This review first appeared on terroirist (dot) com
“Why is there such a magic alliance between volcanoes and wine?” Geologist Charles Frankel goes looking for answers in Volcanoes and Wine, blending history, geology, and viniculture in an illuminating tour of some of the most curious winegrowing locales on earth.
Across eight chapters, Frankel covers several volcanoes of consequence to wine. Each chapter follows a similar construction, beginning with a general history and then moving on to volcanic history and the specifics of how the grapes are grown and the wine is made. Frankel also provides breakdowns of key varieties, cultivars, and producers, as well as detailed travel advice for ambitious readers who wish to visit.
With the exceptions of Napa, Oregon, and Hawaii, the book is entirely European, with Italy—home to Mounts Etna and Vesuvius and the volcanic Aeolian Islands—getting the most love. Whether this is a product of Frankel merely writing about what he knows and where he’s traveled, or of Europe really possessing the only volcanoes of note to winegrowing, I would have liked to see a more global view.
I was most captivated by Spain’s Canary Islands, located off the coast of northwestern Africa. There, on the island of Tenerife, you’ll find 12,280 foot Mount Teide (last eruption: 1909) and the highest vineyards in Europe at 5,800 feet. On the island of Lanzarote, vines are grown in bowl-shaped dugouts with stones lining the rim. This technique, developed in the eighteenth century by enterprising villagers looking for fertile soil beneath post-eruption ash, affords the vines protection from the wind and traps what little rain falls on the island each year.
I continue to be fascinated by the feats of those who stubbornly insist on making wine wherever they want.
Still, stubbornness can be either admirable or foolish, and I’ve often wondered why people choose to live in places prone to natural disasters. (But I guess I’m talking more about hurricanes and tornadoes, which are annual threats, unlike volcanoes.)
There’s clearly something worthwhile (and worth the risk) about living in the shadows of volcanoes, because throughout history people have returned time and time again to the slopes of these irascible mountains, hellbent on bottling the incredible flavor latent in their soils. Take the Olivieros of the Fuocomuorto estate near Mount Vesuvius, for example. Their vines were planted in 1780 atop a lava flow from 1631, abandoned in 1906 after post-eruption mud flows, and then resurrected in 2006.
Look also at the way men and women have fought back against Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano. In 1669, a priest named Diego Pappalardo led fifty men armed with pick axes and iron bars in an attempt to divert an advancing lava flow. They would have succeeded had it not been for an angry mob from a neighboring village, which would have come into the path of the diverted lava flow, who ran them off with clubs and pitchforks. 1983 saw a failed attempt by local officials and volcanologists to use dynamite to reroute a lava flow. And in 1993 authorities successfully tamed a slow-moving lava flow with a combination of rocks (formed into a dam 66 feet high), dynamite, and 8,000 pound concrete blocks dropped by helicopter.
Volcanoes and Wine will certainly stir your imagination. It’ll also fan your wanderlust. Both because it showcases exotic places flowing with wine and because the only way to have a taste is to travel. You won’t find these wines in Costco.
My recommendation
Frankel’s book is well-researched, with the right blend of history, science, and wine. He did lose me a couple times, wandering off to other topics like coffee growing in Hawaii, but all in all, it’s a fun flyover of volcanic wine, with some really cool history and stories thrown in. Wine-drinking history buffs, this is your book.
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