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Terroir - The Geology of Wine with Brenna Quigley · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey Dr.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Ramick, how we doing today?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Christopher.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's up, man?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are we doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Christopher.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you're busting that out.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a while.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I uh how are you doing?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm great, man.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we always do this.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: We we uh after an interview, we sit down and and record the intro after the discussion, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: People probably know this by now.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've always liked wine.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not always.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wine, I I kind of have always liked wine.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know a lot about it, and I always knew that there was like some sort of geology involved, but this was way more interesting than I actually really expected.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was excited for this, but I was I I I I was kind of blown away.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: I totally agree.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: I learned a ton about how geology and the rocks and you know, and their their role in the formation of soil and how all of that affects the flavor of the grapes and you know farming practices.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: It was just a really cool thing to learn that much about it.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Brenna did an awesome job explaining what her job really is.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think we need to spell this word for everyone so they can understand what a terroir is, and maybe even look it up if you want.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: So a terroir, the how you pronounce it.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is T-E-R R O I R.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Terroir.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the person we interviewed here is Brennna Quigley, and Brennan received a bachelor's degree, a dual major in aquatic biology and geology, as she talks about in this interview, from uh UC University of California, Santa Barbara.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: She also has a master's in geology, and she has sort of developed her own uh terroir geology winery vineyard consulting agency, as well as a podcast host.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So she hosts the podcast called Roadside Terroir, and Chris, you just spelled that.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So Roadside Terroir is her podcast.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find out more about Brennan on BrennnaQigley.com.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's Brennan Q-U-I-G-L-E-Y.com.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's Brennan.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this was really interesting, really exciting for me personally.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a ton about, like you said, Chris, both the geology and how it affects wine.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think I'm gonna be learning a lot more in the future based on this episode.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: I feel the same way.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm inspired to go out now and learn more about this whole thing and and wine in general as well.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and it's a good uh uh the learning process is probably quite fun when you're learning about wine, you know?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, she found a way to combine traveling and drinking wine.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you and I, Jesse, we being geologists, we found a way to incorporate traveling because we get to it's an excuse to go see wonderful things, right?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: She took it to a whole nother level.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: A whole nother level.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: She's a genius.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And her best day doing geology, her answer to that question was my dream.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: That is, I think, Chris, you would probably agree.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's our like dream day.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: So she's got it pegged.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: She is an aspirational uh geologist here, Brandon Quigley.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, with that, before we jump to the episode, remember you can find Camp Geo.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: You want to learn all the basics, all the terminology that we use that is sort of introductory level, but we don't cover it.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have the time to cover it in the podcast.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to CampGeo, our conversational textbook, and learn all about that with the key images you need.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first link in the show notes.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can follow us at Planet Geo on all the social medias at Planet Geocast.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Our website is planetgeocast.com, and please, please, please send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: We begin tons of listener questions.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We have some more office hours episodes coming up very soon.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So get your questions in.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: We love them, they're really interesting, and uh we like talking about those.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right on.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, Branna quickly coming your way.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, I have a glass of wine in front of me, red wine here.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if Chris does too, probably.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I no but Brennan, you didn't answer my email, so I didn't, you know, I didn't know what to do.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't know.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know what happened actually is I did answer your email and I even included a question about the mic and I forgot to hit send.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on that note, welcome to Planet Geo, Brenna.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to have you.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh look for you.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, what do we have?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of wine are you drinking?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, maybe we should start with that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is a nice glass, too.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, these are incredible.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_04: They're um fancy, they're like paper thin.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's if you look at them the wrong way, they shatter, which is incredible.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but sometimes you can rest in my house.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, sometimes you can drop them and they don't, but other times you like hold them too tightly and they just kind of burst.