September 17, 2025 • 50 mins
Volcanic soils account for only around one percent of the earth’s surface, but they produce some of the world’s most alluring wines explains John Szabo MS in his award -winning book, “Volcanic Wines- Salt, Grit and Power.” Szabo became Canada’s first Master Sommelier in 2004. He is a partner and principal critic for WineAlign.com, Canada’s largest wine publication, and a buyer for the WineAlign Exchange wine club. He co-hosts the podcast, Wine Thieves, with Sara d’Amato. Follow @johnszaboms
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple.
We love to travel the world to bring you the
dynamic people we meet in wine, food, spirits and hospitality.
We love sharing their stories with you and the places
we've is it with you, David? Where are we today? Virtually?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Virtually that's in the background.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, high up and mena and.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Very high up on above the tree line, which is
where we were in twenty twenty two with our guest today.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yes, yeah, so that's setting this up. So we were
there for ETNA days learning about at the wines that
is a still active, very active volcano, and we've had
the great honor of going there, I think two or
three times to try the amazing wines. And we're going
to talk about volcanic wines today because volcanic soils account
for only about one percent of the world's earth surface. However,
(01:41):
they really account for an amazing amount of fantastic wines
with very unique characteristics. In fact, we were just in Hawaii,
on the island of Maui, which has a volcano, Haleakala
and Aba, Hawaii's first and I'm probably going to peach
to the name, and I think only a lakua or
(02:01):
ula Palakua, whichever, and it's an ava in Hawaii, and
people go they make wine in Hawaii.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
They do.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Actually the winery there's a one winery there and it
was originally founded as Tadeshi Winery in nineteen seventy three,
I think it was, so they've been around a long time.
And I remember going to tastings back in the day
when I'd go to tasting support my own wine and
sometimes Todayshi would be there pouring their wines, and I
was fascinated by the fact that they could even make
wine on Hawaii because I always thought of as a
(02:28):
very tropical aisle with palm trees and a human climate,
et cetera. But they've been making wine there for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
No Holey Aklis, high elevation and cool, and it has
these volcanic souls. So we're going to talk about this
topic and some places that you would never think are
volcanic in geography and make amazing wines with our guest
John Zabo, who is the founder and chief wine critic
at Wine a Line, Canada's largest wine magazine, like The Biggie.
(02:58):
He has been a master since two thousand and four
and was Canada's first master Somileier. We have traveled with
John a couple of times, now mainly in Italy, will
probably only in Italy and definitely an Etna, and most
recently in Campagna, another amazing volcanic wine region. John is
prolific on the topic and author of a book called
(03:21):
Volcanic Wines, Salt, Grit and Power. It's won a lot
of awards. He's working on an update. It's so fantastic.
So I will let him show the book because it'll
show better on his screen. But we want to Welcome
to the Connected Table. John Zappo, Master Somier.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Hello, friends, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Good to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Nice to see you without your travel hat and you're
you're probably one of the most dapper travelers that we know.
So that's your fild war Michael Goodell, you do really
represent Canada well, brilliant.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Although, Michael, where's more plaid?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I think, yeah, yeah, more plaid. So we learned before
we were coming on air that your name is Hungarian,
so your roots are Hungarian. There's a Hungarian chapter in
the book. Give us a sense of your family in
your background.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Well, I grew up in was born in and grew
up in Toronto. My father was born in Budapest. He left,
like so many thousands of Hungarians in nineteen fifty six
just after the failed revolution against the Russians or the
Soviets back then, ended up in Canada and where he
met my mother. And that's why I was born in
Toronto and grew up in that sort of mixed family.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
David, have you been to Toronto many, many, many times?
My parents were both from Buffalo, so we used to
go over to Niagara Falls all the time and go
to a place called Shirston Quarry to go swimming, and
I think they had an amusement park there too, which was
in Ontario as well, along Lake Erie. But we went
to Toronto a lot, and I have friends that live
there as well.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Not John Well, I'm at once for work, called and
I visited. My client was mauven Pick. Do you remember
moven Pick?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Of course, yeah, I've been there for that restaurant too.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Really awesome, but I didn't know. That's my only contact
with Toronto and of dying to go back. Is there
a large Hungarian community there there and in Canada?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Yeah, there was still a massive Hungarian community back when
I was at University of Toronto. You know, all Hungarians
play water polo. I played water polo and we had
the all Hungarian U of T water polo team. We'd
confuse our opponents by speaking Hungarian in the water, realiant tactic.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Do you still speak Hungarian?
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I do, yeah. I mean it's a tough language if
you've ever looked into it. It's it's kind of its
own language group. But I can, you know, I can,
I can get along. Just got back from Budapest. In fact,
I was there for the Hungarian Wine Summit where I
did a seminar masterclass on volcanic wine of all topics.
Can you imagine?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Imagine that? So tell us how you obviously you're from Toronto,
you were born and raised there, what got you interested
in wine originally? And tell us about the path to
become a becoming canada'sirst Mastosemily.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Oh, all right, well, I'll give you the brief version.
My first interest in love was with food more than wine.
I mean, my father always had wine around the house,
but nothing really special at all. It usually came in
a box and I have a glass or two here
and there. I would didn't really have much interest in it.
But eating, on the other hand, I love flavors, I
love textures, I love you know. I learned to cook
(06:32):
because of that. So my care actually started off in restaurants,
but not like many some of LA's on the front
of the house side. I was in the back of
the house. I worked in kitchens in Toronto and then
in Niagara Wine Country, and then ended up in France,
all the while, you know, being exposed to fine wine
along the way, and becoming a little bit more and
more curious about it as I went along. So when
(06:54):
I was in France, in Paris. I ended up doing
this wine course, sort of in depth French wine program,
five days a week all day. I would do that,
and then I would go work in restaurants at night
and sort of fell, like so many of us, for
the world of wine and the possibilities it offered. So
I did a few other things that ended up importing wine,
(07:15):
then carried on studying. I did my WCT diploma just
so I could brush up, did the Canadian so ofa
Guild diploma, and a friend of mine suggested, well, why
don't you take a run at this Masterla exam? I said,
what's that? Who are they tell me more? This was
back in the early two thousands. Nobody in Canada I'd
ever heard of the quarter master some lias. Anyhow, I
(07:38):
looked into it and ended up doing my advance and
then a year and a half later past the MS
in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's pretty good because it's one of those tests that
you can also take a lot like the BAR. So,
did you have to write a thesis? And if so,
what was it?
Speaker 4 (07:53):
There's no thesis part of the MS exam the MW
Actually I started doing the MW and the MS at
the same time. Okay, happening to pass the MS first,
So I thought, okay, it's time to get serious and
maybe do some work, not just studying my life away,
although I would have been happy doing that. So no,
no thesis required. But you know, I eventually became a
(08:14):
writer being out of restaurants all together. And uh, I
mean I love I love sharing the stories. I think,
like any any writer, you know, painting pictures with words
and sharing background stories, teaching in a sort of passive
and uh and friendly ways. It's a great joy for me.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Well, as we all know, writing about wine can be
challenging these days. Uh, you are in a really great
position because Wine Aligne is a very large, well read
Outlet tell us about it. Because I mean, obviously we
have here in the United States, wine spectator, wine enthusiasts,
whine advocate. I was just reading a Bud Chip and
I guess defintally figure out who the hell he was,
(08:54):
and now we're going to put him on the show.
And there's a lot of interesting people, but we're less
familiar here about what's going on in Canada. And it's
an amazing large wine market. First of all, with some
wonderful wine writers we've met several on our trips. Tell
us about Wine Line in Canada.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I mean, I guess the first thing to share is
that Canada is that actually not one country. It's ten
countries and a couple of territories. Because every province operates
its own alcohol distribution system. It's sort of like you're
Pennsylvania but in every state. Imagine that. So one line
is based in Ontario. We've got about ten million people,
so even Ontario on its own, it's quite a big
(09:35):
Market's the biggest province in the country. And we focus well.
Winer Line started in two thousand and eight, late two
thousand and eight, so we've been around for a while,
and at that point print already didn't make sense. So
we were an online publication from the start, and the
main idea was to become a I guess, a glorified
shopping tool if we break it down to as essence,
(09:58):
connecting readers with the wine that they could find the
best wines that we tasted at the local monopoly we
call it the LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
And then we expanded outside of Ontario into Quebec and
BC mainly, and now we've got readers all over the world,
of course, because the wines are not only available in Canada,
(10:18):
they're available in many other markets around the world. So
I mean, the concept is that we're multiple critics, so
it's not just me. We're sort of five principal critics
at Wine Line. We all taste independently, review independently, so
that you, as a reader, you can look up a
wine you'll see three or four, maybe five different reviews
on it. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't agree. But
(10:39):
the idea is that you align with the critic whose
tastes best match yours. That's the concept behind wine align.
So you know, you taste the wine and I rated
it very highly and my colleagues are rated it a
little less highly, and you think, wow, this is a
terrible wine. What was John thinking. I'm going to align
with Sarah because her tastes are much more in line
with mine. So this, for me is the great freedom.
(11:02):
Being a critic can sometimes be a challenge when you
try to be everything to everyone. I think it's futile
to even attempt to do that. So I can be myself.
