it.

Um, and that happens again for like, you know, over a hundred million years, these kinds of keep layering on top of each other. Then shift forward to our next name geologic event. So 65 million years ago, uh, plates have all broken apart. And now, as it happens, they're crashing back into each other again. So the Alpine orogeny begins. So Africa starts to collide into Europe. Sea level falls. The ocean drains off of all of these continents. Things get drier. Things get colder. And we're uplifting all of this, uplifting and exposing all of this deep sediment that then kind of weathers away. And what happens is that all of those pieces of the metamorphic rocks that were formed when Pangea essentially was created and then have been ripped apart start getting exposed throughout the world.

And so we see all of these massifs, as how we refer to them, which are these kind of like ancient, ancient, ancient, you know, which was once one continuous mountain chain, but like little pieces of that mountain chain all over the world. And they have very cool like wine, wine origins. So in Germany, in the East, so Germany, Austria. We're kind of talking about the Bohemian massif being related to what we're going to focus on here, which is the Rhine massif. There's the Galician massif in Spain. There's the Massif Amorican, which is like Muscadet in France, the Massif Central, which gives us Beaujolais and the Northern Rhone, all related to even the Alpine or sorry, the Appalachian mountains in the Eastern part of the United States. So pretty much that's how we get there.

Then there's for, for my, for my purposes, when we're talking you know, sub 20 million years, we're talking about really recent geological events. And basically what happens is you, this landscape kind of continues to evolve. The Alps continue to uplift. We continue to kind of expose and weather new things. And we start to, and then very, very recently, hundreds of thousands of years, we start to get glaciations that start carving the landscape. The Rhine river starts cutting through all of these rocks. And, you know, exposing different layers of them and exposing, you know, creating the topography that we see, and work with today. I think that about covers it. No, that feels like a great segue into our first wine, which hails from the Falz, which is kind of geologically, an extension, northward extension of Alsace, into the, you know, and to Germany.

And you all can see the Falk here at the Iselbuefel. Bottom of this map, and we're going to be tasting a wine from Steven Auten, who's one of, you know, certainly the most highly regarded modern winemakers in Germany. Von Binning, great name for an estate, and they make, you know, some of the most fabulous single vineyard wines. This is Erslaga, so it's essentially Premier Cru under the Bourbon-Deutscher-Pratikatz-Weingutter, everyone's favorite German producer association, almost 100 years, over 100 years strong now, but this particular vineyard is from transported soils, and I have pictures of all these vineyards, which I'm irrationally excited about, and Germans are always good for an evocative vineyard name. Usually there's a lot of religiosity.

They're very literal, the Germans, you know, you're not going to get an ironic name from the Germans, but, you know, we'll be transported nonetheless, so this is, you know, the Paradise Garden, you know, you don't need to be a German major to figure out that translation, and a sandstone that's weathered, but quite a bit of loam, and there's a little loess in here as well. What does that mean typically for the wines, Brenna? Yeah, so here we're kind of talking about a big distinction that I like to make. I think it's like the first and foremost thing that you want to think about and know before you really start thinking about the wine. We're talking about terroir, and we're talking about the distinction between transported soils, so soil that forms from kind of the degradation of transported materials versus residual soils, so that would be soil that kind of forms directly from the bedrock that's below it.

And so in this case, when we talk about things like loess and loam, which is really just sort of a soil term, we're usually talking about things that have some sort of alluvial nature to them, so that means that all of these things were kind of scavenged and brought down usually from some sort of, usually a river, usually a water system. Loess is actually windblown. It's also usually related to glaciation, so the glaciers, the ice of these glaciers kind of like grinds down and carves a lot of the rock into a really fine powder, and then when the glacier recedes and it explodes, it kind of leaves these, you know, just kind of like drops of water, and then it's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's like, all of this material, that powder then gets kind of blown away and accumulated in little pockets downwind, and so where usually those soils are, they're easier for the roots to access because they're, they were never really compacted, and so they're usually deep, they're usually very fertile, and they're usually quite water retentive, and so they're often going to be, they're kind of like, you know, Paradise Garden is actually a good, a good name for it, like it's, it's this kind of like lush, you know, luscious situation, it should be, you know, pleasant and pretty, and things grow really well, and the problem in these vineyards is typically that they need to kind of devigorate them, or they need to kind of control the, the vigorous nature of the vines, because they've got everything going for them. Yeah, I think of them as kind of fleshy wines, and a lot of times in the fall, people talk about, you know, yellow fruit.

The Dirty Uncle Terry Thies says, this one is Mirabelle drenched. Zoe, oh, I don't know if you've heard of Mirabelle drenched, but it's a what are your tasting notes on this one? Yeah, it's very similar, that yellow pear is exactly my first jumping out there, very, very big fruit. Oh, golden plum, oh, I thought it was more of that archer for me. The golden plum, okay, that's okay. But it does have a significant amount of weight to it, I think that's going to be what really, what really shines. I mean, coming from falls, having a warmer climate generally there from the Rheingau, I think also, like, makes me say that, but that like peanut butter saltiness that it has is just delightful. Peanut butter saltiness, that is a great taste. Yeah.

Yeah, on point, definitely, you know, I think definitely apropos for the sake of this wine. Wanted to use this as a foil for an offering from the Rheingau. So we are venturing, you can see the Rhine is really the German Ganges, and it flows from south to north. Which is always difficult for those of us stateside, because our rivers don't really flow that way for the most part. But downstream here is north into the North Sea, and downstream, the Rhine typically flows north to south, but it takes this dramatic westward turn, for the sake of the Rheingau, and it has this, like, dramatic south-facing northern bank of the river here, and it's sheltered by the northern winds, from the northern winds, by the Taunus mountains, equally.

And I have a picture of this vineyard as well, hot off the presses. I just have to, this is the, the Rosen Garden, again, you know, they're making it very easy for us on the translation front, with these vineyards. This is a limestone, this is, I mean they caught the vineyard at a beautiful time, this is, you know, the leaves changing color. It's just pretty idyllic, but you're going to see the estate there, this is a parcel, I'm going to share a little map here that's actually relatively close to the river, but it's notable because it is a limestone and a marl heavy. Marl is another word that, you know, wine lovers like to deploy and, you know, rarely bother to explain.

Do you want to bring us in on that, Brenna, and, you know, talk about what you expect from Riesling on limestone soils? Because, you know, a lot of Burgundy lovers, you know, just, you know, they're all in on their limestone, but you don't hear as much about Riesling on limestone. What does it give to Riesling? Does it give the same kind of things it does to Pinot or, you know, something else, Natalia? Yeah, I think in most situations it does, you know, from my experience, most kinds of true soil types that are well-defined do translate very well from one grape to another, so it does kind of share a lot of characteristics. The one thing that I always point out is, again, kind of being careful with the vote.

I think it's important to be careful with the vote. I think it's important to be careful with the vocabulary because marl means lots of different things. So marl basically just means it's like the simplest way to think of it is just like a dirty limestone. So it's a limestone with clay mixed in, but that marl can be really soft and the clay can be kind of like really ready to interact and break down into the soil, or it can actually be really hard and sharp and kind of like white marl. You get that in the upper slopes of a lot of the Cote d'Or. Oh, wow. I didn't even know that was an option. I thought it was always like, you know, darker in color.

No, I mean, I think that's probably like a safe guess, but you can actually get, you know, that's one of the things that was first very confusing for me to get used to was that there are these kind of like white marls where they're these kind of soft, a lot of, I think that's how a lot of Barolo, you can talk about a lot of like white marls, they're actually like chalky white marls. And so then you're just kind of like, in terms of wine speak, like you've got three totally different structures that you're talking about there, where you've got like more clay rich, so you're thinking fuller bodied, you know, fleshy, denser. And then you've kind of got the white marl, which is really calcareous.

