Brenna Quigley in Burgundy, where her work has included providing geological mapping.
As the world of wine seeks to connect to new generations and demographics, the story of California-based geologist Brenna Quigley’s entry into wine may serve as a case study. ‘I have memories of going wine tasting around Santa Barbara with a bunch of geology graduate students, as I was finishing my master’s degree,’ Quigley shares. ‘We’d all be sitting around tasting wine and, in our own sort of bubble, we’d say, “There has to be something to the geology.” We’d never heard the term terroir before. We honestly had no idea anyone else cared about it.’
Since then, Quigley has come to be known for both exploring and explaining the concept of terroir, working with Californian wineries such as Quintessa in Napa Valley and Carlo Mondavi’s Raen label in Sonoma, but also further afield – including in Burgundy, where she has visited to provide geological mapping.
‘As one of the world’s foremost wine geologists’, says Carlo Mondavi, ‘Brenna has helped us tell the story of our wines in a new, very fundamental way; not just in the vineyard but by connecting the minerality in wine’s flavour profile to the story and geological history of our site – something she’s uniquely able to help us do.’
From the ground up
A series of serendipitous events saw Quigley, who comes from a family of geologists, working in the tasting room at Kunin Wines in Santa Barbara upon graduation. It was on