I can love the wines that I want to love
and then either relign or we don't align.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And for anyone interested in looking at the site, it's
wine Align a l I g N dot com and
you can see the critics there. You co host also
Wine Thieves, a podcasts with one of the critics, Sarah
de Matto. I think your concept of aligning with a
critic and taste is interesting because, as you know, you know,
back in the day, everybody was like following Robert Parker
(11:36):
and there was the Parker Palette, and then there was
a lot of criticism about wineries trying to tailor the
wines with the Parker Palette to get better scores. How
would you describe your palette, your tasting palette approach.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Well, I think it's fair to say that, you know,
we all evolve, so the wines that I love twenty
years or so ago are not necessarily the ones that
I gravitate towards today. For example, personally, I drink probably
eighty white wine, which is often surprising for many people, like,
what isn't red wine more serious? Aren't serious wine people
into red wine more than white? And my answer as well, no,
(12:11):
I mean white wines given me as much joy and
pleasure as anything. I like the freshness. I like a
city d vibrancy. I like non fruity wines. That's my
favorite request walking to a restaurant, I'll call them over
and said, bring me your least fruity wine. I want
zero fruit, And that usually causes a little really serious
(12:31):
that's what you wanted, no fruit and lots of acid,
which you know, volcanic wines happened to be a lot
of the time. Maybe my palate has gravitated towards the
volcano salty, gritty wines, fruitless and stony.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It could be your personality, but you know your personal
you know that.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I think I think it depends on what on what
your diet is too, as to whether you drink more
red or white wine as well.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, because our theory is in the United States, I'm
sure in Canada a lot of people are having more
Mexican food and Asian food and foods that naturally gravitate
toward having and a lot of spicy foods. And some
of the whites are just terrifically that we eat a
lot of sushi here. Although we did an article on
red wine and sushi. People tend to gravitate toward white wines. Also,
(13:23):
I have a theory that climate change is turning us
to white wines. We live in New Orleans. It's hot,
like we have friends like, please don't serve us red wine.
We can't take it. You know, bubbles or white.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
A couple of ice cubes go a long way when
you get served that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's true food. Yeah, I mean, I think the climate
change is impacting that as well. But so obviously you
like to write about volcanic wines. Are there other in
terms of what you like to cover and what got
you into volcanic wines? What were you enjoying writing about?
Because everybody has things they like to write about. I mean,
David writes about for his magazines towards the trade. I
(14:00):
tend to like to write about people who are planning
to go somewhere and want to learn what to expect
and where to go and how to eat. What do
you when you picture your avatar, your avatar reader, who
are they? What are they liking to read about that
you write?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I think my wedding writing is directed towards obviously, people
who are quite into wine, who love wine. They don't
necessarily need to be so called experts. But sometimes I
get a little technical. But you know that's my background.
I studied science, I study language. I like to dig
deep into the subject. And for the record, I should
(14:38):
say that I do drink other than volcanic wines. You know,
that's the problem. You write a book about a subject,
and you're forever intimately linked to that. But I've got
time for all sorts of soil types, you know. Give
me a good limestone, give me a good granite, a shift.
I enjoy wines for many of those soils. I just
happen to fall into this volcanic wine world kind of
(14:59):
kind of accident. I'll tell you how it happened. About
fifteen or so years or so ago, an editor of
mine asked me to do some in one of these
end of the year kind of light articles, write a
paragraph about your favorite wine. So there I was at
my desk, trying to be a little more clever than
the eye. Rage. What am I going to write about Champagne, burgundebro,
you know, all the things that folks already knew. So
(15:21):
I started to think about some areas that had recently
visited some interesting wines, and I had happened to have
just visited Etna. I'd recently been to Santorini. I had
been back in Hungary tasting some wines there, and the
north shores of Lake Bollatone and up in Tokai. And
finally it dawned on me that the only thing that
kind of related all of these totally disparate regions was
(15:42):
the fact that they were volcanic regions volcanic soils. So
I thought, hah, okay, I'm going to be a tongue
in cheek and wrote my little paragraph saying, my favorite wine,
you know, it rose on the side of a volcano.
And the editor read this and she said, that's an
interesting concept. Could you maybe produce a full length article.
(16:03):
I don't know, let me look into it. And I did,
and then that's when I started to scratch a little
deeper beneath the surface and realize there's an amazing world
of volcanic wines out there. It's not nearly as niche
as it sounds off the top, and it sounds like
a completely niche category of volcanic wines, but if you
think about it, it covers pretty much every major wine
(16:24):
growing continent. I'm talking hundreds of different great varieties, every
imaginable climate from Hawaii to Patagonia, you know, so it's
a pretty massive world. And yeah, I wrote a nice,
big article and then I thought, maybe there's a whole
book in there, and in fact there was a few
years later, this little beauty came out.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
We have our own copy in front of us too.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It's a it's a hefty book, yea, it's like dog eared.
It's It's been a great reference books when writing, and
we like both. I've had a fascination with volcanoes ever
since I spent New Year's Eve looking at a tumolole
in Chili, gazing into the crater and realizing I could
(17:06):
die or get off the and it was like burping
in my face. And then they pushed me to go
down the mountain. That was how we went down. They
pushed me and I body to bogging down. But I've
had a fashin Nation. And then we had the chance
to go to Etna, We've been to Vesuvius. We were
just an Orvieza, which you know, it's amazing because a
lot of people don't realize that there are parts of
the world where they may not see a volcano. But
(17:30):
it's volcanic.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes, indeed, I mean yeah, the picture you have behind
you is the poster poster child Region four volcanic wines
because Etna seems to erupt every other week, I mean.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Probably constantly in motion, let's put it that way.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yeah, but listen, I'm not a geologist, but my definition
for a volcanic wine. That's the first thing people ask me,
what is a volcanic wine. It's simply a wine made
from grapes grown on soils derived from volcanic material. And
that volcanic material could be you know, three day old
ash on the slopes of Mount Etna, or it could
(18:08):
be three hundred million year old lava flows that have
degraded into beautiful soil like you have in parts of
northern Italy, and that, for me all qualifies as volcanic exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And there's and as Millie, as you pointed out, there's
volcanic soil. You know in so many places around the
world that you might not know our volcanic soil because
you don't think of that region as being volcanic. It's
really fascinating. When we were in Orviedo, they were talking
about an eruption that had taken place in that region
that created volcanic soil there, and we were like, well
(18:40):
where is that? And it happened to be the lake
next to Orviedo, which was which was the water filled crater.
Now that really created all the volcanic soils in that
region that you'd never know with.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Lake Bolsano, which is the largest volcanic and.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It happens all over the place.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Lake John.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
As you were doing your research, what were some of
the surprising takeaways that you found as you were creating
and putting the book together.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
One of the things that really surprised me, you know,
like you lots of areas you didn't know are volcanic
was just the sheer diversity of places, but also great varieties.
And not only that, but strangely enough, in so many
parts of the volcanic world, while there's no philoshra for one,
(19:27):
which means that old ancient indigenous varieties tended to survive
and are still around, as opposed to having being ripped
out and replanted with cabernet and chardonnay back in those
crazy eighties when everything was you know, everything was shardenay
and cabernet. The Canary Islands is a brilliant example of this,
and this is in the Archibellico that was settled in
(19:49):
the fifteen hundreds by the Spanish, or by Iberians, i
should say, who brought with them all of their great
varieties from home, because that's what a good sixteenth century
sailor does. They need wine when they arrived, and they
brought all of these varieties that subsequently went extinct on
the mainland when Vloxa came in and wiped everything out
in the late nineteen centuries. So Canarios is like this
(20:12):
Jurassic park of about eighty different varieties, many of which
you wouldn't find anywhere else on the planet other than there,
because they survived, and this pattern kind of repeated all
over the place. We were just in Campania. How many
fantastic varieties are still around that the Romans were planting
two thousand years and even before that, And thankfully those
(20:33):
grapes have survived and they give this amazing richness of
diversity and flavors.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
In that world, something you describe in the book, just
defining the character. The soils are diverse, and the types
of volcanoes are very different. We've learned and you've explained
and we'll asked for their eruptions are all different and
to create different debris, as we say, but you do
say that there are some common characteristics about volcanic owids,
(21:02):
and one of them was the savory character.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Yes, So, I mean, if we wanted to divide the
vast world of wine into two kind of hemispheres, on
the one hand, you'd have your fruity wines. On the
other hand, you'd have your more savory wines. Yeah, there's
overlap between the two, but more often than not, I
would say nine to nine times out of one hundred,
wines growing in volcanic soils fall on the savory side
(21:26):
of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
And why is that?
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Why is that? Well, that's a ten million dollar question.
I don't think even a million would cover that. The
answer is complex, of course, but I'll break it down
as simply as I understand it to be. And there's
nothing simple about this world. Volcanic soils differ. Even in
the vast range of volcanic soils themselves. They all come
(21:51):
from magma which has erupted or come onto the Earth's surface.
Magma's got different composition, but by and large has a
huge range of micro and macro elements. So pretty much
everything a vine needs is in all types of volcanic soil,
from basal through to rhige lights, which means that the
wine has access to you know, essential nutrients. Now, if
(22:14):
it were two available, then you'd have super fertile soils
and you'd have big, vigorous canopies and probably pretty dilute,
uninteresting wine. So, I mean, they are volcanic soils all
over the world, but they're not all good for great
growing to make quality wine. You know, in the tropics,
for example, plenty of great volcanic soils in Costa Rica
(22:36):
for example, there that make great coffee, but not so
much great wine. Climate being wine, but the soils are
two fertile, so the best volcanic soils tend to be younger, rockier,
not very fertile, with low water availability, which means that
those elements that are all in the soil can't be
(22:57):
dissolved and taken up by a root system. So the
vine is kind of semi parched. You know, water availability
is low, all the elements are there, it gets a
little bit of everything a broad diet, but still remains
low vigor which ends up being smaller bunches, smaller berries,
more skin than juice in many cases, which translates into
(23:20):
concentrated flavors. I mean, maybe that sounds a little complicated,
but you know, just think of struggling vines. We know
that struggling vines tend to produce more interesting wines, and
vines in volcanic soils, which are also acidic for the
most part, make make it a challenge for the vine,
which which is good for us.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, that's all. It's all very interesting. You talk
about volcanic soil. But one of the things that volcanic
soil does is break down over the time and become
a different type of soil but still volcanic. But the
older it is, and with no eruptions on top of it,
the more of a chance it has to break down.
(24:02):
There is there in your research and in your travels,
have you found a volcanic soil age requirement that produces
the best type of wines out of it?
Speaker 4 (24:13):
No? I mean, that's a great question. I don't know
if I can answer that. I mean, yeah, it has
to be probably at least fifty one hundred years old,
depending on the climate. You know, they say on mounted
for example, that The first things that start to grow
in a fresh lava flow is the genestra, that beautiful
yellow yellow flower. So on a young volcanic flow, nothing
(24:36):
will grow for you know, probably ten twenty thirty or
so years, so it has to have weathered into some
amount of soil. Can't just grow in a row. So
there's a you know, sort of minimum age requirement, maximum
age I haven't found. You know, there's some beautiful, rich
red jewelry soils in the Willamette Valley, for example, that
(24:56):
produces some absolutely fabulous pino NOI the about sixteen million
year old soils, and they are older, and there's everything
in between. So you know, I wouldn't want to hem
myself in with a time frame because it really depends
on the type of lava and the climate. You know,
in a tropical climate, so it forms much more quickly.