And a lot of times the softness of that white marl means that the calcium carbonate breaks down into the wine a lot. So you get really extremely alkaline soil. It's actually a very, very harsh environment. And so that's like, when you think of like Barolo tannins, I think a lot of that really comes from that like chalky white marl, just as much as it does from the neck. That's more like the Saralunga side of the commune than like Canovio, which has a little more of that clay and gives you softer, kind of prettier wines. Right. Yeah, yeah. So again, it's kind of like there are tricky distinctions that I think get people confused pretty quickly. But I think another thing to note is that usually as far as Riesling limestone soils, they're often found in places just like what you showed a picture of, like they're not the steep, like limestone weathers and breaks down pretty easily.

So you're not getting the same. You're not getting the same steep slopes that you get from, you know, like the Mosel where you have very shallow, steep slopes. So I think because of that, like you are getting these limestone characteristics where you get acidity, but you know, we're in Germany, so we've got lots of acidity to work with. But there tend to be in kind of slightly warmer regions. So you're getting a fuller body and they're also deeper soils and they're usually flatter topography. So I think you have a lot of things kind of interacting together when you're talking about the limestone soils of Germany that are kind of hard to parse out. But I do think that like, if you could like smooth over a lot of those other major differences, you would see similar things in terms of that kind of like typical, like linearity and energy that you get from limestone.

It's funny, just in tasting this wine, you know, I get a little bit of that herbaceousness. And again, you know, Terry is always a fun person to read for the sake of his tasting notes, but not always the most instructive in a conventional way. You know, but he talks about this as an herbaceous wine. I think it has some of that, but you know, the wines that Rheingau always have this, you know, for me, they're always a little masculine. They're always, you know, kind of a little more powerful. That's because it's a slightly warmer region by German, you know, this is in the, you know, parlance of, you know, warm by German standards. But equally for me, you know, this reflects the fact that, you know, it's not the center of popular imagination, that's just like hard rock and, you know, producing these like severe, you know, I think of like Pinots that are just like racy and structured and, you know, tight.

This is not that wine. Zoe, what do you get for the sake of the Spritzer here in the Rose Garden? I was floored with how herbaceous it was. Like it's very peppery. It has that like bitter leaf to it. It reminded me a lot of actually nasturtium. Oh yeah, I feel like a little lemon verbena thing kind of happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that like canned peachy. It has like a lot of like sweetness to it, and like that, really nice like juicy fruit, but then it's just refreshing, crisp, and clean; it just like ends like a little um wave in my mouth, a little saltiness. Um, and they actually, it's funny, uh, spritzer talks about this as a delicate wine, uh, they say there's a decent amount of sand in the soil, which you know, I think sandy soils tend to give you know, pretty, you know, more delicate wines, um, uh, you know, as well.

And so you know, that's kind of um, you know, something I don't always associate with limestone, so you have these like you know, kind of um, you know, dueling banjos, as it were, geologically speaking, and and you know, that's a maddening, and equally, you know, the Wildly fascinating thing about studying this all because you know you can have one variable that in a particular instance, you know gives you you know wine with this you know particular personality and then you know another kind of contravening variable, you know that you know has you know this different kind of imprint for the sake of the wine so you know it's just, it's impossible to make gross generalizations about and these systems are so dynamic and complex that you know they almost surpass our understanding um but you know of course that doesn't stop us from trying to, trying to understand it, but you know that's.

That's the fun of all, uh, in my imagination, Joe. Uh, do we have any questions for Brenna from, uh, The Chatters? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think the the main question right now is to place like value on the different types of like terroir minerality, meaning like what is the most important or if you could like maybe do like a guesstimation of a like a percentage breakdown between like the size of the soil, the amount of moisture that it can retain or doesn't retain than like the type of soil it is. Um, sorry, what do you mean in terms of value? Like, what's the most, you know, what is the most important you know criteria for this like I think?

People are asking, 'You know, um, is you know, so the soil structures you know, trump soil composition in terms of the mineralogy, um, and you know, also to what extent do those things go hand in hand? To what extent are you know, certain types of rocks likely to break down into certain types of you know, soil particles? Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of them do kind of come together which helps like a lot of times they kind of like you know, uh, reinforce each other. So, like I said, the first thing I like to understand is like whether we're talking about a transported soil or a residual soil, because that's going to tell you a lot about uh the depth.

Of the soil, which is usually transported, soils are going to be a lot deeper, um, and then obviously you have all of this volume potentially to hold things like water and nutrients, and that's assuming that the roots have the ability, um, and you know the desire to access that full depth, so it's kind of like they have all of these reserves, uh, and then also that will typically also tell you things about the soil texture, um, and so for example if you have, you know, many transported soils, you're going to have soils are going to have more silt and clay, and those fine particles are going to, um, also hold more water, hold more

nutrients, be more Of a um more of a an easier environment for the vine uh versus you know the other end of that spectrum would be a very very shallow soil on very hard sharp rocks with um you know if they if those rocks are just starting to break down they're probably going to be in larger particles there will be less clay there will be less ability to hold water there will be less ability to hold water and there will be less ability to hold nutrients so there we've kind of like created two like end members of a system and then there's all of that stuff that kind of goes in between so like where are their pockets you know like in burgundy it's that.

Middle of the slope where you have uh residual soil, so that's on bedrock but it's got all this stuff that's fallen down the slope and so the clay is accumulated on top of it and so you get that mix of like clay and limestone that works really well for burgundy um you know I think when you're talking Riesling or when you're talking about a lot of like Riesling regions, a lot of times because the Riesling vine is so hardy, like you were saying they will then put the Riesling vines on the harshest areas and kind of let them do their thing and they'll plant something else on the on the softer areas and so um and that's because Riesling.

Does a really you know Riesling just like makes really great wine in all sorts of different locations, and that's why we get the opportunity in tasting riesling to try all of these different terroirs in good wines. Now what's wild though to me is that you know that's kind of the Austrian paradigm so in the Austrian parlance, Riesling always gets the shitty top slope, um, or the nutrient-deficient top slope, uh, and Grüner, which is a much more needy grape; it just it needs water, um, you know, it suffers, uh, you know, uh, water stress a lot more easily than Riesling. It gets these, um, lies like the classic, you know, Grüner. Belting or soil, it gets it gets these more water-retentive soils, but you know the great question is, if you plant Riesling on Loess, does it start to taste like Grüner?

and and uh i think sometimes it does um yeah it really does and yeah the austrians say that too they're like well here like when the terroir is good enough it masks the grape like when i was tasting in austria for the first time i was like really embarrassed because i kept not knowing what the grape was and they were like no no no like when when we change up the terroirs that's the intention um and so the actual cool thing especially about riesling is that like it still makes good wine on los like it still makes really great wine on transported soils maybe not the same you know it's not the same wine as on the moselle but like when you do see it act in all of these different places it kind of adapts and you know and that's why it is the translator of terroir um and so again like i always all of those things are important to kind of think about in terms of like what is impacting this wine but i also think of it more as kind of like there's a time and a place for everything you know like there's a time and a place for friendly you know transported soils and i think it's really important to think about You know, wines that are, you know, that are pretty and fun and fresh. Um, I think with like climate change it's going to become more and more common, you'll see different interactions with those things, so it's really more a time and a place kind of a thing when I think as a geologist, too.