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: But okay.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks like it's a white wine.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I'm cheating a little bit.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: This is uh cider made by a friend of mine called it's called Scar of the Sea, is the label, and he makes wine as well from the central coast of California.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: But I love cider and I love his cider, and I always, you know, we talk about terroir and wine, and it's always good to point out that there's terroir in cider and chocolate and all sorts of other things as well.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, cool.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, excellent.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's oh, that's great.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome to Plan Geo.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're excited to have you.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this is an interesting conversation for me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I did not grow up like drinking wine at all, so I know very little about wine, as Chris will uh probably attest to.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know that there's red and white, but uh there is so I went to uh graduate school in Alberta, in Canada, and there's this huge like legacy of Canadian geology professors who they retire and then they all go quote unquote consult for wineries in British Columbia.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it seems like a great gig to do in retirement, and so that's how I kind of learned the word terroir and everything.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh so I'm excited to talk to you about this because uh it's something that's very interesting to me, even though I know nothing about it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I'm so excited to be here.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, Brenna, we're gonna start off with a question that we ask all of our guests, okay?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because I definitely remember the moment that I fell in love with geology.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was just this big, huge impact on my life, and I knew it right away.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I think Jesse had a kind of a similar experience.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: Did did you ever have like this aha kind of moment with you where you just knew this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: How did you end up here?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yes, absolutely.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_04: So I went to school in California and I knew that I wanted, I'm from Minnesota, I'm from the Midwest.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so I knew that I wanted to go to undergrad in California.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I knew without a doubt in my mind that I wanted to study marine biology.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: And so when I went to look at schools with my parents, um, we drove down the coast.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_04: So we drove down the Highway One, all of California.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_04: We actually started in Seattle and drove all the way to San Diego.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: And my dad is a geologist, and so he spent the whole drive watching the um cliffs on the side of the road.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I spent the whole drive watching for like dolphins and whales and stuff in the ocean.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_04: So I was like looking out to my right, and he was looking to his left.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: And I eventually went to school at UC Santa Barbara, and I I mean, just what a place to go to school.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my God.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there we go.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's a dream, it's beautiful.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's hard to concentrate sometimes, but I would imagine, yes.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: But it's beautiful.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: And in my freshman year, I took a geology class because I kind of thought it was funny.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like my brothers are geologists too, and I was kind of like, oh, this will be great.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, you know, like it'll be fun.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: I can like call for help or whatever.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: And it was really just an intro class.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: And I my dad'd been trying to tell me that geology is cool for a long time, never listened, couldn't care.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: And about halfway through that semester, I went on a road trip down to Southern California, and I caught myself looking to my left at the cliffs instead of at the water.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, oh no, I'm ruined.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, goodness.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is a great story.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, Chris, hold on.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let me back up, Chris, because you're the first person that we've asked this question to who actually has, you know, family members who are geologists who kind of caught the bug.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: But there's like two ways kids can go, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: They can either definitely want to do what their parents do, or like definitely not want to do what their parents do.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So did you grow up with like rocks around the house?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Were you kind of like turned off by too much geology growing up?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is that was that kind of the dynamic or probably.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I just didn't care.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like I my dad would tell me these like amazing things, and I was just kind of like, okay, whatever.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I just didn't care.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: But I I do think that it really gave me a an appreciation for the natural world, you know, and for you know, being outside and for science.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: So I knew that I liked those things.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: I just thought that I liked the biology side of it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: So was there something particular that you saw on that trip, or was it just like the realization that wait a minute, maybe I've been just fighting this?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think it was just the putting together of the pieces.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was really being able to see that you can see a glimpse into this big picture pretty quickly.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that I found that really satisfying.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas, you know, marine biology, you're like, cool, I'm gonna swim with sharks, and then you're like counting phytoplankton cells for four years.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: And like it was a little bit of a letdown.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, brother, the backstory here is my my father was a high school biology teacher, and Chris's father was a high school biology teacher.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we grew up in the biology sphere.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: My sister is a high school biology teacher too.