On the island of Santorini, for example, those are thirty
(25:19):
six hundred year old soils, if you can call them that,
such a dry island that there's zero clay, there's zero
organic matter, no real soil is formed. Those vines grow
in a pitifully poor ash.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, it's looks almost like walking on a Moonscape.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You right about We've been to Santorini and you write
about we as well some of the most interesting calderras.
I mean, basically, Centrini is a calder It is, it is,
and it's quite remarkable. You talk about a conference there
and it's really exquisite. But a lot of people may
not realize, like there's a section on the Pacific Northwest
(25:58):
and northern California. Don't necessarily equate equate. You equate them
with equators and earthquakes, but you don't think about the
volcanic history of these areas. I'm curious, you know, that's
much further away than Santorini and Italy. And the counter
is how they're different region by region. Are the volcano
(26:24):
compositions different? That would make the Willamette in basically the
Pacific Northwest and northern California unique in different ways.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
That might be useful to point out where and why
volcanoes occur. And I'm sure you know that's probably most
of the listeners as well. But if you picture the
surface of the Earth, it's not one solid sphere. It's
actually composed of different tectonic plates, about eight major plates
and literally hundreds of smaller plates microplates, and the vast
(26:57):
majority of earthquakes and volcanoes occur on those plate boundaries.
Right the Pacific Basin as a great example, you got
this massive Pacific plate that's bouncing into all of the
surrounding land masses from New Zealand all the way around
forty thousand kilometers twenty five thousand miles down around to
(27:18):
the other side to Patagonia in Chile. And as one
plate hits another, you get what's called the subduction zone.
One plate gets dragged underneath one of those who's got
to win. That plate sings deeper and deeper into the
Earth's core, gets horder melts, and about one hundred miles
(27:38):
fifty miles from that subduction zone, you get an arc
of volcanoes as that magma wells up and has to
find its way up to the surface. So you get
mountain formation and volcanic formation on those subduction zone edges.
So that's the Andes Mountain. You know, they're not all volcanoes,
but there are hundreds kind of scattered in there. Up
(27:58):
a little closer to where you are are, there's the
Sierra Nevada three hundred million years ago that would have
been a hypervolcanic area, but the volcanism has kind of
moved further north. That's why further north and certainly up
into Alaska, you've got a whole bunch of active volcanoes.
That's more or less where they occur. There's some other
mysterious ones, like where you just were in Hawaii. Waii
(28:20):
is an island sitting smack dab in the middle of
that plate, that Pacific plate. Why is there a volcano there? Well,
it's still a bit of a mysterious mystery the geologies.
But thin crust, it's a it's a thin crust. The
crust is thinned out for reasons we don't really understand,
and that allows magma to come up and erupt into
lovely volcanos. So in Hawaii and in Stromboli and even
(28:45):
Etna there you get these wonderful effusive it's called an
effusive eruption. Lava kind of bubbles out there. You get
these curtains, these fountains. That's basalt for the most part,
which is a very viscous type of lava kind of
flows and moves very slowly compared to at the other
end of the volcanic spectrum. You get these massive they're
(29:06):
called Plinian eruptions after Finis a younger who described in
horrific detail the eruption of Vesuvius in seventy nine AD.
I mean, it's actually a fabulous read. He goes into
amazing detail. But that is the sort of massive column
of smoke that rises tens of kilometers into the air
(29:26):
mount Saint Helen's, I guess would have been a pretty
recent example in nineteen eighty was it in Pacific Northwest?
So that's another type of lava called rhy light for
the most part, which is much more viscous and takes
a lot more energy to erupt. So when it erupts,
that baby goes. So those are your kids, those are
(29:48):
your two.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Don't wait around to watch it.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So there's plenty in And then what was the other
one called.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
It's called Hawaiian or Strombulian or a few sus.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It was something that was kind of an interesting takeaway
when we were traveling the different types. When we were
in the Big Island, obviously there's a massive and still
active volcano there, and we walked on the lava, the
crunchy lava fields, which are very different. Okay, the crunchy
lava fields of Hawaii Kilauea and volcanoes, versus the incredibly
(30:25):
sandy soils that are pictured behind us in Etna. When
we took that tour, which was you can do it
for anyone interested, you can't. There are many day trips
up to Atna Bay jeep. Sometimes there's like this little
lift airlift thing, but it was to windy. You sink
into those it's sandy.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
But it's a coarse gravel.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Course gravelly, but yeah, like gravel sand to me what
it felt like walking in the thickest beach.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yeah, I mean you get a little bit of both
there on Etna, and you've seen the massive high and
lava flows, some of which you know happened to flow
right in the middle of a vineyard and you know, yeah,
vines on either side. Uh, And you get along with
that a ton of ash. So they say in now
you know when the when the smoke is white, that's okay,
that's mostly just steam and it's almost continuously emitting steam.
(31:19):
When it turns blue or black, that's that's when you've
got to be a little bit more weary about what's
coming next. And winemakers describe you know that black ash
fallowing like rain coming up your windshields, getting on vinelea,
stopping photosynthesis. You know, that's another a whole different hazard
of living in growing grapes on the side of a volcano.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
We asked a lot of the producers that they don't
seem to. You know, when we were there last year,
it was fall and I had just exploded. So around
Kaitanya there was ash everywhere, you know, like all over
black and we saw, you know, the remains of old
you know, like like little Palmento that had just fallen
(32:02):
into whatever they was covered by ad and we add,
no one seems secure. It's just it's life. It's the battalion.
That's life. You live on a volcano, that's life, and
that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Don't remember asking a producer on the on the slopes
of Vesuvius when I was researching the book. You go
into his little cellar and I see the scratching on
the wall. It said seventeen forty ors until when's that?
I said out, that's when the cellar was dug out
by my great great great great grandfather whatever it was.
He said, But we've had to dig it out a
few times since there, What do you mean? You know,
(32:38):
it's a live, active volcano. The last major eruption, well,
nineteen forty four was a little minor one, but nineteen
o six, I think it was enough of a flow.
Mud flow came in filled out the cellar. So what
do they do a you know, get the shovels, dig
it out again? You know, I said, so what's it like?
I mean, knowing that your entire life's work and multi
generations behind you could be wiped out in a flash,
(33:01):
I wouldn't you want to go somewhere else? And he said, Majiovanni,
where do I go? This is my home, This is
my place. This is where I love to be, This
is where I love to go, grapes, I love the
wine I make. I thought, well, yeah, you know, I
guess there are hazards no matter where you are, maybe
a little bit more obvious in some volcanic regions. But
where they're going to go?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
You know, I'm wondering. You know, when we all left
Campanna Stories and we were there in June, right there
was activity in the Kampa Flagley area and in the subs. Afterwards,
I started to feel like everywhere we go, activity starts. Absolutely,
you don't. Unfortunately, there was geological teams and scientists that
(33:44):
help predict all that. But everywhere people are saying a
big one's coming, the big ones.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Maybe we're the accidental volcano whispers.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
People just have to be prepared. I mean, there's a
lot of science that goes into predicting eruptions, and yet
they erupt.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Well, I tell you when the Campy Fla go was
hopefully not for a long time, but it's going to
be absolute, total chaos because it's right in the Bay
of Puttswale. I mean right in Naples. Yea three million
people living there, and I remember chatting with some locals.
They said, you know, there's there's lots of provisions in place,
but you can't make the roads any wider, and you
(34:19):
can't shut down shops. You can't stop life. Life goes on,
and you know, so it must.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
You know, a region you cover, and you you're clear
in the intro of the book there's many regions you
could not cover. Yet, I mean I can only imagine
what's going on in Asia and and even more of
South America, I mean typically the southern hemisphere. But you
talk about all sauce in Germany, which was interesting. We've
(34:47):
not spent any time in Hungary, where you have familiar roots.
We've spent no time, minimal time in all sauce, even
though we've done some podcasts with Alsatian producers. Zero in
Germany and Hungary. What are the so we only know
anything about the volcanoes even the names of them. Are
they dormant? Talk to us about that area and how
(35:09):
are those wines which are very unique and different from
the ones we were talking about Italy impacted by the soils?
Speaker 4 (35:17):
All right? So, I mean we were talking about subduction zone,
that's where most volcanoes occur. But the other places is
divergent boundaries when plates are moving apart from one another.
As they do that the crust stretches and gaps appear,
and that's when volcanoes form. So the entire Rhine Valley
you have volcanoes that appear here and there, you know,
(35:39):
with no regularity. I guess the most most notable volcanic
areas in Germany called the Kaiser Stool in southern bottom,
and those are pretty serious volcanoes extinct now long extinct.
But the very southern tip of Alsas the Ronguan Dutan
grown crew. That's one of these little areas.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
That we've been on the hill.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's where we've been and where.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
The wines good, my friends, I mean they were, they
were very good.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
We had a pick.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well it's one of the great crews of Alsace and
a very steep hill too.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
But yeah, we did a picnic right there with the
with the importer and his team and the wines. It
was a highlight.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I wonder if you knew you were on an old
volcano at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I think I think we were told.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, And it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
It's interesting to find where volcanic regions are that you
don't expect.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Well, that's what I'm getting to is like you don't
think about you know, you don't think about them if
we're just out there looking around. And I did a
I did google like the world's top volcanoes to see
what there was, but that was kind of a an
in Germany and Hungary, you know, we didn't think about
those as volcanic, and you're saying they are and probably
(36:53):
the same tectonic plates because they're kind of there.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
When I would suggest and I found this extremely educational
and fun is to go to areas of mixed geology
and do comparisons, because then you really get a sense of, okay,
what is the volcanic soil give versus the limestone. So
Germany is a great place to do that because there
aren't that many volcanic vineyards. There's a few like the
(37:19):
Forster Pastine in Force down in the faults, and you
know one little sliver of the Moso, the Erzigervertz Garden,
so little vineyards here and there. And there's a professor
at Neustadt University named doctor Ulie Fisher actually did comparative
tastings of reasling, which we all know is a super
transparent variety reflects origins pretty nicely. So he did the
(37:42):
comparison of reaslings from vineyards adjacent to one another, one
sandstone and one basalt. And then he did a comparison
of two volcanic reaslings, but from opposite ends of the country,
so way up in the Moso and way down in
the faults. And I mean, obviously the climate that is
not that similar when you're that far away. But he
(38:04):
found that the flavor profile of the reaslings miles apart
were more similar than the reaslings that grew next to
one another, but on different soils. So you know, not
that we didn't know this, but soil makes a big difference,
and it does change the flavor profile. You know, the
acidity was a little bit lower in the volcanics. That's surprising.