You just want to find a home for all rocks in the vineyards, yeah. Um, great. Uh, so that brings us to uh, you named up the Moselle uh, and uh, we have to talk slate um, uh, we're talking red versus blue slate um, what is slate uh, and uh, you know why is it red and or blue? Yeah, so okay, so slate, we are starting to talk about metamorphic rocks um, and so again this is a rock that already existed as a rock it could be anything that then gets slowly gets metamorphosed um as it gets buried to deeper and deeper depths and is then also exposed to higher and higher temperatures and so we talk about metamorphosis and we talk about the fact that it's a rock that gets buried to deeper and deeper depths and is then also exposed to higher and higher temperatures in terms of their metamorphic grade so as you increase the temperature and pressure the metamorphic grade goes up uh most commonly what we see as far especially in these kind of lower grade metamorphic rocks um as the protolith or the original rock. That got buried is like protolith, yeah, is um clay or mudstone or shale, so we're kind of calling all those things the same thing. It's basically like a mudstone or shale. So we're kind of calling all those things the same thing; it's basically like a muddy rock that was solidified into a rock and then gets buried.

And so our first step of metamorphic grade is to create slate, and so it's basically like we're taking clay stone and we just bake it. And so in order for it to be a metamorphic rock, it actually has to have recrystallization, so the formation of new minerals form... uh, it's actually very simple because they Have to actually grow and so they're going to grow in the east and they're going to grow in the east and they're going to grow in the east and they're going to grow in the east and they're going to grow in the east orientation that they can which means that they're going to if something's getting squeezed this way and there's you know pressure putting it in this direction those flat minerals are going to grow this way because they're flat and it just makes sense and so that's why you get all of those layers of slate and slate is really just kind of baked, you're not getting big flaky minerals, you're really just getting like A reorientation and a recrystallization of little kind of clay particles, um, and so that I have some rocks here. Oh, nice! You can see those kinds of slaty things. And what's really great about it is that again the minerals haven't grown, so after slate, um, basically the next well, there's a couple steps, but then you eventually get to like schist. So, schist gives that like schistosity and so you have that kind of like flaky mineral texture, but if you think about the step in between those two things, like that schist has to has to have all these big flaky minerals, and so that's why you get that kind of like flaky; they're like papery mica.

Minerals, and so if you think about water traveling through oh great so yeah, if you think about like water traveling through that like schist where it's like it's actually looks almost like sandy in texture like you can see the grains themselves versus slate where all it's almost like all of those minerals have just been kind of welded together, you get a very very different textured rock, you get a very different um and you get a very very difference a big difference in hardness and a big difference in sort of how it reacts or reacts with water um, and also I think um those micaceous minerals break down pretty easily versus slate i think is actually an even harsher tends to be an even harsher environment in terms of nutrient availability and then when they do degrade they tend to degrade into different types of soils so i always think about like granitic sand and then in context of slate i think these you know really thin soils but when they do devolve i think of these like you know you know little ultimate frisbee discs you know interlocking for the sake of you know smaller smaller particles in the soil yeah yeah exactly and those smaller particles then will um impact obviously the texture in terms of like being more clay rich or sandier But it'll also impact, um, you know, like I said, the ability for water not just to be held, but water for the ability for water to move through that site, and so basically all of this to say it makes sense; all has these insanely steep slopes with insanely shallow soils, they're very rocky, um, and it's like, it's just one of those beautiful wine connections where it's like, yes, this rock is very very sharp, it is going to create sharp slopes, and it's going to make a sharp wine, like all of those things make sense, and like you've said a couple times, it is also super important to know that It doesn't pick up on the whole scale, like, there's any rock-like there's any soil there, but there is. There is, you know, even if it's just on the um, I look at this in like soil pits all the time where there's these really shallow soils and you look at kind of the roots making their way down through the cracks.

This is like Pedro Cara's um, really lovely metaphor that he does about like it's kind of like a like a five-course Michelin uh meal where they kind of have to work all the way down to get all these different layers of nutrients and there's not much soil at the top but there is this like film on the cracks of the rocks that Are like breaking down minerals, it's creating little clay minerals right there; there's a little bit of organic material, um, there's a little bit of like water and air, like it's like that little film of soil is what the vine is working with and it speaks to just kind of like how uh resilient um grapes vines uh you know are uh for the sake of you know for the sake of the vines you know being able to survive in these otherwise you know essentially like inorganic landscapes um uh so that was I just shared a picture of uh Zeltinger uh Slulsberg um let's see uh Castle Hill uh Johannes Selbach um one of my winemaking heroes from Germany. You know at the top of this uh this is blue devonian slate devonian there a geological age or geologic age that uh Brenna spoke to earlier so um I'm just going to leave the picture so what do you taste uh of that uh from uh the castle uh Burg Amkusap I was wondering where we were going with that um I like it it's so before I wanted to talk about a little bit more about like that salty brininess and just like exactly where that's coming from because obviously it's the acidity that like makes my palate salivate so hard um but it's like a step away from kernel or a step away from how to participate to outgrow table small azimuth away From popcorn-like something that I would expect for maybe like a slightly warmer region, but it's it's starting to develop there, I'm still very light on its sweetness, and that racing acidity is just so lush; it's interesting, so too, like texturally, um you know there's there's something there's something there, um you know there's a little bit of like uh an oiliness and and and you know I find sometimes you know in these privileged sites and um you know the skins will develop uh on Riesling, you know uh according to you know various uh dimensions um of you know an individual site but uh soil color is important for the sake of the Um, kind of metabolic activity of the grapes and and on red soils, you know, and darker colored soils, you get this um, you know increased ripening, and I think sometimes you get the spiciness uh, in those wines, and you know texturally, you know, you get this like peppery uh, kind of, kind of streak in them.

Um, you know, this is kind of a hard wine, it's chiseled um, you know for me, and uh, I always get that out of blue slate, and I think a blue slate, you know, I don't know if it's right or wrong um Brenda, but I think of it as like the hardest slate, um, you know, I think of it as like you know, and and you know just kind of having trekked a few German vineyards. You know, I feel like it's the most you know impenetrable uh, in its own right. You know, whereas I have a very different association with the uh red slate. Uh, I'm going to share a picture of the most famous red slate vineyard in all the world. Um, one of the great German evocative vineyard names.

Uh, this is the Spice Garden. Let's think about Scotland. So, what do you taste uh, in uh, the Verse Garden? Um, should be said that uh, German German is one of the you know most enjoyable languages to do a goofy accent in. What do you get in the Verse Garden? I always want to say that there's something spicy on it just from a simply association. But, um, I remember, like, a honey tasting, and having, like, the spicy honey, and, like, that's that's where I can put that um. Whereas I felt like the um cell box was more like red fruit driven with, like, those like nice round like red apples, I think this is much more like green and closed and a little bit like crisper um.

And I think that the um the texture on this um certainly surprising, like I don't think it's it's it's chewy; it makes me it's juicier; it's not quite as hard, yeah, and stony as the um you know; stoney feels like a really weird term to use in the context of this tasting but you know there's something about you know the blue slate. Wines that you know, um, you know, really, it almost feels closed off, especially when they're in your youth, um, whereas the earthsig, you know, earthsig for me always is, it's a you know, it's an approachable wine, you know, it's it's an expressive wine, it is, you know, there's this, you know, very expressive quality to it to it and it's it's always there, you know, it's not reticent, you know, um at all and I think this this wine, you know, has quite a bit of that um, uh, Brenna why does this vineyard look the way it does and so dramatically different, um, than uh, Johannes' uh, Slossberg, yeah, so this is a a like really cool vineyard, it is, so steep. It just like absolutely blows my mind every time I see a picture of it. Um, I was I think standing right there with um Ernie Lozen and like it was my first time in Germany and I was like, 'What, like how does this even work? Like don't you have a problem with erosion, like like how do you how do you how do you possibly farm on this and he was just kind of like, 'No, we've never ever had a problem with erosion.