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, you know, I'm the black sheep who went into geology, and Chris and I have a running joke that we go to family events, and and it's always this biology versus geology thing.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So happy to hear you converted, but I think you do have an aquatic biology undergrad degree and a geology degree.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So did you have this transition?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Was it midway through?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Were you already like too deep into biology, or did you still like it so that you went for both uh both degrees?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think I still liked it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, I was so like my whole life I wanted to be a marine biologist.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think I really fought the geology thing for a while.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_04: I really wanted to do the marine biology, and I was like, well, maybe like I'll just do some because I was um I was also good at it, which I think was probably because I had all this like geology stuff in the back of my head.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: And and that's nice when you're in college and you don't feel like you're very good at a lot of things.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: So I liked it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that little that little hint of being good.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that I guess this is I don't know if it's the same in Santa Barbara when you're there, but you know, the the places at Penn State and when I where I went to undergrad, the geologists were like the ex engineers and ex pre-med people who who didn't really like it or didn't want to work that hard for a grade and went over to geology and had a lot more fun and did some really cool stuff too.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think uh there's something to be said about that, just sort of enjoying what you're doing and being good at it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Berna, I'm curious, what what did your dad do then?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And what do your brothers do?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: So they are all in uh like mineral exploration.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: So they're in the junior mining industry and do kind of grassroots prospecting, boondogging.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean uh up in Minnesota or are they kind of uh in places all around?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: Mostly based in the Midwest, so Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and then one of my brothers is in um like North and South Carolina is mostly where he's based.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um he's also done some work in other parts of the world.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's totally interesting.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I went, I did my PhD in Canada, and the you know, junior exploration companies, especially minerals, are everywhere.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I never really could could put my finger on the industry, like understand the industry itself.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many little companies, and uh there's a lot that uh sort of go under frequently and then get are reborn in various ways, but I didn't know that this existed in the Midwest, that there was companies that that operated in the Midwest.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that's really interesting.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_04: There's the Canadian Shield down here a little bit too.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's amazing.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so, Branna, you worked in the mining industry too, didn't you, for a while?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_04: So I ended up doing my master's degree uh based in kind of structural controls on synorogenic gold deposition.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: And you're gonna have to explain what that is.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like Jesse doesn't know.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm too busy looking at my wine right now.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really okay, yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Minerals.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get to the wine here, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, okay, sorry.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: So just looking at how tectonics, how structures, faults, and folds can control where you would have a, you know, an economically viable gold deposit, particularly.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I was I was doing that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_04: It was um really, you know, inspired by the work that my family did, and again, being kind of really excited by the idea of being able to kind of work with them, but in my own way.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so we all kind of did our own things.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: I was really into structure, and you know, one of my brothers is more into you know geochemistry and one of them's more into more like actual core logging and that kind of stuff and defining things like that.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: And so it was I felt like I liked having my own niche within the same world.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's and did you stay out in California to do that?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: I did.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_04: So partially because I did the double major, by the time I was done with my undergrad, I was pretty checked out on biology.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: I'd finished most of that degree, but I was I felt like I was behind in the geology part.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_04: And Santa Barbara has a really great department, and I felt like there were pieces of it that I didn't have, and also it's Santa Barbara since so I stayed for to do my master's for another two years with my advisor there.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you did uh how many years did you kind of work in the in the exploration industry then?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um so that's a good question because it really overlapped with the wine.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: So it was probably for you know two years where that's most of what I was doing.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_04: And then like it just kind of like swapped.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like I did more and more wine work and less and less um exploration work.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: So I would kind of get mostly with my family, I would get kind of hired out as a consultant to do various things here and there and did a little bit less of it as the wine stuff got going, but most of the wine stuff at the beginning didn't pay any money.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: So Okay.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And is that what you're doing full-time now?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is is the the terroir work?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So could you define that term for us?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Terroir, right, is how it's pronounced.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Can you define that for us?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've heard it defined by money people who know a hell of a lot less than you do, and they all have different definitions.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So could you could you like nail it for us here?