Alex Maltman explains how five of the world’s most celebrated vineyard soils earned their exalted reputations.
When young William Gimblett sailed out of London in 1878, headed for a new life in New Zealand, he must have had little idea of what lay ahead of him. He is scarcely likely to have imagined that 30 years later he would be raising sheep, acclaimed for his precocious “Gimblett lambs.” That came about because, after settling in the North Island’s Hawke’s Bay, he purchased some land just inland from Napier, strikingly stony but nicely sheltered, and its relative warmth meant his lambs reached maturity considerably earlier than those of his neighbors. And he is extremely unlikely to have imagined that, 100 years later, the land would be bearing grapevines, with those self-same, warm, gravelly soils given his name and known to wine enthusiasts the world over.
All the world’s grapevines are, of course, growing in soils of one kind or another. They all provide stable anchoring along with water and nutrients; but in just a few places, they have acquired a designation of their own, names that are treasured by wine lovers. So, we have galestro and llicorella, Willakenzie and gore, roten schiefer and galets roulées—names that probably mean little to most people but that, for wine enthusiasts, can prompt images of special places and wines of distinction. In this article, I will explore the stories and the science behind five such named soils, examples that have become legendary in
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