There's nothing to erode; it's just rock.' Um, which is a classic snarky response from Dr. Lozen. You have to know the good doctor. Yeah, uh, he probably he's probably wearing orange pants at the time; um, he is just like, he had pandemic hair. before pandemic uh yeah yeah uh very the man he doesn't mince his words certainly no he doesn't like like mad scientist like total like out of spoken just um but very very lovely um and so anyways we have the this was another one of those things where like i went to germany and i was like people keep talking about like different colors of slate and i just like didn't buy it i was like the that you have slate of different colors is because of like really minor um you know elemental impurities in the rock like a little bit of oxidized iron it'll it'll kind of like um kind of like stain the whole rock red but it doesn't mean that they're Iron rich soils, and same thing with other things, it's like a light thing. And I was just kind of like, I don't really see how this is going to make a difference. And then, like, you go through these tastings, and you know, so many people have spent so much time tasting on these different things. And I was like, I don't know, I'm not sure how many people have spent so much time tasting on these different plates. And I was like, totally converted by the end of my trip.

I was just kind of like, all right, it turns out. And there are you know, they're Germans, they're not um, you know, they're not so much in the the waxing poetic sense of things, like they are pretty literal and there are actual scientific papers i don't think i have it in front of me but there's an actual paper about like how the these red soils of the red slates um i think they it's the way that they sort of accumulate uv light differently yeah geisenheim did all sorts of work on it um it's really interesting and they they trace it through different regions too so um yeah they determined that it did accelerate you know these metabolic you know ripening processes in grapes uh so that the the color of the soy soil itself you know had this determining impact on you know this distinctly spicy character in the Wine, yeah, exactly.

And I do think that you know even small differences in the hardness of the rock so they also talk about kind of gray slates versus blue versus black versus red, um, and so slates are they're they're they're they're they're they're they're they're white. Differences in the hardness of those rocks is going to make a big difference for its ability to actually create soil for the vine, and when we talk about there's all of these like conflicting other factors like aspect and um, you know, slope, like you know, in the Mosel for the most part, um, there are some important, there are some important. Um, differences in aspects that are really apparent because they're so steep, but a lot of those other factors are you know when you're talking about short distances are kind of smoothed over and so it's like we're looking at, we are able to look at you know small differences in the rocks and how they matter.

So I would say again if we're kind of like breaking down what's important it's uh color is really important for the the color of the actual soil and how it interacts with light and then how it also potentially reflects light back onto the vine as well, and then the hardness of the rock makes a big difference so the blue. Is a little bit harder, the grey is pretty soft, red is kind of, um, I think, kind of in between, generally softer than the blue, but also has that like red red factor. Um, here also it's actually called uh Rothliegend, which is a geologic time period that doesn't exist anymore, like we don't really use it, but sort of just a name for all of these red soils associated with the late stages of the formation of Pangaea, so kind of like right before or right as things started to break apart again.

Um, you get these kind of uh inter-inter contain like in between mountain basins that were kind of had all of this material shed off of them and it was really Hot and it was really dry, and that's when you usually get a lot of like red sediments. It has to be a really arid environment; think of like red sediments in like Utah, you get that kind of like arid arid um sedimentation. And they also have association with nearby volcanics, so um there is red slate in Earth's garden but there is also this kind of like red conglomerate that is mostly made up of like volcanic rocks, so there's some different stuff going on there too. That is a killer segue into uh our volcanic uh wine porphyry.

Zoe did you have any quick questions uh from the commentary for Jenna before or for uh um Brandon before? We launch into the next duo, yeah, absolutely because you just touched on it. Um, is after Pangea has broken up and we are, we know it now, where are we going from here? How are our continents moving? Yeah, I was thinking about that um this morning too. So, we are, I think, we're at the very early stages of like re-accumulating continents, they all kind of got like fully separated and we're all in their different places, and now, and you know the past 60 million years they're starting to crash together again. And so, the main places to look at that are India crashing in, and then the other places to look at are Asia with the Himalayas, uh, Africa colliding.

Into Europe with the Alps, and the Pyrenees - that's kind of the same system as that main collision, uh, and so I think in the next several hundred million years, that will all of that will kind of continue to kind of come together. So we got today, we'll see another supercontinent before the sun consumes us, oh I hope so hot hot take - excellent! There's like a Fox News-like geologists predict supercontinent, um, what else, what else, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, um, what else you got though, um, in terms of talking about the silly things that psalms say. How do you how do you truly feel about the word? minerality and wine bum bum bum, I want another hot take, yeah, another hot take, you know what?

I actually actually don't mind it, like, I think I know it's surprising and sometimes people are like embarrassed to use it around me or they like, you know, or they all not use it, and I think that's really happening in a lot of the psalm community too where like when like people will use the term minerality amongst friends because like they don't like the reason that I avoid using it when uh like in doing something like this or like I always let the question come up first is because like i don't when I say it I don't want to distract from the Conversation in order to have the minerality conversation because, like, people still feel like it's so necessary to say like, it is not minerals that we're tasting, which is true, you know, like we know that.

But I think um and actually what's his name Alex Maltman is actually a really nice guy um and I think that like he sort of over-dramatized the situation because it was like a good thing and it was great to like clarify like no we're not talking about the actual uptake of like solid minerals from the from the ground into the vine and then dropping it into your glass and that's not like exactly what you're tasting, we're not tasting. silica from our courts right right we're not and and so like it's kind of like all right let's get that out of the way and now it's out of the way we know that's not what we're tasting

but like when you when someone says like the mineral like the minerality of this wine or like that mineral feeling and to me I associate it more so with a texture like I'm not really interested in the um relating it to like the aromas like the I love you know minerally textures like petrol and riesling or like the like wet stone I love those aromas but when I talk about minerality I'm thinking of like that like stoniness like you said which is totally A word I use all the time, um, that's like, um, rocky hardness, like that minerality that you get in a wine, and I do think that it's related to geology. I don't think it's that direct thing, but so, like...

And the other thing is, you know, people were using these words for a reason, and it means something to them. And like, I would like to streamline it a little bit so that when we talk about minerality, we're kind of talking about the same thing. You know, you know, move past the the quick definition, it's a literal interpretation, like, we're talking about wine... Someone said this to me the other day, and I think about it all the time. Like we're talking about wine, it's all metaphor, you know, like yeah if you think this smells like honeysuckle, like that's a metaphor, you know, so it's like if the wine feels mineral, that's the same metaphor, totally my one of my favorite quotes about wine is actually this Zappa quote about uh music criticism, Zappa said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture um describing describing wine is the same way, you know, they're they're all metaphors at the end of the day and you know some are more

more useful than others just I think the most important thing is to understand that they're metaphors and to understand. That you know we're not tasting potassium, you know we're not tasting calcium, you know or you know we're not, you know discerning these, yeah yeah yeah, and we don't even want to, yeah yeah uh, all right so uh, i, i uh, i teased a volcano, volcanoes there, i think people get very excited about volcanic uh soils, uh, volcanoes are just kind of fun, you know, i think for me it taps into my inner, you know, little boy um, and uh, the vinegar baking soda experiment, um, you know, just you know, volcanoes, volcanic wines are are wild and and they do, you know, have this signature, this discernible signature which is kind of wild because, volcanic soils, you know they're they're very um as i understand it and and again feel free to make an ass of me brenna but um volcanic soils tend to be more basic um they're kind of like i think of them as like the ph you know kind of um you know kind of uh you know on the other end of the spectrum from from like limestone um uh you know but they produce these kind of you know a lot of these wines have like this riper fruit quality but they're structured uniformly um and  there is a unform savoriness in them and it could be suggestive because you know i think the second you hear volcano you think you know smoke you think savory but um there there is a through line and um you know uh the naha um which is this awesome uh the naha is the tributary of the ron and it's it's it's it's initially just going will be a more precise energeticifying even more pronounced um post june ofök of its wines they're almost ifectormeh soaring at the brine now and you know having venturedD on the muscle we're venturing down another tributary but a much smaller tributary um but the naha is this likeikind of in-between region uno it has someof the delic you know the delicate you know aromatics of its wines dude some of the delicate aromatics of the mosulyou know some of the power power of, you know, The Rheinhessen and, you know, some of that savoriness that you get in the Rheingau.