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_04: So there are really two definitions, but the main thing to keep in mind is that you know, terroir is basically the complete set of natural circumstances that make up the growing conditions of a certain place.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's everything.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_04: So it starts with the geology, but it's also the topography, the slope gradient of the hill, the aspect, the facing direction of the hill, the climate, you know, down to the microclimate between the differences, you know, between vine to vine, and all of those characteristics that go into making one spot and it can be a vine, it can be a country.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: And then the secondary definition is that it's also the characteristic taste that you can potentially perceive that sort of represents or encompasses all of those things.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting, because I always kind of thought of it as like the soil, as like a soil first uh sort of thing.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you're describing it as this all-encompassing natural phenomenon, which I frankly kind of like more, I guess, and and makes more sense a little bit, I suppose.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's also the taste profile.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Chris.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: No, I just I wanted to back up a little bit because now we've defined what a terroir is, but we haven't really defined what you do.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, so you worked in the mining industry, now you don't do that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: So what do you do now?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: And like how did that transition take place?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of an interesting story, and I'd like to hear it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is totally interesting.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to hear this.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was um as as many things are, it was just a total and complete accident.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you say you talk about getting bit by the geology bug, like we talk about getting bit by the wine bug.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: You just you get into it pretty quickly.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but so I started working at a tasting room when I was living in Santa Barbara, and so that's also how it all kind of overlapped.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is that in grad school?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Or okay.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like right as I was finishing grad school.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: And so I it was it was a tasting room that was really cool.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: They had this big beautiful like chalkboard map on the wall, and they had soil samples in little jars, and they had geologic maps out on the tables just to kind of like lean into the whole terroir thing, and I just thought it was so cool.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I I kind of wanted a a little escape from the rest of grad school craziness.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, well that you get in when you're writing your thesis that everybody goes down.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh familiar with it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're a part of it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm part of the I'm potentially driving force.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like my graduate students may argue I'm part of the problem.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, I really just was really into it really quickly.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_04: And because it was, you know, a very like terroir-focused place, they were really encouraging of me doing more work in the wine industry.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I just started right away and I got really lucky.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: I met some really amazing professionals who were really, really, really passionate about geology.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I had no idea.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I grew up with a family of geologists and no one ever thought it was cool.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then all of a sudden, I'm, you know, at a wine tasting and there's these like famous sommelieres who are like, oh my God, you're a geologist.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, Do you know?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: Did you mean that?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, right.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what the word is actually?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was like strange.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_04: Did you think I said something else?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, no one it was bizarre.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I remember calling my dad and I was just like, it's the strangest thing.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_04: But people just listen to me talk about the difference in you know, grain sizes for like 15 minutes.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Chris and I, we have we are, you know, people are contractually obligated to listen to us for 15 minutes, but but you're they're like doing it for free.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing and by choice.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was the craziest thing.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it really was.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: Whenever I think about like those early days, I'm just I mean, I it was the enthusiasm from everyone that I met that I was just like, this has got to be a thing.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_04: Why would you do anything else when people are just you know hanging on your every word about the difference between intrusive and extrusive volcanic rocks?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's just like a dream, you know?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's great.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's very cool.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is crazy, actually.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is this because you know you where you are?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot abandon your teaching career and go do this.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I might too late, man.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's too late.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, Brennan, is this niche to where you are, do you think?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or do wine people or or you know, farmers is this what they really like?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: They pay attention to this.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I never knew.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm shocked, actually.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, it's all over the world.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I have worked all over the world at this point, and I mean, people are so kind and generous and truly enthusiastic and truly excited to learn.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the amazing thing about the wine industry, is it is this intersection of so many parts of the world.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: And so obviously, there's you know, chemistry and um organic chemistry that are involved in learning how to make wine.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: There's, you know, farming, there's a ton of biology, you know, botany, and there's also human history.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_04: So people are really interested in like the deep history of different places.