(38:25):
When you've got dark volcanic soil, you absorb a bit
more sunlight. Soils warm up grapes tend to ripe in
a little bit higher. Another little maybe technical aside there,
but I think it's kind of fun. Maybe your listeners
won't think it's so fun, but I'm a bit of
a chemistry a geek. Is that volcanic soils tend to
have high potassium, and in the world of chemistry, potassium
(38:47):
is an acid buffer. It makes acids less acidic, It
sort of softens that. So when you grow on volcanic soils,
you tend to have a lot of potassium in your
must in your juice, which lower the acidity, raises the
pH and changes the dynamic in the mouth. But that
(39:08):
being said, you know, you know, I like acid, even
though sometimes technically speaking the acids are relatively low. Volcanic
wines tend to have this freshness because of another little
theory of mine, which is saltiness. Saltiness is the new minerality.
Everyone's talking about the salinity of their wines, of their wines.
(39:31):
I'm glad because I've been talking about it for fifteen years.
I thought maybe I was crazy, but everyone else is
catching on. But I'm quite convinced, and still more research required.
But there tends to be this sensation of saltiness in
volcanic wines. Sometimes it's just plain old sodium chloride, like
a seaside vineyard in the Canaries actually has measurably higher
(39:53):
sodium chloride table salt from the sea spray, not from
the soils. But inland areas like in Germany or Hungary
for example, the saltiness comes from I would say, different
mineral salts, so magnesiums and potassium salts, these sort of
things that have salty taste but also a bitter taste.
(40:13):
So this is where the non fruitiness comes into play here.
Then it's the emphasis that bitter, salty, savory as opposed
to the fruity side of things.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
That's why the book is Volcanic wine, salt, grit, and power.
And I know when we travel, salinity is frequently in
my tasting notes, particularly a lot of the wines from
the Sea area, particularly in Sicily and in the southern France,
and a lot of all is that sipidity. Is you
get the salt and the minerality and the little stoniness.
(40:45):
And I like savory wines. I adore them, and it's
definitely my prey flavor profile, which is why sometimes we
haven't been to northern California enough lately. But what's why
I'm mentally grappling with because to me, the California wines
we've tasted it from Napa and Zooma are so distinct
(41:06):
and I don't get any of that in them, or
more Cina than Napa. So we have to go out
and do some revisit because I'm not there, for me
the least likely to feel that volcanic characteristic that I'm
used to in other areas we listen.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
As a winemaker, you can also do all sorts of
things to shape the profile of a wine. And of course,
if you let your cabernet ripen into twenty eight bricks
and then water it back, and you're going to kind
of beat the volcanic ess inside of it, but go
you know, next time, you're there. I go up to
the Mia Camas side, the eastern side of the Napa
Valley up there, like Pritchard Hill at this peak. Those
(41:44):
are pretty volcanic areas and the great what a pain
in the acid is to do anything there. I mean,
tractors are breaking all the time. It's just chunks of
volcanic stone. And you taste those wines versus say something
down on the valley floor. Cabernet, cabernet, same produce. Sure
you get a radically different profile.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Well, I think that's what we prefer. Mountain wines from California, always, always,
and what we like. Let's talk about the Southern hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Before we go there. I want to just make one note.
It's interesting about that you're talking about napping Sonoma too,
because there's so there's there's a lot of volcanic soil
out there, but there's also a lot of other soil
out there. And I was actually just doing a series
of articles with a winery and Sonoma that actually has
that straddles two avas and one is Chalk Hill and
(42:34):
then the other is Russian River Valley. So that's the
one's volcanic and the other sedimentary. And they're very different wines,
both grown on the same property.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, the not so well named chalk Hill, it's you know,
not limestone at all. It's volcanic ash. It looks kind
of chalky because it's white volcanic ash.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So let's switch so South America. I've been to Chile,
not to any of the wine agents have been everywhere.
I went to the volcanic region timlal and to the
Comma Desert because I do have a thing for soil. Also,
I like to try different areas. You cover some Southern Hemisphere,
not a lot in the book, because that's a whole
(43:16):
other thing of traveling. What are some of your findings
and takeaways from your travels that you've been there. Where
would you like to go back and do some more
field research?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Well, I mean we could start in Chile, which is
a country that is eminently volcanic but only just starting
to discover the potential of the volcanic taire wars for wines, right,
I mean, I remember one of my favorite stories from
the book was it was traveling to Chile for the
research and meeting with a guy named Pedro Para. It
was kind of a self styled there Wars pretty famous
(43:51):
consultant these days around around the world. But I came
down from Santiago. He came up from Conceptsi and we
met in Daka, somewhere in the middle, and I was
very excited to speak to this, you know, this expert
on soils. Sat down. The first thing he says to me,
but Jong, why the volcanic soils? There are? There were
soils in all of Chile for the wine. Yeah, it's
(44:13):
a great start to my interview. And then went on
to explain in greater detail that you know, as we know,
there are good volcanics and there are bad volcanics. Most
of the good volcanics had yet to be exploited for
wine because those are usually way up in the Andes
or way down south where you know, fifteen years or
so ago, nobody wanted to go. Everything was centered around
(44:35):
in Santiago. But now I'm delighted to see what's happening
down in Itata, for example, even further south where it
starts to get super volcanic andies, some new projects that
have just come online or just being planted. So I
would put that high on my list of places to
revisit for the volcanics. And there are some countries that
(44:57):
I simply didn't make it too because A I didn't
they were a volcanic, or be I couldn't. I couldn't
fit them all in Japan comes to mind, I mean, yeah,
and taste some of the koshu from the slopes of
one Fuji and uh, I mean huge parts of Romania
that I haven't visited that are part of the same
(45:17):
volcanic are continuing out of out of Hungary and down
into the Dinner Riots. And whereas Central Fans. I've since
been to the Ovelt de vell and there's a new
association called Lois Volcanic that since emerged. But that whole
massive frale of France, the center massive is pretty much
(45:39):
all old volcano grow some delicious lentils you might have
heard of the lentils from Dupuis chain of volcanoes, and
some terrific wies. Game lovely, lovely game, so lots lots
of places. And then of course, you know, it was
ten years or so that the book came out New
Producers and the world, the world of wine changes, you know,
(46:02):
That's what keeps us in businesses.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Do you feel that A just speaking a generalized term
do you feel that white grapes or red grapes take
better to volcanic soils?
Speaker 4 (46:14):
Ah, yeah, that's that's a great and frequently asked questions.
And I guess the obvious answer is that white wines
tend to be, you know, pun intended, a little bit
more transparent and easier to read. In terms of the volcanics.
I mean, I would hate to say that, you know,
you won't find that in reds. Of course you do,
but there's more going on in the sense of tannin
(46:36):
which can interfere or modify and modulate that that sensation
that I describe as so volcanic. But you know, there
are plenty of savory reds. We were drinking some super Balianicos,
you know, not so long ago, wing Campania from Tauasi,
and those are pretty savory beauties, yeah you asked me.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
And lovely ones.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
And I think Campania has some of the most alluring
wines for me personally amail of all Italian lines. But
Campanna is a discovery region by region by region, those
indigenous amazing. I think we'd like to both spend more
time in South America visiting the wine are particularly Chile
also Argentina. We've interviewed a lot of Argentinian producers, but
(47:16):
we've just spent no time there. Are there. Does Argentina
have a volcanic because it's right there, but the Andes
are here, But there's mountains over there that are they volcanic?
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Yeah? I mean that that border. I don't know how
it was drawn right through the Andes. It seems that
almost all the volcanoes fell on the Chilean side.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah, it looks like it.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Maybe a couple parts in upper upper Upper Mendosa you
could claim our volcanic, but not nearly as uniform.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
So we're getting towards the it looks Wow, We're almost
at the end of our conversation. I'm curious two things
you kind of mentioned where you'd like to spend more
time traveling, and we agree. Japan. I mean, somebody has
just come out with a book with a massive chapter
on Japanese wine. He's an MW I saw on a
LinkedIn and let me to get it. Because there's it's
(48:05):
like a whole other world, almost a home of the
planet over there. What's going on that we want to try? Uh,
you said you love savory wines. How would you describe
your personality as a wine or wine grape.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
We had this very same conversation in Hungary just a
few days ago. But variety would you be still? I
think in the end we decided that I would be
for means, you know, a little spicy, kind of high acid, energetic,
certainly savory more than fruity, a little botanical, kind of
like an amato.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
You know I love drinking great amatos as well, and
for me, no that botanic side. So yeah, but you know,
I would hate to be reduced to one single great
variety because you know, I like diversity in the world
of wine.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
So you're like a sibyl multi personality when it comes
to great personalities.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Yeah, I'm a gemini, you know. At the very least
I've it'll be at least a couple of different grapes.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, we'd love to end that with people love that question.
I've been asking people that besides, how do you get
your teeth white? For years? So we're really glad we
nailed you down because you're always traveling and we hope
to be in the good fortune to be in your
travel company again soon.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
I'm sure we will cross paths and thanks so much
for having me on the show. How it's a pleasure
to speak with you too.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Absolutely, we've been talking with John Zabo. He is a
master so many in Toronto and his book is Volcanic Wine,
Salt Gritten Power. It's been out for a while, you
can get it. It's a terrific read in reference on
some of the most fascinating volcanic wine regions of the world.