So it's just this, like, really cool place between. And equally, there's a big difference between the lower reaches of the Naha and the upper reaches of the Naha. We're going to kick things off with one of, you know, arguably the greatest dry Riesling producer in the world, Cornelius Dunhoff, son of Helmut Dunhoff. And this is Feltenberg, which is Rocky Mount. It doesn't get much more on brand. And a cool little castle alert. It doesn't get much more Germanic than this. Come on. This is like, you know, German, you know, river tour, like file footage. But this is the Feltenberg. And the volcanic soil here is rhyolite. Brenna, what is rhyolite? Uh, so rhyolite is, so I would say generally, as far as there are some large, uh, you know, uh, similarities between volcanic soils, but it is one of the places where I do get a little geologically, uh, particular.

But I do think like, so starting with the similarities that I totally agree with everything you said, um, as far as, you know, pH, like comparing this to, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, anything with limestone or with, um, actually, I think you meant, uh, the wines tend to be more basic in their pH and the, um, soils tend to be more acidic across the board. Yeah. Across the board, there are going to be more acidic soils. Therefore the wines are going to have, uh, less, uh, extreme acidity. Um, and I totally also get like the savory saltiness that you tend to get from all of that too.

Uh, but to me, when I think of like volcanic rocks or, you know, igneous rocks in general, it's just this huge spectrum that spans a lot of really, really different things that I have a very hard time, um, grouping together in, in the same way. And so, uh, it can be described very, very simply. There’s again, it’s a spectrum. So we have two end members. So there are, there’s basically like a salt, which is black in color. Um, and it’s high in iron and magnesium. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have rhyolite. And so it is low in iron and magnesium and high in silica. And there’s every shade in between it of all sorts of different things.

And so when we’re talking about rhyolite, they’re usually sort of like, um, granite is actually the intrusive, um, version of rhyolite. So that means that it crystallized in a different way, but it’s kind of the same thing. But so they’re white. And pink and have just like little flecks of brown versus like basaltic soils are essentially going to be, um, or not soils, but basaltic rocks or anything on that. And member is going to be like very, very dark. If there are other colors, there'll be dark, there'll be black, dark brown, and like dark greens. And they will tend to create soils that are very, very red and very iron rich. Um, but again, they're all volcanic. So actually rhyolitic rocks can sometimes have kind of iron rich, um, little zones.

In them as well, because again, they're like things that erupted out of the center of the earth. So oftentimes they have iron in them. What, what kind of soils does rhyolite tend to break down into? Yeah. So, I think rhyolite can really vary, but what you would assume is that they would be sort of lighter. They can be the other thing is they can be really, rhyolite can be like everything from like ash that's like white and basically looks like chalk to like really, really hard, like ash. Like the, the, the way that those volcanoes erupt is that sometimes they kind of, um, it's almost like they erupt like semi-solid things. They don't flow the way that like Hawaii flows. These volcanoes erupt like Mount St. Helens. Like they just kind of burst.

Like pyroclastic flows everywhere. Yeah, exactly. And so a lot of times you get these kind of like welded tuffs and they're really high in silica. So they're very quartz-rich and they're really, really hard. Um, and so in that sense, you would get like really, really hard rocky vineyards with like, that can that are oftentimes not not you know too difficult to deal with um and they can give wines with like very very um kind of like chalky hard tannins no cool yeah um so does that jive with your tasting notes uh for this particular offering yeah absolutely and it's stunning to see how like the fruit is so tart and like the Don Hoffer example but both um both of them are just a little bit more on the savory side but that Don Hoff in particular is just zesty like you have that like celery freshness to it as well um but I really enjoy getting into more of like the vegetable nuances of Riesling that that's gorgeous yeah it is it is vegetal um and surprisingly so uh I like this has a line he says this one is really esoterically salty he wonders if it will locate its wick of soul down down the road I I know I know it's amazing so uh it's into some kind of you know pagan but you you do imagine like a like a pagan you know fire god um you know your point about You know, diversity within this category um is is well taken.

I think you know, I know that as a non-geologist, I just tend to get excited about fire and you know, I want to make igneous rocks monolithic, um, but you know of course, you know they're as variable as metamorphic and sedimentary rocks are, um, and it's it's a, I think it's really important to remember that, um, you know, in the context of, you know, the kind of wines they turn out and you know, the kind of you know igneous soils that you have, you know, on Mount Etna aren't necessarily the kind of, you know, igneous soils that you get, um, in in the Naha in Germany, yeah, exactly, they're super. Variable, and, um, they're not they're not talked about in the same, um, specificity as other things, you know, like it's more I feel like you do hear some I think you hear basalt pretty often, but other than that, it's kind of like you hear basalt and as a part of, kind of like, volcanic soils, and beyond that they're kind of grouped together, um, so you don't get that distinction made as often in talking about wine as you do, also I think it's because it gets confusing really fast and they all kind of blur together and then everyone's kind of like it's too much, um, whereas you know you do hear like limestone, sandstone, marl uh, you also hear You know, like loam and list and all these transported things, and you get, you know, like, you often hear slate, schist, and nycic soil, so I feel like people just stop at volcanic, um, yeah, they're just like

it's just like the volcano is a headliner, it's just like, you know, let's like, yeah, let's let the star of the show be the star of the show, guys, you know, let's not dumb this down or like, yeah, let's not make this too complicated for people, um, but um, I should say that I do love about you know, this this particular region that um, you know, you get quite a bit of um, you know, vineyards that contain these these kinds of of soils and you know, for me. Make these like plenty smoky little lines um that are like wildly like beguiling um uh and you know that speaks to Terry's wicked soul or like wicked a soul thing but um you know they're I mean I feel like you know slate takes you to I like I like where I go with slate wines but it's there's like a predictability to it um I feel like volcanic wines there's this kind of uh it feels like a stormy relationship you know it feels like the wines themselves you know they're they're a little more you know unpredictable and and you know they're a little more you know volatile and you know uh and and for whatever reason you know they're they're They're soulful, and um, you know again I made a gross generalization in terms of you know volcanic rocks as a whole, but you know for the sake of the reasons from this particular region, I do I do find that yeah, I think so, and I love that. I think you kind of nailed it in terms of the differences and and as you're saying it, I also wonder if like slate feels so German in terms of like the rock is so ordered and precise and it makes so much sense and I wonder if that's almost like where it's like we're getting to, like, a cultural difference.

