My scientific credentials are embarrassing. I struggled to get a C grade in Physics with Chemistry O Level in my teens. By dint of rote learning and conversations with winemakers, not to mention a thrilling, all-day visit to a bottling plant, I managed to bluff my way through paper two of the Master of Wine exam about the production of wine. I have a half-arsed understanding of things like pH, sulphites and oxidation, some of the building blocks of wine analysis. Where geology is concerned, I know the difference between sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks. But that’s about it.
So, when Viña Ventisquero suggested I’d be the ideal person to chair a tasting about Chilean terroir in London, I was initially hesitant. But why not, I thought? It will give me the chance to read some books and scientific papers. More importantly, it will challenge me to structure my own ideas about terroir and put them to the test in a blind tasting.
It was my idea to invite Alex Maltman, emeritus professor of Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University and author of Vineyards, Rocks, and Soils: The Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology, to join the panel. I’ve done a podcast with Alex, and I know him to be experienced, intelligent, persuasive and very sure of his, er, ground. His distilled position is that “you can’t taste vineyard geology in wine”. He has no time for words like “slatey”, “flinty”, “earthy” and “chalky”, let alone “minerality”.
I use terms like this
