In checking Twitter this morning, I came across an article on soils that had been forwarded by @winewomansong. The article, written by Sunny Brown, and posted on winegeeks.com, was a fascinating take on her choice of the top 10 wine soils in the world. The article was fascinating for me on two levels: (i) its internals and (ii) how the regions identified as having the best soils matched up to the regions identified by George Taber in his book In Search of Bacchus.
The article begins with a primer on soil types and then launches into a discussion of of the top 10 wine soils ordered from lowest to highest. The rankings probably will not ignite the third world war but there are a few things I wished the author had delved into in greater detail (understanding that there may have been editorial constraints). First, the stated criteria for the rankings were unique qualities, historical importance, and market appeal (of the region's wines). I would have liked some more detail on what each of the criterion meant, within the current context, as well as the relative weighting of each characteristic. Further, I would have liked some discussion of how each region fared against each of these criterion.
George Taber, whose In Search of Bacchus was reviewed in a previous post, set out on a journey to explore "... twelve of the world's most interesting wine regions." In his work, no effort is made to rank the regions that he visited and, as I point out in my review, no selection criteria are provided.
If we compare the lists emanating form the two works, the only regions of commonality are Napa Valley (broadly speaking as the soils article narrows its choice down to Rutherford), Mendoza, Tuscany, Bordeaux, and Mosel. This is probably not surprising given the starting points of the two efforts. Wingeek.com set out to show the best regions for growing grapes while Taber's focus was the best wine regions to visit. All fun stuff.
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