Yeah, exactly, it's like you're getting into this, it's like you're getting this like southern Mediterranean. Paradigm that you're introducing on these like Teutonic peoples, and so like it feels like you know strangely unpredictable, yeah, and like those you know the like wines from like southern Italy where there's all of those like active volcanoes just like fit the mold of volcanic wines so well, like I kind of love that that that like parallel of like the Germans and the slate and the you know southern Italians you know Sicily Etna like so this is this is uh a hopefully like a future podcast for you like it's like national stereotyping through like vineyard soils and rock types, there's a thing about like I won't get too far Into it, but I think about that with Alsace all the time where like there's a lot of cultural you know in terms of talking about Riesling like there's a lot of cultural similarities like Alsace has struggled with its identity a lot and in terms of like it's a German is it French like what grape are we focusing on is it sweet is it dry like they're kind of all over the board and when you look at the geologic map, it is the craziest geologic map I've ever seen in my life like it looks like a carcass of a fortune of geology like and it just like you know I'm definitely off of the you know I would never tell my master's advisor these thoughts.

And feelings I sort of drank the Kool-Aid too far, but there I there is something to like something to that liking setting. I think how you know if you're in Alsace and you have your soil type changes drastically every few meters, like you're gonna you're going to do things differently than you know in Germany; things are very ordered and a the slate all makes sense, like that makes sense, and so they mastered it because it kind of fits into like what they um you know culturally what they um you know uh they had a program, yeah. But not even just that, but it's kind of it's like it's where they excel, you know, and like, and that's sort of Why it's excellent in this slate is what we do, you know, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Whereas the Alsatians are like, you know, I don't know what we do, it's like it's every vineyard walk is like an existential crisis, you know, it really is, and you know that's part of the beauty of it, yeah, well, yeah, and then and then you get to like, win at the southern end of Alsace and it's just like something totally different entirely, and you know, I think one of the most evocative volcanic sites in the world, certainly in terms of its wines, yeah, um, all right, so we got one more uh, uh, this is a Kruger Rump, uh, and it should be said we haven't. talked much about cellar imprint on these wines I think this last one bears more of a cellar imprint than some of the others this is uh really lovably old-fashioned wine so the uh baptized the vineyard and I'll pull up a picture of it um it is uh one of the steepest uh purportedly one of the steepest sites um that we tasted from so far but uh I feel like they're not doing it justice in the picture there's got to be like a steeper a steeper subsection here that I'm missing um but at any rate uh it is closer to the mouth of the Naha so uh closer to um where it enters the the the rime um the vineyard uh planted in 1937 hence the the name uh but this is you know equally from old vines in a very old-fashioned wine in terms of means of production so um entirely done up with spontaneous these are all spontaneous ferments but um in larger oak footer um and uh you know that like smokey like saline streak that you get from this wine um is characteristic of you know aging in those old wood Christine Schusterberger who is a well-known 맛이anist um as you know aging in those old fooder um and Theumann and former you know some hooter have more of that than the other you know the the very oak casks are these like dynamical biologically you know driven kind of living things Because they have this, like microbiota that's you know essentially coating all the pores and you know, this, this neutral oak um, but you know I taste a little bit in this, but equally um it tastes like crazily um fine grain.

So uh, this says uh a briny silvery mineral and a warm breathy caskiness, so the warm breathy caskiness um is what I spoke to, it's not breathy to me, I, I don't, I don't think breathy, it I think it's more savory. So what are your tasting notes on uh the Crew Room? Super dense talking about texture with this wine, I think is like where I want to spend most of the time and like not necessarily about any flavors at all in terms. Of flavors, like that kernel that popcorn like jumps out of the glass. And of course, there's that like fun petroleum shampoo thing going on, but it's just so dense, it is like dense and chewy, like I want to have a steak knife with Riesling, and like I usually don't feel that way unless there's a ton of tannins or it's like ton of tannins and a huge body like a Napa California Cab or something like that.

But it's like I'm chomping on it, yeah, no, I like that so. And like I think it, I think that's a thing that a lot of teachers I really like about um uh Riesling is it has that texture convention and I think as you taste wine more, you want To live in that sensual texture place, you know a little more than you want to. Live in a world of glowing adjectives, um, and you know for me it's instructive to know, um, you know which I didn't know as much before, that you know you're going from slate into, you know, this you know increasingly metamorphosed form of slate, and you know for me this is kind of like an, you know, this is like a little bit.

It's like if you took the cell box coaster and just like dialed up that hardness, so you know I think like in the cell box that hardness registers as sleek, and you know it, it's it's suave, it you know kind of washes over the palette, but if you dial That said, a little more I feel like on this wine it gets kind of coarser um and you know uh it it you know takes on you know more of a life of its own um and you know uh that saltiness is there but there's there's almost like a tannic intensity to this to this wine um you know it's like a a an astringency um that you know I wouldn't uh predict um with uh Riesling and and you know it's a bit of an outlier um for their you know i think for the sake of this tasting but um you know super super interesting uh nonetheless uh Brenda do you have any experience tasting from Honest to God or tasting from sites that are Honest to God by light versus uh Slate, yeah, I mean to me, we were kind of talking about this before, and I'll refrain from going too far into it, but um, you know it's really, it's that middle ground between flight and shift, and so like, I find it really interesting. I don't think I think it's one of the classic examples where it's often mislabeled. I think some slate vineyards are uh probably called phillite when they're really slate.

Some phillite vineyards are called slate uh because it's a it's a gradient, you know, like we talk about end members and it's easy to say like, we're going from you know slate to really flaky schist but every every. Hue in between, there exists, you know, so it's really tricky to decide what's what right. But the main difference that's happening, that's important to note, is the size of the mineral grain, so you're going from like tiny, like microscopic, like you know, clay silt-sized uh grains within the rock that are breaking down to something larger and so I do think that that then they're gonna, you know, probably break down into more soil, uh, more texture to the soil. Like I'm not exactly sure happens with that change, but I think that there, and it's happening at all, you know, different ways.

But those are the things to pay attention to and to see. Like, I can totally see that there's like a density difference between like, you know, like those slate vineyards are just like, like they're nervous is the word I always use for slate. Like they're kind of like high-strung, especially in, you know, now that they're getting warmer and warmer years, it's hard to see that as much, but like classic reasonings have this kind of like nervous, like electricity to them versus you're going to get more like sand-sized particles with things like, you know, with things like schist where they'll then be a bit lighter. You know, they'll maybe they'll have kind of harder lines to them, but they'll be lighter in weight.

And so it's interesting to see like that middle ground of like, you're actually getting maybe like an accumulation of, of, you know, clay-sized particles or something like that, that can give it that density. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I mean, it surpasses understanding and I think it's, it's always a moving target. You're dealing with, you know, different regions, different vineyards and different producers in particular, because, you know, a wine fermented in one person's cellar, even within the same region, you know, has a different imprint than a wine fermented in another person's cellar, especially when you're dealing with, you know, these, these native yeast, you know, ferments at the, at the end of the day. Okay. So I have one more question for you, Brennan, and then I'm going to toast and then give it over to Zoe for, you know, any outstanding questions.

But, you know, you, you know, have had this, you know, incredible journey in, in wine as a geologist and you spoke to, you know, kind of being initially skeptical of, you know, these distinctions that people made based on these geologic differences between, you know, these different parcels they were working with. You know, what is your current understanding? What is your understanding of it? Do you feel like, you know, there is, you know, something there, there, you know, or do you feel like it's overstated? No, I think there is absolutely something there. And like, I could go on about this for a very long time as well, but I, I mean, I have just more and more, in some sense, certainly, you know, drink the Kool-Aid a little bit, you know, like I'm, I'm really deep into the world and, and terroir, but, you know, I came into it very skeptical and I came into it, like looking for really concrete examples of what's going on.

