Why Limestone....????

During his MonteBello seminar Fri, Paul commented on the prevalence of limestone in the soils at MB.
It is well know that JoshJensen searched far & wide until he found a large outcroping of limestone on MtHarlan, which he apparently thought more important than climatic issues. Soil trumps climate in terroir??
The TablasCreek folks were primarily searching for limestone soils when they selected their parcel up in WestSidePaso.
The very chalky/limestone soils were the primary factor in JohnAlban's selection of his vnyd.
There are wine people who claim they can taste the limestone/chalk from the soils in wines grown on those sites. Yet scientists scoff at the idea that there is a direct transfer/transport for those minerals directly into the juice of the grapes. Paul acknowledged that those studies are probably correct.
I've had some spectacular wines from granitic soils, clay soils, sandy soils, alluvial soils, slate soils over the yrs.
So...somebody that actually has some knowledge (sorry...that eliminates some 99% of those of us on these wine boards)...what is it that makes limestone soils so sacrosanct for growing grapes...that makes limestone soils so far superior over all other types of soils?? Or is it, in reality?
Realizing, of course, that if you're a vnyd owner, that the type of soil that composes your vnyd is obviously the World's most superior type of soil.
Tom (stirthefrigginpot.gif)

Tom,
One thing that occurs to me is that limestone is a very porous rock and so will promote drainage. It's clearly not the only mineral with those properties, but if the decision is between limestone and clay, I can see the benefits of limestone.

Mark Lipton
(semi-professional pot calmer)

Tom,
One thing that occurs to me is that limestone is a very porous rock and so will promote drainage. It's clearly not the only mineral with those properties, but if the decision is between limestone and clay, I can see the benefits of limestone.
Mark Lipton
(semi-professional pot calmer)

Yup....that's one of the things that occurred to me, Mark. That rainwater is probably rapidly drained away on limestone soils. Roots have to go deeper. Vines have to struggle.
But there are plenty of gravelly/alluvial soils that go deep. Yet one never hears from the "experts" of being able to taste alluvial rocks in those wines??
But thanks for trying to calm the pot a bit, Mark.
Tom

Yup....that's one of the things that occurred to me, Mark. That rainwater is probably rapidly drained away on limestone soils. Roots have to go deeper. Vines have to struggle.
But there are plenty of gravelly/alluvial soils that go deep. Yet one never hears from the "experts" of being able to taste alluvial rocks in those wines??
But thanks for trying to calm the pot a bit, Mark.

The problem with alluvial soils is that they so often are found in valleys where water will tend to accumulate. On the plateaus of the Medoc or in Marlborough they do plant on alluvial soils with seemingly good results (I also recall Rod Berglund saying that one of his vineyards [Great Oak?] was alluvial soil located on a hilltop).

Mark Lipton

p.s. I also recall the late Joe Dressner making a big point of talking about vineyards in the Beaujolais planted on schiste, another mineral that I imagine has good drainage properties.

Soil trumps climate in terroir??

Well, there you go again, making quantum leaps to questionable conclusions armed with little information.

I would not say that soil trumps climate in terroir. I would say that soil is, and must be, always, one of the key factors in terroir, and in some instances, given small an focused choices, soil could be slightly more important than climate....i.e., the right climatic conditions in general with two different soil areas to choose from.

As to limestone, you'd certainly have to add Cognac (and Chablis, and Burgundy, and Champagne) to that limestone list. But even in those areas, soil is changeable. Take Cognac specifically: the six denominated areas within Cognac have significantly different soil patterns, and the grapes are grown in all of them. True, the Grande and Petite Champagne are the richest in limestone, but the Borderies right next door (currently becoming a darling of the Cognacais) is pretty heavily clay soil. Some of the soils are heavy with sand and deconstructed colluvial. Point being, the Cognac producers look for variety of soil/microclimate and then blend these things together.

(On, and interesting sidelight on the Cognac and the six areas----the division and demarcation lines of the six areas were devised early on, by performance. It was only after the lines were drawn by the locals that an exhaustive scientific survey of the soil types was made. And it turned out the lines drawn by the farmers almost precisely conformed to the breakdown by the the soil surveys.)

As to "scientists maintain"-----yup, and they will maintain that up until they figure out how it might happen that the vines could pick up those elements, which is a possibility. Maybe there is a transference of minerality or "gout de terroir" that we simply don't know about yet.

FWIW - Limestone is Calcium Carbonate (chalk), made from ancient deposits of marine shell creatures. It is alkaline and limestone soils will be less less acidic (have a higher pH).
From: [url=http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/eb2001/eb2001.pdf]Growing Wine Grapes
in Maritime Western Washington[/url]

Hybrid and V. vinifera vines are apparently adapted to higher pH soils. A pH of approximately 6.0 to 6.5 for these cultivars is recommended (Throop, quoting Stiles). Low soil pH for wine grapes can
adversely affect both vine health and juice quality.

Bob Haas told me that when he and the Perrins were looking for a site for what became the Tablas Creek project, they were looking for clay-limestone soils, like those in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and for olive trees, as indicators that what they hoped to do would be possible. Lots of European vineyard areas, in addition to those already mentioned feature limestone, including Piemonte, Chianti (parts of it, anyway) Bandol, parts of Muscadet, and so on.
In my experience working with grapes grown in limestone and elsewhere, some of those grapes seem to make wine with a kind of energetic presence that I haven't found in wines made from grapes NOT grown in limestone. It's perhaps a subtle thing, and maybe a little woo-woo for some.
Gamay and limestone don't get along very well, mostly, which is why Phillip the Bold kicked it out of Burgundy. It DOES love granite.

JasonHaas/TablasCreek has this to say on limestone:

http://tablascreek.typepad.com/tablas/2010/05/why-limestone-matters-for-viticulture.html

took the words right out of my mouth, he did...

Add Jerez de la Frontera to the list of famous wine regions with limestone soils.

-Paul W.

Add Jerez de la Frontera to the list of famous wine regions with limestone soils.

-Paul W.

yes, indeed!