Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate: A Geologist Wanders Through the World of Wine

Terroir is everything in modern wine appreciation. Geologist and professor, Alex Maltman looks at the rocks that make up key wine regions and what difference they make.

"Rocks and soils haunt our thinking about wine. We see links, sniff origins, taste connections, digest differences. Is this cause and effect -- or fantasy? Alex Maltman is ghostbuster-in-chief. This wide-ranging and clearly reasoned book shines a torch through the cobwebs." — Andrew Jefford

Burgundy thrives on the limestone remnants of a warm, shallow sea while Sancerre and Pouilly wrap their roots around flint. The finest Pomerols bloom in a ‘button’ of blue clay, and Beaujolais famously begins life in granite. Cabernet Sauvignon loves just about any sandstone and Champagne gets on gloriously with chalk. But is the secret to great port really schist? Alex Maltman, Emeritus Professor of earth sciences at Aberystwyth University, finds himself between a rock and a vineyard place as he explains how a wine’s flavors relate to the geology at foot, and discovers that there is more to ‘minerality’ than mud, rocks and the earth’s stark materials...

Terroir is as intrinsic to the quality of a wine as the grapes it comes from or the intentions of the wine maker. This beautifully produced and illustrated book looks at the many factors that influence, or don't, how a wine tastes. Professor Maltman poses lots of questions and answers, while busting some myths along the way.

Alex Maltman is emeritus professor of Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University in Wales. He has researched and lectured on vineyard geology on four continents and is a seasoned speaker at international conferences. He has contributed to a number of wine books, including The World Atlas of Wine and The Oxford Companion to Wine, for which he is responsible for the geological entries. Alex is the author of the acclaimed book Vineyards, Rocks and Soils: A Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology (Oxford University Press, 2018).