And you should go to your local retailer and ask
can I try some wines from volcanic areas so you
(49:52):
can expand your palette and see for yourself what we're
talking about, because we are all about making sure you eat, drink, explore,
and always stay inspired and always say insatiably curious. Thank you.
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple.
We love to travel the world to bring you the
dynamic people we meet in wine, food, spirits and hospitality.
We love sharing their stories with you and the places
we've is it with you, David? Where are we today? Virtually?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Virtually that's in the background.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, high up and mena and.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Very high up on above the tree line, which is
where we were in twenty twenty two with our guest today.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yes, yeah, so that's setting this up. So we were
there for ETNA days learning about at the wines that
is a still active, very active volcano, and we've had
the great honor of going there, I think two or
three times to try the amazing wines. And we're going
to talk about volcanic wines today because volcanic soils account
for only about one percent of the world's earth surface. However,
(01:41):
they really account for an amazing amount of fantastic wines
with very unique characteristics. In fact, we were just in Hawaii,
on the island of Maui, which has a volcano, Haleakala
and Aba, Hawaii's first and I'm probably going to peach
to the name, and I think only a lakua or
(02:01):
ula Palakua, whichever, and it's an ava in Hawaii, and
people go they make wine in Hawaii.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
They do.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Actually the winery there's a one winery there and it
was originally founded as Tadeshi Winery in nineteen seventy three,
I think it was, so they've been around a long time.
And I remember going to tastings back in the day
when I'd go to tasting support my own wine and
sometimes Todayshi would be there pouring their wines, and I
was fascinated by the fact that they could even make
wine on Hawaii because I always thought of as a
(02:28):
very tropical aisle with palm trees and a human climate,
et cetera. But they've been making wine there for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
No Holey Aklis, high elevation and cool, and it has
these volcanic souls. So we're going to talk about this
topic and some places that you would never think are
volcanic in geography and make amazing wines with our guest
John Zabo, who is the founder and chief wine critic
at Wine a Line, Canada's largest wine magazine, like The Biggie.
(02:58):
He has been a master since two thousand and four
and was Canada's first master Somileier. We have traveled with
John a couple of times, now mainly in Italy, will
probably only in Italy and definitely an Etna, and most
recently in Campagna, another amazing volcanic wine region. John is
prolific on the topic and author of a book called
(03:21):
Volcanic Wines, Salt, Grit and Power. It's won a lot
of awards. He's working on an update. It's so fantastic.
So I will let him show the book because it'll
show better on his screen. But we want to Welcome
to the Connected Table. John Zappo, Master Somier.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Hello, friends, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Good to see you.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Nice to see you without your travel hat and you're
you're probably one of the most dapper travelers that we know.
So that's your fild war Michael Goodell, you do really
represent Canada well, brilliant.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Although, Michael, where's more plaid?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I think, yeah, yeah, more plaid. So we learned before
we were coming on air that your name is Hungarian,
so your roots are Hungarian. There's a Hungarian chapter in
the book. Give us a sense of your family in
your background.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Well, I grew up in was born in and grew
up in Toronto. My father was born in Budapest. He left,
like so many thousands of Hungarians in nineteen fifty six
just after the failed revolution against the Russians or the
Soviets back then, ended up in Canada and where he
met my mother. And that's why I was born in
Toronto and grew up in that sort of mixed family.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
David, have you been to Toronto many, many, many times?
My parents were both from Buffalo, so we used to
go over to Niagara Falls all the time and go
to a place called Shirston Quarry to go swimming, and
I think they had an amusement park there too, which was
in Ontario as well, along Lake Erie. But we went
to Toronto a lot, and I have friends that live
there as well.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Not John Well, I'm at once for work, called and
I visited. My client was mauven Pick. Do you remember
moven Pick?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Of course, yeah, I've been there for that restaurant too.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Really awesome, but I didn't know. That's my only contact
with Toronto and of dying to go back. Is there
a large Hungarian community there there and in Canada?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Yeah, there was still a massive Hungarian community back when
I was at University of Toronto. You know, all Hungarians
play water polo. I played water polo and we had
the all Hungarian U of T water polo team. We'd
confuse our opponents by speaking Hungarian in the water, realiant tactic.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Do you still speak Hungarian?
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I do, yeah. I mean it's a tough language if
you've ever looked into it. It's it's kind of its
own language group. But I can, you know, I can,
I can get along. Just got back from Budapest. In fact,
I was there for the Hungarian Wine Summit where I
did a seminar masterclass on volcanic wine of all topics.
Can you imagine?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Imagine that? So tell us how you obviously you're from Toronto,
you were born and raised there, what got you interested
in wine originally? And tell us about the path to
become a becoming canada'sirst Mastosemily.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Oh, all right, well, I'll give you the brief version.
My first interest in love was with food more than wine.
I mean, my father always had wine around the house,
but nothing really special at all. It usually came in
a box and I have a glass or two here
and there. I would didn't really have much interest in it.
But eating, on the other hand, I love flavors, I
love textures, I love you know. I learned to cook
(06:32):
because of that. So my care actually started off in restaurants,
but not like many some of LA's on the front
of the house side. I was in the back of
the house. I worked in kitchens in Toronto and then
in Niagara Wine Country, and then ended up in France,
all the while, you know, being exposed to fine wine
along the way, and becoming a little bit more and
more curious about it as I went along. So when
(06:54):
I was in France, in Paris. I ended up doing
this wine course, sort of in depth French wine program,
five days a week all day. I would do that,
and then I would go work in restaurants at night
and sort of fell, like so many of us, for
the world of wine and the possibilities it offered. So
I did a few other things that ended up importing wine,
(07:15):
then carried on studying. I did my WCT diploma just
so I could brush up, did the Canadian so ofa
Guild diploma, and a friend of mine suggested, well, why
don't you take a run at this Masterla exam? I said,
what's that? Who are they tell me more? This was
back in the early two thousands. Nobody in Canada I'd
ever heard of the quarter master some lias. Anyhow, I
(07:38):
looked into it and ended up doing my advance and
then a year and a half later past the MS
in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's pretty good because it's one of those tests that
you can also take a lot like the BAR. So,
did you have to write a thesis? And if so,
what was it?
Speaker 4 (07:53):
There's no thesis part of the MS exam the MW
Actually I started doing the MW and the MS at
the same time. Okay, happening to pass the MS first,
So I thought, okay, it's time to get serious and
maybe do some work, not just studying my life away,
although I would have been happy doing that. So no,
no thesis required. But you know, I eventually became a
(08:14):
writer being out of restaurants all together. And uh, I
mean I love I love sharing the stories. I think,
like any any writer, you know, painting pictures with words
and sharing background stories, teaching in a sort of passive
and uh and friendly ways. It's a great joy for me.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Well, as we all know, writing about wine can be
challenging these days. Uh, you are in a really great
position because Wine Aligne is a very large, well read
Outlet tell us about it. Because I mean, obviously we
have here in the United States, wine spectator, wine enthusiasts,
whine advocate. I was just reading a Bud Chip and
I guess defintally figure out who the hell he was,
(08:54):
and now we're going to put him on the show.
And there's a lot of interesting people, but we're less
familiar here about what's going on in Canada. And it's
an amazing large wine market. First of all, with some
wonderful wine writers we've met several on our trips. Tell
us about Wine Line in Canada.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I mean, I guess the first thing to share is
that Canada is that actually not one country. It's ten
countries and a couple of territories. Because every province operates
its own alcohol distribution system. It's sort of like you're
Pennsylvania but in every state. Imagine that. So one line
is based in Ontario. We've got about ten million people,
so even Ontario on its own, it's quite a big
(09:35):
Market's the biggest province in the country. And we focus well.
Winer Line started in two thousand and eight, late two
thousand and eight, so we've been around for a while,
and at that point print already didn't make sense. So
we were an online publication from the start, and the
main idea was to become a I guess, a glorified
shopping tool if we break it down to as essence,
(09:58):
connecting readers with the wine that they could find the
best wines that we tasted at the local monopoly we
call it the LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
And then we expanded outside of Ontario into Quebec and
BC mainly, and now we've got readers all over the world,
of course, because the wines are not only available in Canada,
(10:18):
they're available in many other markets around the world. So
I mean, the concept is that we're multiple critics, so
it's not just me. We're sort of five principal critics
at Wine Line. We all taste independently, review independently, so
that you, as a reader, you can look up a
wine you'll see three or four, maybe five different reviews
on it. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't agree. But
(10:39):
the idea is that you align with the critic whose
tastes best match yours. That's the concept behind wine align.
So you know, you taste the wine and I rated
it very highly and my colleagues are rated it a
little less highly, and you think, wow, this is a
terrible wine. What was John thinking. I'm going to align
with Sarah because her tastes are much more in line
with mine. So this, for me is the great freedom.
(11:02):
Being a critic can sometimes be a challenge when you
try to be everything to everyone. I think it's futile
to even attempt to do that. So I can be myself.
I can love the wines that I want to love
and then either relign or we don't align.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And for anyone interested in looking at the site, it's
wine Align a l I g N dot com and
you can see the critics there. You co host also
Wine Thieves, a podcasts with one of the critics, Sarah
de Matto. I think your concept of aligning with a
critic and taste is interesting because, as you know, you know,
back in the day, everybody was like following Robert Parker
(11:36):
and there was the Parker Palette, and then there was
a lot of criticism about wineries trying to tailor the
wines with the Parker Palette to get better scores. How
would you describe your palette, your tasting palette approach.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Well, I think it's fair to say that, you know,
we all evolve, so the wines that I love twenty
years or so ago are not necessarily the ones that
I gravitate towards today. For example, personally, I drink probably
eighty white wine, which is often surprising for many people, like,
what isn't red wine more serious? Aren't serious wine people
into red wine more than white? And my answer as well, no,
(12:11):
I mean white wines given me as much joy and
pleasure as anything. I like the freshness. I like a
city d vibrancy. I like non fruity wines. That's my
favorite request walking to a restaurant, I'll call them over
and said, bring me your least fruity wine. I want
zero fruit, And that usually causes a little really serious
(12:31):
that's what you wanted, no fruit and lots of acid,
which you know, volcanic wines happened to be a lot
of the time. Maybe my palate has gravitated towards the
volcano salty, gritty wines, fruitless and stony.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It could be your personality, but you know your personal
you know that.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I think I think it depends on what on what
your diet is too, as to whether you drink more
red or white wine as well.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, because our theory is in the United States, I'm
sure in Canada a lot of people are having more
Mexican food and Asian food and foods that naturally gravitate
toward having and a lot of spicy foods. And some
of the whites are just terrifically that we eat a
lot of sushi here. Although we did an article on
red wine and sushi. People tend to gravitate toward white wines. Also,
(13:23):
I have a theory that climate change is turning us
to white wines. We live in New Orleans. It's hot,
like we have friends like, please don't serve us red wine.
