So-Called Volcanic
Written by John Faulkner
They say it's volcanic soil we've got at our vineyard, Seven Springs. The greater wine community then casually uses the term terroir in place of soil as if they were synonyms, which I'm very sure they're not. (The one is a term of science, while the other is a term of art.) And it's by that tricky word terroir that we can't help but conjure a volcano as we drink our wine; can't help but smell the smells of a volcano, presuming we know what they are: sulfide, smoke, infernal things...
But I doubt it's so helpful to call our soil volcanic. First of all, volcanoes don't erupt soil. They erupt molten rock. And in fact, the volcanoes that issued forth the rock of the Willamette Valley hardly erupted! They were shield volcanoes, not even of the recognizable pointy-cone variety, but more unassuming and low profile: more hills than mountains. And their eruption was in relatively slow motion: more a continual ooze over millennia than an explosion.
The lava cooled into the flood basalt that makes up our bedrock today. Overlying this bedrock is soil, some of it shallow, some of it "profound" in depth. (Profound is how the geologists say "deep beyond easy measure.") It's in this soil that the vines set their roots. The viticulturalists call it clay loam.
Clay loam is to a volcanic rock what fossil fuel is to a dinosaur: derived from, but with some fundamental chemical changes having taken place! By geologic time and biochemistry, they're utterly distinct from one another, even if they have some vestigial minerals in common on the other side of their transformations. For the most part, they've decomposed physically and chemically. Carbon from decomposed organic matter, including dinosaurs, is what makes the hydrocarbon of fossil fuel so potent. Mafic minerals, especially iron, remain in our clay loam even through the decomposition process. I do not underestimate its importance to our own liquid gold, even if there's little science to support my hypothesis. I think it, too, is potent.
Do the wines taste like iron? I won't say that, not directly. I'm not sure I know what iron tastes like. But the terroir as I'm coming to know of it is one of iron. There's a telltale in the wine of this terroir, something clipped and hard. In their youth, they burst forth with flavor. They're redolent of summer berries. But then, in an instant, all's dark. They close as by the shutter of a camera: flooded with light one instant, and then black, sealed tight, the next. But, that first light! It's exhilarating! Where's the wine gone, what's become of it? Exposed for an instant, how will it develop? Not sulfide, or smoke, or infernal things, but these questions are what the volcanoes leave us with.
THE WATERFALL: Tucked away in Evening Land's Seven Springs Vineyard, a hidden waterfall cascades gently over volcanic rock, fed by pure, cold spring water. This secluded gem, nestled among vines rooted in mineral-rich soil, embodies the vineyard's quiet magic - where time slows, and nature's elements merge. The steady flow of water, filtered through layers of basalt, nourishes the land, echoing the vineyard's deep connection to its volcanic origins.