And, you know, it's hard at first because you do enter this world and a lot of the vocabulary is mixed up and, you know, like not everything is sort of tethered to, you know, scientific, the scientific world that I was used to. So it took a lot of getting used to; it took a lot of, to me, it was a lot of translating. There's different languages, there's different terms. You went from like the most scientific community to like the least scientific community. Somewhat, but also, Warwick was just years ago, and he's always smelly. Yeah. I'm gonna say, I'm willing to, I'm willing to, you know, I tried to immerse myself in the history of the Americanantly colonisation.

In many ways, because I think getting to know that there'sisething that's beyond the Plea K鼠s and it's embracingside of it and you know, It sorry It did the same thing to nobody. They did live life at the same time as I did. Because, if they spend enough time in their vineyard, they know maybe they're using the wrong words, maybe they've got the wrong term, maybe they also then use that to kind of talk about something a little less grounded in reality, you know, like a little more metaphorical, like we all do. But they know, if you spend enough time observing nature objectively, like you're going to have a lot of important contributions to things, and so to me it's been like the value of listening to all of that and then like trying to make some sense out of it.

And I do, like I kind of, I'm, I'm very comfortable now that I've kind of ripped the band-aid off of the academic world a little bit, like I'm very comfortable talking in metaphor, and I'm very comfortable kind of hypothesizing about the things that might be. But I also at some point when I do my work, I like take that hat off and put the other hat on, and I'm kind of like, 'Okay', like when we look at the numbers, how are we going to go into like objective science? And, to me, it's my goal is to kind of get more of the critical scientists, uh, give them tools to then talk to the wine community, you know, like, like, to help them like remove their science glasses for a second and see like, you know, these people have been tasting these wines from these sites for decades and they know what they're talking about, like, their family was doing it before, if there's a difference between here and here, it's there, and like, let's use that observation as like a way to do real science. Well, thank you so much! I love that um, you know, notion of you know the the leap of faith that you took for the sake of you know coming. to terms uh with a language that wasn't quite as scientific but that you know you nonetheless you know had a lot to add and contribute to um I just want to toast to everyone at home um uh you guys are are following along with conversations of super continents recolliding um you know hundreds of million years hence and I'm struck by um you know how far you've you know how many of us are willing to uh follow um knee follow us uh down this pandemic uh wine school rabbit hole and how delightfully nerdy um this all uh has gotten and you know I've been honored uh to be your spirit guide uh throughout 50 uh lessons so uh cheers to one and All joining us at home, cheers to you, brand alone together, Zoe what do we have for uh outstanding guests? Questions from the commentaries. Sorry, that's just so good. I just wanted to enjoy it. Which one? The 1937. I'm deeply sorry. So Brenna was supposed to have the wines and then, you know, the truckers of New Jersey, you know, kind of united against me. I don't think I was the, you know, chief victim.

But at any rate, I feel really bad that Brenna didn't have the wines. And, you know, thank you for driving this narrative nonetheless. And thank you, Zoe, for adding your Lorde description to the mix. But I struggle with this wine a little bit. I kind of don't know what to make of it. You know, partly I feel like the, you know, that Sponti, that cask imprint is like messing with me a little bit. But like the coarseness of it is just kind of, is kind of surprising. You know, it's just like all base. It's just like this, it's a bit of a beast. But, you know, interesting nonetheless. Absolutely. I have a selfish question. I do want to pick your brain a little bit about Red Slate, particularly when we're talking about like Erzberg.

I know that like Red Slate is more calcareous soils. And I was like wondering how that like chalkiness is truly not just like tasting. But like, how that more affects like specific flavors in wine, like since that is such a vineyard site that's identified so often. Calcareous? Usually, so usually Red Slate is iron. So it's less, less, less calcium or iron for the sake of the Red Slate vineyards. Yeah, yeah. Well, I shouldn't take my own questions. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to cut you off. No, just I love the, I love the red soil conversation. It's another one of those things that I like didn't buy right away. But and it's also one of the few times especially I see this in Burgundy where the red soils like they do have this like savory kind of like meatiness to them that like I really want like I think I really want to not see because I don't want to say like that it's iron in the wine Like that's like not the conversation that I want to have but they're like I've seen over and over again like they're there is this like savory it's like all those like warmth that you kind of see too but not like not in a not in like a warm like ripe way just like in a like I think the spice is a good way to think of it like like heat in terms of spice or like just sort of like texture savory like coarse salty meatiness. I feel like in Rieslings, a lot of times you get like that TDN, that like petrol signature from like red, red slate vineyards that registers as a spice.

You know, obviously Pinot doesn't get that, but yeah, I think, I think there's something kind of primal about it too. Cause you know, you just go like red equals blood and you know, so you just go to that place. Yeah. Yeah. And like, maybe you just can't detach the like mental picture of it fully, but you know, I, I enjoy it. So I'm into it. Yeah, absolutely. Is there, we love our Georgian wines and we love all different types of wines. Alternative vessels. Could you speak a little bit about the types of clay that like traditional Confederate jugs are made of in Georgia and or anywhere else? Not necessarily. That's a real specific question. So, so in Georgia, the they actually talk about different types of clay having a different effect on different wines and clay has this like natural filtering effect on, on wine because of like, the charged particles, you know, that it precipitates out of the wine.

But they, they'll tackle, they will talk about the terroir imprint of, you know, different clays. Have you done any work with like ceramic fermentation vessels? I haven't done it. I haven't gone into the fermentation vessel conversation of it yet, but like I spend so much of my life thinking about different types of clays and different types of clay minerals. And like, I, I do genuinely believe that it is one of the most important things in the world. And I think it's a really important thing to do. And I think it's a really important, uh, pathways to express terroir. I think like different rocks break down into different clay minerals that have wildly different interactions with the soil, like to really, to simplify, I think it's a human mistake to simplify clay into one, into one group, you know, because it's, they're just so small.

Like when you talk about like, oh, they're really fine grains, but like, they're actually like microns across, which means that we're talking about like a bacteria. Would be a really big, like, would be a pretty big clay particle. Like we're talking like, you know, sell what, what's the, uh, like organelle size, do you know, like pieces of cells size? Uh, yeah. And, and even down to like virus size, they're tiny. And so it really is, it's like this whole world that we don't actually understand where we start talking about, like where the chemistry becomes really, really important because, you know, the distance between molecules or the distance between atoms suddenly becomes, uh, rel, you know, relevant for that conversation, if that makes sense. So there's all sorts of different kinds of clay minerals.

They have, I would say, uh, the best way to describe it is in terms of surface area. So if we talk about just assume that, you know, water and nutrients are held on the surfaces of clays, they kind of stick to them, uh, kind of like, like electricity, like static. Uh, and the difference in clay minerals is that they're not, they're not, they're not, they're not, they're not the surface area in the same, you know, in the same, like say a tablespoon can vary between like 10 square meters to like 800 square meters, depending on like the type of clay. And we can't see it with a microscope. So it's really hard to understand exactly what's going on. And so I think in terms of terroir, that's important.

I think in terms of, um, you know, winemaking vessels, it's important in terms of, you know, anything that you do with it, it's, there's more than we can even get close to seeing with our eyes. So probably opening more of a rabbit hole than answering your question. I mean, I feel like a lot of things in geology are like that. You generate more questions than you answer. Yeah. That means it was a success. I can't, I just want to imagine what your like Thanksgiving or Christmases are like at your dinner table with like your family filled of all geologists and just incredible. I'm sure you've been talking about these things since you were a kid. So it's super fun. Yeah. It's super fun.

