Wine Soils Flashcards
What is Alluvial?
A combination of clay, silt, sand and gravel that forms over time from mineral deposits left by running water.
What is Calcareous?
A soil primarily composed of calcium carbonate and high in chalk or limestone as well as fossilized shells.
What is Granite?
A hard and granular rock with a high content of crystals, particularly quartz.
What is Jory?
A volcanic soil composed mostly of basalt, which is in turn a hard and dense soil that often has a glassy appearance.
What is Limestone or Chalk?
A soft soil made primarily from fossilized seashells.
What is Loam?
A crumbly mixture of clay, sand and silt.
What is Marl?
A crumbly mixture of different clay as well as calcium and magnesium carbonates with fossilized shells mixed in as well.
What is Sandstone?
A combination of silica and sand compacted together by pressure and time.
What is Schist?
A metamorphic rock derived mostly from clay, but it can be made from several other rocks. Schist is a soft rock that flakes and breaks easily.
What is Shale?
Over time what series of different soils does it become?
Layers of clay-like, fine-grained sedimentary rock. On the surface where the shale breaks it often forms beds of sharp fragments.
—if buried and subjected to oven-like temperatures over millions of years, gradually becomes slate.
—it might continue to descend further, into hotter zones, for more millions of years and become schist. Pile on even more depth, pressure and heat and you’ll end up with gneiss.
**Shale—to Slate—to Schist—to Gneiss
What is Tufa?
A mix of silica, calcium carbonate and sometimes volcanic ash that has been deposited over time by streams, lakes and other water sources.
What is Ponca? (aka flysch)
Main soil type in northeastern Friuli. It is a marl and sandstone soil with high calcium and limestone content, similar to what you might find in Burgundy. It contains marine fossils originating at the bottom of what is now the Adriatic Sea.
What is Basalt?
Where found?
A dark-colured, fine-grained igneous (volcanic) rock. Accounts for as much as 90% of lava based volcanic rocks. It contains various minerals, is rich in lime and soda, but not quartz, the most abundant of all minerals, and it is poor in potash
***Found in Columbia Valley, WA, Victoria and Hunter Valley in Australia; Dominated vineyards in parts of Hungary.
What are the three main rock types?
—Igneous Rocks
Crystalline solids which form directly from the cooling of magma. This is an exothermic process (it loses heat) and involves a phase change from the liquid to the solid state. Igneous rocks are given names based upon two things: composition (what they are made of) and texture (how big the crystals are).
—Sedimentary Rocks
In most places on the surface, the igneous rocks which make up the majority of the crust are covered by a thin veneer of loose sediment, and the rock which is made as layers of this debris get compacted and cemented together. Sedimentary rocks are called secondary, because they are often the result of the accumulation of small pieces broken off of pre-existing rocks.
—Metamorphic Rocks
The metamorphics get their name from “meta” (change) and “morph” (form). Any rock can become a metamorphic rock. All that is required is for the rock to be moved into an environment in which the minerals which make up the rock become unstable and out of equilibrium with the new environmental conditions. The metamorphic changes in the minerals always move in a direction designed to restore equilibrium. Common metamorphic rocks include slate, schist, gneiss, and marble.
What is the difference between slate, schist, and gneiss?
—Gneiss - coarse grained form of granite
—Schist - Crystalline rock, heat retaining and rich in minerality
—Slate - pressure derived, fine grained formed from clay, silt, shale (sedimentary rock)