We can't take it. You know, bubbles or white.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
A couple of ice cubes go a long way when
you get served that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's true food. Yeah, I mean, I think the climate
change is impacting that as well. But so obviously you
like to write about volcanic wines. Are there other in
terms of what you like to cover and what got
you into volcanic wines? What were you enjoying writing about?
Because everybody has things they like to write about. I mean,
David writes about for his magazines towards the trade. I
(14:00):
tend to like to write about people who are planning
to go somewhere and want to learn what to expect
and where to go and how to eat. What do
you when you picture your avatar, your avatar reader, who
are they? What are they liking to read about that
you write?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I think my wedding writing is directed towards obviously, people
who are quite into wine, who love wine. They don't
necessarily need to be so called experts. But sometimes I
get a little technical. But you know that's my background.
I studied science, I study language. I like to dig
deep into the subject. And for the record, I should
(14:38):
say that I do drink other than volcanic wines. You know,
that's the problem. You write a book about a subject,
and you're forever intimately linked to that. But I've got
time for all sorts of soil types, you know. Give
me a good limestone, give me a good granite, a shift.
I enjoy wines for many of those soils. I just
happen to fall into this volcanic wine world kind of
(14:59):
kind of accident. I'll tell you how it happened. About
fifteen or so years or so ago, an editor of
mine asked me to do some in one of these
end of the year kind of light articles, write a
paragraph about your favorite wine. So there I was at
my desk, trying to be a little more clever than
the eye. Rage. What am I going to write about Champagne, burgundebro,
you know, all the things that folks already knew. So
(15:21):
I started to think about some areas that had recently
visited some interesting wines, and I had happened to have
just visited Etna. I'd recently been to Santorini. I had
been back in Hungary tasting some wines there, and the
north shores of Lake Bollatone and up in Tokai. And
finally it dawned on me that the only thing that
kind of related all of these totally disparate regions was
(15:42):
the fact that they were volcanic regions volcanic soils. So
I thought, hah, okay, I'm going to be a tongue
in cheek and wrote my little paragraph saying, my favorite wine,
you know, it rose on the side of a volcano.
And the editor read this and she said, that's an
interesting concept. Could you maybe produce a full length article.
(16:03):
I don't know, let me look into it. And I did,
and then that's when I started to scratch a little
deeper beneath the surface and realize there's an amazing world
of volcanic wines out there. It's not nearly as niche
as it sounds off the top, and it sounds like
a completely niche category of volcanic wines, but if you
think about it, it covers pretty much every major wine
(16:24):
growing continent. I'm talking hundreds of different great varieties, every
imaginable climate from Hawaii to Patagonia, you know, so it's
a pretty massive world. And yeah, I wrote a nice,
big article and then I thought, maybe there's a whole
book in there, and in fact there was a few
years later, this little beauty came out.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
We have our own copy in front of us too.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
It's a it's a hefty book, yea, it's like dog eared.
It's It's been a great reference books when writing, and
we like both. I've had a fascination with volcanoes ever
since I spent New Year's Eve looking at a tumolole
in Chili, gazing into the crater and realizing I could
(17:06):
die or get off the and it was like burping
in my face. And then they pushed me to go
down the mountain. That was how we went down. They
pushed me and I body to bogging down. But I've
had a fashin Nation. And then we had the chance
to go to Etna, We've been to Vesuvius. We were
just an Orvieza, which you know, it's amazing because a
lot of people don't realize that there are parts of
the world where they may not see a volcano. But
(17:30):
it's volcanic.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes, indeed, I mean yeah, the picture you have behind
you is the poster poster child Region four volcanic wines
because Etna seems to erupt every other week, I mean.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Probably constantly in motion, let's put it that way.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yeah, but listen, I'm not a geologist, but my definition
for a volcanic wine. That's the first thing people ask me,
what is a volcanic wine. It's simply a wine made
from grapes grown on soils derived from volcanic material. And
that volcanic material could be you know, three day old
ash on the slopes of Mount Etna, or it could
(18:08):
be three hundred million year old lava flows that have
degraded into beautiful soil like you have in parts of
northern Italy, and that, for me all qualifies as volcanic exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And there's and as Millie, as you pointed out, there's
volcanic soil. You know in so many places around the
world that you might not know our volcanic soil because
you don't think of that region as being volcanic. It's
really fascinating. When we were in Orviedo, they were talking
about an eruption that had taken place in that region
that created volcanic soil there, and we were like, well
(18:40):
where is that? And it happened to be the lake
next to Orviedo, which was which was the water filled crater.
Now that really created all the volcanic soils in that
region that you'd never know with.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Lake Bolsano, which is the largest volcanic and.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It happens all over the place.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Lake John.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
As you were doing your research, what were some of
the surprising takeaways that you found as you were creating
and putting the book together.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
One of the things that really surprised me, you know,
like you lots of areas you didn't know are volcanic
was just the sheer diversity of places, but also great varieties.
And not only that, but strangely enough, in so many
parts of the volcanic world, while there's no philoshra for one,
(19:27):
which means that old ancient indigenous varieties tended to survive
and are still around, as opposed to having being ripped
out and replanted with cabernet and chardonnay back in those
crazy eighties when everything was you know, everything was shardenay
and cabernet. The Canary Islands is a brilliant example of this,
and this is in the Archibellico that was settled in
(19:49):
the fifteen hundreds by the Spanish, or by Iberians, i
should say, who brought with them all of their great
varieties from home, because that's what a good sixteenth century
sailor does. They need wine when they arrived, and they
brought all of these varieties that subsequently went extinct on
the mainland when Vloxa came in and wiped everything out
in the late nineteen centuries. So Canarios is like this
(20:12):
Jurassic park of about eighty different varieties, many of which
you wouldn't find anywhere else on the planet other than there,
because they survived, and this pattern kind of repeated all
over the place. We were just in Campania. How many
fantastic varieties are still around that the Romans were planting
two thousand years and even before that, And thankfully those
(20:33):
grapes have survived and they give this amazing richness of
diversity and flavors.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
In that world, something you describe in the book, just
defining the character. The soils are diverse, and the types
of volcanoes are very different. We've learned and you've explained
and we'll asked for their eruptions are all different and
to create different debris, as we say, but you do
say that there are some common characteristics about volcanic owids,
(21:02):
and one of them was the savory character.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Yes, So, I mean, if we wanted to divide the
vast world of wine into two kind of hemispheres, on
the one hand, you'd have your fruity wines. On the
other hand, you'd have your more savory wines. Yeah, there's
overlap between the two, but more often than not, I
would say nine to nine times out of one hundred,
wines growing in volcanic soils fall on the savory side
(21:26):
of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
And why is that?
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Why is that? Well, that's a ten million dollar question.
I don't think even a million would cover that. The
answer is complex, of course, but I'll break it down
as simply as I understand it to be. And there's
nothing simple about this world. Volcanic soils differ. Even in
the vast range of volcanic soils themselves. They all come
(21:51):
from magma which has erupted or come onto the Earth's surface.
Magma's got different composition, but by and large has a
huge range of micro and macro elements. So pretty much
everything a vine needs is in all types of volcanic soil,
from basal through to rhige lights, which means that the
wine has access to you know, essential nutrients. Now, if
(22:14):
it were two available, then you'd have super fertile soils
and you'd have big, vigorous canopies and probably pretty dilute,
uninteresting wine. So, I mean, they are volcanic soils all
over the world, but they're not all good for great
growing to make quality wine. You know, in the tropics,
for example, plenty of great volcanic soils in Costa Rica
(22:36):
for example, there that make great coffee, but not so
much great wine. Climate being wine, but the soils are
two fertile, so the best volcanic soils tend to be younger, rockier,
not very fertile, with low water availability, which means that
those elements that are all in the soil can't be
(22:57):
dissolved and taken up by a root system. So the
vine is kind of semi parched. You know, water availability
is low, all the elements are there, it gets a
little bit of everything a broad diet, but still remains
low vigor which ends up being smaller bunches, smaller berries,
more skin than juice in many cases, which translates into
(23:20):
concentrated flavors. I mean, maybe that sounds a little complicated,
but you know, just think of struggling vines. We know
that struggling vines tend to produce more interesting wines, and
vines in volcanic soils, which are also acidic for the
most part, make make it a challenge for the vine,
which which is good for us.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, that's all. It's all very interesting. You talk
about volcanic soil. But one of the things that volcanic
soil does is break down over the time and become
a different type of soil but still volcanic. But the
older it is, and with no eruptions on top of it,
the more of a chance it has to break down.
(24:02):
There is there in your research and in your travels,
have you found a volcanic soil age requirement that produces
the best type of wines out of it?
Speaker 4 (24:13):
No? I mean, that's a great question. I don't know
if I can answer that. I mean, yeah, it has
to be probably at least fifty one hundred years old,
depending on the climate. You know, they say on mounted
for example, that The first things that start to grow
in a fresh lava flow is the genestra, that beautiful
yellow yellow flower. So on a young volcanic flow, nothing
(24:36):
will grow for you know, probably ten twenty thirty or
so years, so it has to have weathered into some
amount of soil. Can't just grow in a row. So
there's a you know, sort of minimum age requirement, maximum
age I haven't found. You know, there's some beautiful, rich
red jewelry soils in the Willamette Valley, for example, that
(24:56):
produces some absolutely fabulous pino NOI the about sixteen million
year old soils, and they are older, and there's everything
in between. So you know, I wouldn't want to hem
myself in with a time frame because it really depends
on the type of lava and the climate. You know,
in a tropical climate, so it forms much more quickly.