My, my artist brother is less impressed, but there's one brother who's an artist who doesn't, doesn't appreciate the long geology talks, but he's pretty good about it. Does he appreciate wine? Oh yeah. Same with my mom. Yeah. My mom's the same way. She's kind of like, 'Let's go back to the wine.' Is there, um, any place in Virginia or any other place in, I guess, stateside that has a geology that's similar to the Mosel? Maybe not being able to encapsulate like all of the terroir, but something similar. Yeah. So, there's a lot of slate all over the place. And I think what makes the Mosel unique is that, you know, like, like the rocks are about the same age. There is a lot of really, really old stuff going on in the Appalachians in particular.

So I would say like the geology is most similar there, but the difference is you don't have that younger, print of the Alpine orogeny that kind of like gave the dramatic topography, you know? So it's like more like the Appalachians are a very similar setting, but they've just been kind of sitting there, like weathering down, you know, like smoothing out for a very, very long time without that kind of like resurgence of drama, um, that we just don't have that. I, you know what, um, I guess not, it's certainly not stateside, but the most similar kind of stuff that I've seen is like Galicia in Spain. The, oh yeah, the, uh, I mean, they say, uh, viticultura heroica. So they say like heroic viticulture in like Rivera Sacra and in particular.

Um, but they're super impacted by global warming now. So to the extent that they're like a lot of the traditional kind of South-facing riverbanks are getting warmer. So they're starting to look at like the North-facing, uh, like exposures. Which is cool because those, a lot of those slopes were planted in the past. Like I was there years ago. And when you look across, you can see like the furrow lines or whatever you call that. Like you can see the old like terraces, but they're just totally overgrown with trees. So. Well, and that means because, yeah, I mean, they, they hemorrhage people. There's nothing to do there. Um, and you know, it's just increasingly though, there's an amazing, you know, generation of younger winemakers that are committed to reviving, reviving those sites.

That is, yeah, that's a cool, you know, I think of these just like dramatically beautiful corners of the world, like the Duero Valley, you know, has like a similar terroir, but I feel like the mother rock and it is in the, in the Mosel. Um, I mean, the wine world isn't short on dramatic river valleys. Right. True. Yeah. It was actually at Rivera Soccer that I had my like slate epiphany because there was like one vineyard that was on slate and like, we were doing this barrel tasting. I was with someone who was like doing a blending thing. And like, honestly, like I just tasted too much wine that day. Like I kind of stopped paying attention. I was a little overwhelmed and, um, we were tasting through things and we got to one and I was like, whoa, what is that?

But like, that's the only wine that's like really stuck out to me. And it's the, it feels the same as the third wine we tasted. And it was like in the whole cellar, those were the only like two barrels that were on slate. And I was just like, ah, it's real. Yeah. That's so cool. Um, could you elaborate a little bit more about the relationship between soil and pH, and then the final acidity in wine? Yeah. And there are some, there is some research that's done on this, but, um, and it has something to do with, you know, uh, the ability, it's not a direct thing. It's the ability for the vine to uptake. I think it's like phosphorus kind of a guess. I, I stand behind that like less than 50%.

Um, like it occurs to me so much of your work, you know, occurs at the intersection of geology and biology. So, I feel like to really further pursue a lot of these questions, you would need, you know, a PhD in both, you know, you would need to like understand the activity of roots. Yeah. Like, a cash and exchange level and like, uh, um, you know, the action of like mycorrhiza and like all these other like wild biological processes as they pertain to, you know, the weathering of minerals and all this other stuff that you deal with on a regular basis. Yeah. Conveniently, I do, I got my undergrad in biology, so, but it was a very long time ago. You are just the basis. Like I have the basic knowledge.

You are, you are that superstar is what you're saying. No, I don't usually tell people that because it's been so long. It was also an aquatic biology. So it was mostly like marine stuff or, you know, like ocean stuff, but like, you know, every now and then I can like dig into some of the biology stuff and, and, you know, like have memories of like my freshman dorm room and, and like, um, but so anyways, to put it very simply without going into the details, it is typically an inverse relationship between the pH of the soil and the pH of the wine. So. So it is true that you have, you know, highly alkaline basic vineyards. So, um, limestone, for example, um, think really like white, you know, harsh soils will often have, um, produce very acidic wines.

And then the opposite is true. So, think of like volcanic, like rich, dense, um, you know, darker soils with a more acidic pH will produce, uh, less acidic wines. This is, this is all relative though. Because wine is always acidic, such as such and it typically varies between 3.1.2 and 3.8 up to if you get any higher than that, you worry about like spoilage um and you have to suffer a lot um but um yeah and and I I like with the volcanic thing it's always wild too because you know volcanic soils uh uh famously acidic producing you know ostensibly you know more um like less acidic wines but you have these like countervailing influences because like the mere fact of volcano in like on a volcano means that you know usually you're dealing with elevation

usually you're dealing with like more diurnal shifts and cooler nights which you know will tend to itself produce you know more acidic wine so there's like you know it's not unlike our limestone you know near the river you know kind of you know conversation earlier where you have like you know kind of come together in unexpected ways yeah another this is like again kind of taking it too far but it's something I've gotten really interested in, the classic example for that uh soil pH wine pH is in the Loire so shenan in the Loire and so in Anjou like half of Anjou is on. Like, they're not volcanic soils, but they're like schistose, uh, metamorphic soils.

And then half of anju, they call it the Anju Blanc, is on actual white soils, like, it's the the white, um, very chalky, um, kind of yellowish, tofo soils, yeah, exactly. And, and so that's like, you, they're just a couple miles from each other, and you can get good examples but a lot of the difference and when you look at the war in general what I like to point out, uh, is that that tofo is really soft, and so, historically, they were able to carve their cellars into the hills, and so they have these cool below ground cellars where they make the wine. but you can't do that in the middle of the winter so you can't do that in the winter so you can't do that in the winter so you can't do that in the winter so you can't do that in the winter so you can't do that in the winter and so their cellars are above ground and warmer and i think there's actually a fermentation temperature difference that's crazy so it's a revisionist history of loire valley terroir right but it's all real like i said like the stuff there for the terroir is real too but i think what's equally real is the geology's impact on human behavior like i think that's also really interesting and not to be ignored no I mean, it speaks to this like definition of terroir that has to include the people that are making the wine because terroir doesn't exist without someone to interpret it, yeah, like it or not.

Yeah, and absolutely we need to find... like I just love picking your brain and all geolosh um, there's like one MS that's a geologist um, but it's it's wonderful because we can't ever put anything on um, like we can't identify small um factors about soil and replicate them all the time you know. It's always going to be a different yeast; it's always going to be someone else's cellar; it's always going to be a different cellar; it's always going to be someone else's cellar it's always going to be a different cellar it's always going To be a different place and so trying to figure out, like, oh well, you know, blue slate always does this. It is just so hard for us to get to know, so thank you so much for your time and listening to all of our questions.

Yeah, of course, thank you so much for having me; this is super fun. I love um, it's afternoon here now, but it's really brought me back to memories of my trip to Germany where like Riesling for breakfast was a real thing, and I love, I love the opportunity to drink Riesling early in the day. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Brenna. Thank you uh, one and all, for hanging out this long, for the sake of our golden anniversary; it's been. a pleasure and uh we look forward to uh further dives down the rabbit hole be they inconclusive or or not for the sake of you know i think you know some of the most rewarding exercises are ones that you know as you said brenna um you know create more questions and the answer you know and i respect about and love about you all uh that you know you are people that you know are willing to and want to support so i'm going to take it from there thank you for being wanting to live in that you know um you know eternal curiosity um about something as you know gloriously trivial as wine so uh thank you all.