Wine enthusiasts, whether they are involved in the trade or not, love talking about soil. We speak of “good soils” and “bad soils”, discuss the merits of schist versus granite or limestone and their respective impacts on drainage, vigour and nutrient status. Yet for all that, we rarely pause to ask what soil actually is, how it comes into being, or why it behaves the way it does beneath the vine. In fact, despite the extent to which many romanticise the concept of soil, it is more often than not treated as a static medium to be managed or corrected, rather than as a living system that is continuously forming, responding, and under the right conditions, improving itself.
Like many things we easily take for granted, soils are incredibly complex, sitting at the intersection of geological time and far shorter biological cycles. The minerals that make up its inorganic fraction are formed exceedingly slowly, shaped by the slow weathering processes that operate over centuries and millennia. I…