On the island of Santorini, for example, those are thirty
(25:19):
six hundred year old soils, if you can call them that,
such a dry island that there's zero clay, there's zero
organic matter, no real soil is formed. Those vines grow
in a pitifully poor ash.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, it's looks almost like walking on a Moonscape.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You right about We've been to Santorini and you write
about we as well some of the most interesting calderras.
I mean, basically, Centrini is a calder It is, it is,
and it's quite remarkable. You talk about a conference there
and it's really exquisite. But a lot of people may
not realize, like there's a section on the Pacific Northwest
(25:58):
and northern California. Don't necessarily equate equate. You equate them
with equators and earthquakes, but you don't think about the
volcanic history of these areas. I'm curious, you know, that's
much further away than Santorini and Italy. And the counter
is how they're different region by region. Are the volcano
(26:24):
compositions different? That would make the Willamette in basically the
Pacific Northwest and northern California unique in different ways.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
That might be useful to point out where and why
volcanoes occur. And I'm sure you know that's probably most
of the listeners as well. But if you picture the
surface of the Earth, it's not one solid sphere. It's
actually composed of different tectonic plates, about eight major plates
and literally hundreds of smaller plates microplates, and the vast
(26:57):
majority of earthquakes and volcanoes occur on those plate boundaries.
Right the Pacific Basin as a great example, you got
this massive Pacific plate that's bouncing into all of the
surrounding land masses from New Zealand all the way around
forty thousand kilometers twenty five thousand miles down around to
(27:18):
the other side to Patagonia in Chile. And as one
plate hits another, you get what's called the subduction zone.
One plate gets dragged underneath one of those who's got
to win. That plate sings deeper and deeper into the
Earth's core, gets horder melts, and about one hundred miles
(27:38):
fifty miles from that subduction zone, you get an arc
of volcanoes as that magma wells up and has to
find its way up to the surface. So you get
mountain formation and volcanic formation on those subduction zone edges.
So that's the Andes Mountain. You know, they're not all volcanoes,
but there are hundreds kind of scattered in there. Up
(27:58):
a little closer to where you are are, there's the
Sierra Nevada three hundred million years ago that would have
been a hypervolcanic area, but the volcanism has kind of
moved further north. That's why further north and certainly up
into Alaska, you've got a whole bunch of active volcanoes.
That's more or less where they occur. There's some other
mysterious ones, like where you just were in Hawaii. Waii
(28:20):
is an island sitting smack dab in the middle of
that plate, that Pacific plate. Why is there a volcano there? Well,
it's still a bit of a mysterious mystery the geologies.
But thin crust, it's a it's a thin crust. The
crust is thinned out for reasons we don't really understand,
and that allows magma to come up and erupt into
lovely volcanos. So in Hawaii and in Stromboli and even
(28:45):
Etna there you get these wonderful effusive it's called an
effusive eruption. Lava kind of bubbles out there. You get
these curtains, these fountains. That's basalt for the most part,
which is a very viscous type of lava kind of
flows and moves very slowly compared to at the other
end of the volcanic spectrum. You get these massive they're
(29:06):
called Plinian eruptions after Finis a younger who described in
horrific detail the eruption of Vesuvius in seventy nine AD.
I mean, it's actually a fabulous read. He goes into
amazing detail. But that is the sort of massive column
of smoke that rises tens of kilometers into the air
(29:26):
mount Saint Helen's, I guess would have been a pretty
recent example in nineteen eighty was it in Pacific Northwest?
So that's another type of lava called rhy light for
the most part, which is much more viscous and takes
a lot more energy to erupt. So when it erupts,
that baby goes. So those are your kids, those are
(29:48):
your two.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Don't wait around to watch it.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So there's plenty in And then what was the other
one called.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
It's called Hawaiian or Strombulian or a few sus.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It was something that was kind of an interesting takeaway
when we were traveling the different types. When we were
in the Big Island, obviously there's a massive and still
active volcano there, and we walked on the lava, the
crunchy lava fields, which are very different. Okay, the crunchy
lava fields of Hawaii Kilauea and volcanoes, versus the incredibly
(30:25):
sandy soils that are pictured behind us in Etna. When
we took that tour, which was you can do it
for anyone interested, you can't. There are many day trips
up to Atna Bay jeep. Sometimes there's like this little
lift airlift thing, but it was to windy. You sink
into those it's sandy.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
But it's a coarse gravel.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Course gravelly, but yeah, like gravel sand to me what
it felt like walking in the thickest beach.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yeah, I mean you get a little bit of both
there on Etna, and you've seen the massive high and
lava flows, some of which you know happened to flow
right in the middle of a vineyard and you know, yeah,
vines on either side. Uh, And you get along with
that a ton of ash. So they say in now
you know when the when the smoke is white, that's okay,
that's mostly just steam and it's almost continuously emitting steam.
(31:19):
When it turns blue or black, that's that's when you've
got to be a little bit more weary about what's
coming next. And winemakers describe you know that black ash
fallowing like rain coming up your windshields, getting on vinelea,
stopping photosynthesis. You know, that's another a whole different hazard
of living in growing grapes on the side of a volcano.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
We asked a lot of the producers that they don't
seem to. You know, when we were there last year,
it was fall and I had just exploded. So around
Kaitanya there was ash everywhere, you know, like all over
black and we saw, you know, the remains of old
you know, like like little Palmento that had just fallen
(32:02):
into whatever they was covered by ad and we add,
no one seems secure. It's just it's life. It's the battalion.
That's life. You live on a volcano, that's life, and
that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Don't remember asking a producer on the on the slopes
of Vesuvius when I was researching the book. You go
into his little cellar and I see the scratching on
the wall. It said seventeen forty ors until when's that?
I said out, that's when the cellar was dug out
by my great great great great grandfather whatever it was.
He said, But we've had to dig it out a
few times since there, What do you mean? You know,
(32:38):
it's a live, active volcano. The last major eruption, well,
nineteen forty four was a little minor one, but nineteen
o six, I think it was enough of a flow.
Mud flow came in filled out the cellar. So what
do they do a you know, get the shovels, dig
it out again? You know, I said, so what's it like?
I mean, knowing that your entire life's work and multi
generations behind you could be wiped out in a flash,
(33:01):
I wouldn't you want to go somewhere else? And he said, Majiovanni,
where do I go? This is my home, This is
my place. This is where I love to be, This
is where I love to go, grapes, I love the
wine I make. I thought, well, yeah, you know, I
guess there are hazards no matter where you are, maybe
a little bit more obvious in some volcanic regions. But
where they're going to go?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
You know, I'm wondering. You know, when we all left
Campanna Stories and we were there in June, right there
was activity in the Kampa Flagley area and in the subs. Afterwards,
I started to feel like everywhere we go, activity starts. Absolutely,
you don't. Unfortunately, there was geological teams and scientists that
(33:44):
help predict all that. But everywhere people are saying a
big one's coming, the big ones.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Maybe we're the accidental volcano whispers.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
People just have to be prepared. I mean, there's a
lot of science that goes into predicting eruptions, and yet
they erupt.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Well, I tell you when the Campy Fla go was
hopefully not for a long time, but it's going to
be absolute, total chaos because it's right in the Bay
of Puttswale. I mean right in Naples. Yea three million
people living there, and I remember chatting with some locals.
They said, you know, there's there's lots of provisions in place,
but you can't make the roads any wider, and you
(34:19):
can't shut down shops. You can't stop life. Life goes on,
and you know, so it must.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
You know, a region you cover, and you you're clear
in the intro of the book there's many regions you
could not cover. Yet, I mean I can only imagine
what's going on in Asia and and even more of
South America, I mean typically the southern hemisphere. But you
talk about all sauce in Germany, which was interesting. We've
(34:47):
not spent any time in Hungary, where you have familiar roots.
We've spent no time, minimal time in all sauce, even
though we've done some podcasts with Alsatian producers. Zero in
Germany and Hungary. What are the so we only know
anything about the volcanoes even the names of them. Are
they dormant? Talk to us about that area and how
(35:09):
are those wines which are very unique and different from
the ones we were talking about Italy impacted by the soils?
Speaker 4 (35:17):
All right? So, I mean we were talking about subduction zone,
that's where most volcanoes occur. But the other places is
divergent boundaries when plates are moving apart from one another.
As they do that the crust stretches and gaps appear,
and that's when volcanoes form. So the entire Rhine Valley
you have volcanoes that appear here and there, you know,
(35:39):
with no regularity. I guess the most most notable volcanic
areas in Germany called the Kaiser Stool in southern bottom,
and those are pretty serious volcanoes extinct now long extinct.
But the very southern tip of Alsas the Ronguan Dutan
grown crew. That's one of these little areas.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
That we've been on the hill.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's where we've been and where.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
The wines good, my friends, I mean they were, they
were very good.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
We had a pick.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well it's one of the great crews of Alsace and
a very steep hill too.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
But yeah, we did a picnic right there with the
with the importer and his team and the wines. It
was a highlight.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I wonder if you knew you were on an old
volcano at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I think I think we were told.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, And it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
It's interesting to find where volcanic regions are that you
don't expect.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Well, that's what I'm getting to is like you don't
think about you know, you don't think about them if
we're just out there looking around. And I did a
I did google like the world's top volcanoes to see
what there was, but that was kind of a an
in Germany and Hungary, you know, we didn't think about
those as volcanic, and you're saying they are and probably
(36:53):
the same tectonic plates because they're kind of there.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
When I would suggest and I found this extremely educational
and fun is to go to areas of mixed geology
and do comparisons, because then you really get a sense of, okay,
what is the volcanic soil give versus the limestone. So
Germany is a great place to do that because there
aren't that many volcanic vineyards. There's a few like the
(37:19):
Forster Pastine in Force down in the faults, and you
know one little sliver of the Moso, the Erzigervertz Garden,
so little vineyards here and there. And there's a professor
at Neustadt University named doctor Ulie Fisher actually did comparative
tastings of reasling, which we all know is a super
transparent variety reflects origins pretty nicely. So he did the
(37:42):
comparison of reaslings from vineyards adjacent to one another, one
sandstone and one basalt. And then he did a comparison
of two volcanic reaslings, but from opposite ends of the country,
so way up in the Moso and way down in
the faults. And I mean, obviously the climate that is
not that similar when you're that far away. But he
(38:04):
found that the flavor profile of the reaslings miles apart
were more similar than the reaslings that grew next to
one another, but on different soils. So you know, not
that we didn't know this, but soil makes a big difference,
and it does change the flavor profile. You know, the
acidity was a little bit lower in the volcanics. That's surprising.
(38:25):
When you've got dark volcanic soil, you absorb a bit
more sunlight. Soils warm up grapes tend to ripe in
a little bit higher. Another little maybe technical aside there,
but I think it's kind of fun. Maybe your listeners
won't think it's so fun, but I'm a bit of
a chemistry a geek. Is that volcanic soils tend to
have high potassium, and in the world of chemistry, potassium
(38:47):
is an acid buffer. It makes acids less acidic, It
sort of softens that. So when you grow on volcanic soils,
you tend to have a lot of potassium in your
must in your juice, which lower the acidity, raises the
pH and changes the dynamic in the mouth. But that
(39:08):
being said, you know, you know, I like acid, even
though sometimes technically speaking the acids are relatively low. Volcanic
wines tend to have this freshness because of another little
theory of mine, which is saltiness. Saltiness is the new minerality.
Everyone's talking about the salinity of their wines, of their wines.
(39:31):
I'm glad because I've been talking about it for fifteen years.
I thought maybe I was crazy, but everyone else is
catching on. But I'm quite convinced, and still more research required.
But there tends to be this sensation of saltiness in
volcanic wines. Sometimes it's just plain old sodium chloride, like
a seaside vineyard in the Canaries actually has measurably higher
(39:53):
sodium chloride table salt from the sea spray, not from
the soils. But inland areas like in Germany or Hungary
for example, the saltiness comes from I would say, different
mineral salts, so magnesiums and potassium salts, these sort of
things that have salty taste but also a bitter taste.
(40:13):
So this is where the non fruitiness comes into play here.
Then it's the emphasis that bitter, salty, savory as opposed
to the fruity side of things.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
That's why the book is Volcanic wine, salt, grit, and power.
And I know when we travel, salinity is frequently in
my tasting notes, particularly a lot of the wines from
the Sea area, particularly in Sicily and in the southern France,
and a lot of all is that sipidity. Is you
get the salt and the minerality and the little stoniness.
(40:45):
And I like savory wines. I adore them, and it's
definitely my prey flavor profile, which is why sometimes we
haven't been to northern California enough lately. But what's why
I'm mentally grappling with because to me, the California wines
we've tasted it from Napa and Zooma are so distinct
(41:06):
and I don't get any of that in them, or
more Cina than Napa. So we have to go out
and do some revisit because I'm not there, for me
the least likely to feel that volcanic characteristic that I'm
used to in other areas we listen.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
As a winemaker, you can also do all sorts of
things to shape the profile of a wine. And of course,
if you let your cabernet ripen into twenty eight bricks
and then water it back, and you're going to kind
of beat the volcanic ess inside of it, but go
you know, next time, you're there. I go up to
the Mia Camas side, the eastern side of the Napa
Valley up there, like Pritchard Hill at this peak. Those
(41:44):
are pretty volcanic areas and the great what a pain
in the acid is to do anything there. I mean,
tractors are breaking all the time. It's just chunks of
volcanic stone. And you taste those wines versus say something
down on the valley floor. Cabernet, cabernet, same produce. Sure
you get a radically different profile.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Well, I think that's what we prefer. Mountain wines from California, always, always,
and what we like. Let's talk about the Southern hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Before we go there. I want to just make one note.
It's interesting about that you're talking about napping Sonoma too,
because there's so there's there's a lot of volcanic soil
out there, but there's also a lot of other soil
out there. And I was actually just doing a series
of articles with a winery and Sonoma that actually has
that straddles two avas and one is Chalk Hill and
(42:34):
then the other is Russian River Valley. So that's the
one's volcanic and the other sedimentary. And they're very different wines,
both grown on the same property.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, the not so well named chalk Hill, it's you know,
not limestone at all. It's volcanic ash. It looks kind
of chalky because it's white volcanic ash.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So let's switch so South America. I've been to Chile,
not to any of the wine agents have been everywhere.
I went to the volcanic region timlal and to the
Comma Desert because I do have a thing for soil. Also,
I like to try different areas. You cover some Southern Hemisphere,
not a lot in the book, because that's a whole
(43:16):
other thing of traveling. What are some of your findings
and takeaways from your travels that you've been there. Where
would you like to go back and do some more
field research?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Well, I mean we could start in Chile, which is
a country that is eminently volcanic but only just starting
to discover the potential of the volcanic taire wars for wines, right,
I mean, I remember one of my favorite stories from
the book was it was traveling to Chile for the
research and meeting with a guy named Pedro Para. It
was kind of a self styled there Wars pretty famous
(43:51):
consultant these days around around the world. But I came
down from Santiago. He came up from Conceptsi and we
met in Daka, somewhere in the middle, and I was
very excited to speak to this, you know, this expert
on soils. Sat down. The first thing he says to me,
but Jong, why the volcanic soils? There are? There were
soils in all of Chile for the wine. Yeah, it's
(44:13):
a great start to my interview. And then went on
to explain in greater detail that you know, as we know,
there are good volcanics and there are bad volcanics. Most
of the good volcanics had yet to be exploited for
wine because those are usually way up in the Andes
or way down south where you know, fifteen years or
so ago, nobody wanted to go. Everything was centered around
(44:35):
in Santiago. But now I'm delighted to see what's happening
down in Itata, for example, even further south where it
starts to get super volcanic andies, some new projects that
have just come online or just being planted. So I
would put that high on my list of places to
revisit for the volcanics. And there are some countries that
(44:57):
I simply didn't make it too because A I didn't
they were a volcanic, or be I couldn't. I couldn't
fit them all in Japan comes to mind, I mean, yeah,
and taste some of the koshu from the slopes of
one Fuji and uh, I mean huge parts of Romania
that I haven't visited that are part of the same
(45:17):
volcanic are continuing out of out of Hungary and down
into the Dinner Riots. And whereas Central Fans. I've since
been to the Ovelt de vell and there's a new
association called Lois Volcanic that since emerged. But that whole
massive frale of France, the center massive is pretty much
(45:39):
all old volcano grow some delicious lentils you might have
heard of the lentils from Dupuis chain of volcanoes, and
some terrific wies. Game lovely, lovely game, so lots lots
of places. And then of course, you know, it was
ten years or so that the book came out New
Producers and the world, the world of wine changes, you know,
(46:02):
That's what keeps us in businesses.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Do you feel that A just speaking a generalized term
do you feel that white grapes or red grapes take
better to volcanic soils?
Speaker 4 (46:14):
Ah, yeah, that's that's a great and frequently asked questions.
And I guess the obvious answer is that white wines
tend to be, you know, pun intended, a little bit
more transparent and easier to read. In terms of the volcanics.
I mean, I would hate to say that, you know,
you won't find that in reds. Of course you do,
but there's more going on in the sense of tannin
(46:36):
which can interfere or modify and modulate that that sensation
that I describe as so volcanic. But you know, there
are plenty of savory reds. We were drinking some super Balianicos,
you know, not so long ago, wing Campania from Tauasi,
and those are pretty savory beauties, yeah you asked me.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
And lovely ones.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
And I think Campania has some of the most alluring
wines for me personally amail of all Italian lines. But
Campanna is a discovery region by region by region, those
indigenous amazing. I think we'd like to both spend more
time in South America visiting the wine are particularly Chile
also Argentina. We've interviewed a lot of Argentinian producers, but
(47:16):
we've just spent no time there. Are there. Does Argentina
have a volcanic because it's right there, but the Andes
are here, But there's mountains over there that are they volcanic?
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Yeah? I mean that that border. I don't know how
it was drawn right through the Andes. It seems that
almost all the volcanoes fell on the Chilean side.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah, it looks like it.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Maybe a couple parts in upper upper Upper Mendosa you
could claim our volcanic, but not nearly as uniform.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
So we're getting towards the it looks Wow, We're almost
at the end of our conversation. I'm curious two things
you kind of mentioned where you'd like to spend more
time traveling, and we agree. Japan. I mean, somebody has
just come out with a book with a massive chapter
on Japanese wine. He's an MW I saw on a
LinkedIn and let me to get it. Because there's it's
(48:05):
like a whole other world, almost a home of the
planet over there. What's going on that we want to try? Uh,
you said you love savory wines. How would you describe
your personality as a wine or wine grape.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
We had this very same conversation in Hungary just a
few days ago. But variety would you be still? I
think in the end we decided that I would be
for means, you know, a little spicy, kind of high acid, energetic,
certainly savory more than fruity, a little botanical, kind of
like an amato.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
You know I love drinking great amatos as well, and
for me, no that botanic side. So yeah, but you know,
I would hate to be reduced to one single great
variety because you know, I like diversity in the world
of wine.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
So you're like a sibyl multi personality when it comes
to great personalities.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Yeah, I'm a gemini, you know. At the very least
I've it'll be at least a couple of different grapes.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, we'd love to end that with people love that question.
I've been asking people that besides, how do you get
your teeth white? For years? So we're really glad we
nailed you down because you're always traveling and we hope
to be in the good fortune to be in your
travel company again soon.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
I'm sure we will cross paths and thanks so much
for having me on the show. How it's a pleasure
to speak with you too.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Absolutely, we've been talking with John Zabo. He is a
master so many in Toronto and his book is Volcanic Wine,
Salt Gritten Power. It's been out for a while, you
can get it. It's a terrific read in reference on
some of the most fascinating volcanic wine regions of the world.
And you should go to your local retailer and ask
can I try some wines from volcanic areas so you
(49:52):
can expand your palette and see for yourself what we're
talking about, because we are all about making sure you eat, drink, explore,
and always stay inspired and always say insatiably curious. Thank you.
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