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_04: There's art to it, so there's a lot of like artistic expression and creativity.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: And I think because of that, no one can ever know, like no one can ever be an expert in in almost anything.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_04: And so there's this really amazing community of shared knowledge and shared.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: You teach me something, I'll teach you something, and we're learning together, and this kind of like feeling of we all have something to learn and we all have something to share.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's really interesting.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: And uh a bunch of new questions just popped into my head.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, here we go.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, take another drink of wine because I'm gonna do the same because Chris is getting going here.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um Branna, can you though finish that like the thought off of how did you all right, what was the transition then?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: When did you decide I'm gonna leave the mining industry and this is the direction?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, can you do that?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to know kind of also, were you kind of going off on your own as like an independent consultant, or like how did you structure that that sort of excursion?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think there's a lot of people, like a lot of my students would be curious about how do you make a career for yourself.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, you know, kind of kind of frame it in that way, maybe that would be very useful.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I I mean I really started off doing I just said yes to everything.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: I did anything and everything that I possibly could that would keep me involved in the wine industry.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so I I I mean, the first thing really was I had I knew someone who was a wine importer and he wanted to kind of better develop some of the like geology sections on his website.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_04: So from each country that he imported in, he wanted to kind of have the basics, and he just wanted to learn more about geology, and so we actually traded.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_04: So I would go over to his house, you know, once every two weeks, and he would give me like a wine tasting lesson, and I would give him like a basic intro geology lesson.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: We did that for about a year, and at the end of it, actually, he invited me to go to France, and he was like, Well, you like now let's apply it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: Like, let's go check out these vineyards, and then I was like, Yeah, I'll put together like a whole trip and research everything.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_04: We actually went to basically like the French geological survey office and met with some people there to really get into it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: And and again, it was sort of as an exchange for the trip.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, all right, Brenna, hold on a minute.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: You have taken geology and trips to a whole nother level.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is why we go into geology because it's an excuse to travel, and now you've like you.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: You pulled the carpet out from underneath everybody else with this.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is a whole different level of scheming here.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's no longer like going to look at volcanoes is the coolest thing.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's going on a wine tasting trip because you're a geologist.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's amazing.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: This it's on real.
• 22:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_04: No, I mean my parents for the longest time, I mean, they're s super sweet and very supportive, but they called it my ruse.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: They were just like, I can't believe you're getting away with this.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's great.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, that that's a lot of uh jobs though, are just you know, how did you pull that one off?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: How did you figure out how to make that your job?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you went to France.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: You went to France, yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're you're saying yes to everything, which uh first uh let me just like underline and and double click on that.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Say yes to everything.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you're building something, if you're going for something, just say yes to everything.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's excellent advice, I think, to to anybody.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and so I also like I worked at a at a wine shop.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: So I, you know, for a minimum wage, just helping to sell wine so that I could be there to taste things and so that I could learn about different wines, also so that I could get the employee discount.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um just amazing.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Never, never a bad reason.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: But but also like that's that's kind of a tricky thing with wine, is you really do have to taste the wines.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_04: You have to know them, you have to understand them.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I think something that was maybe a little different from my approach because I was I was 25 and I didn't know anything, and I didn't expect anyone to listen to me about anything.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think I was lucky in that sense because there are a lot of geologists who kind of retire into the wine consulting path.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, that's great.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: It sounds really great, but I think that they miss the wine part pretty often.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: They miss the connection to the wine and they miss the ability to really connect with wine professionals and to treat them like really high-level professionals who maybe they don't, you know, they probably don't know hardly any technical geologic terms, but they do know their properties and they do know a lot of kind of personal experience.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think Yeah, that that that's a good point.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, for sure.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_04: So I was just lucky that I was, you know, like a very young female who was really, you know, like I bartended until two o'clock in the morning.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: I, you know, I was like working many jobs to kind of keep my foot in everything that I wanted to do and to really start from square one with wine.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So can you kind of tidy that up and like where are now you working full-time on wine stuff?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll get into what wine stuff is, I think, uh, next to sort of like let's dive into the geology part.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: But is that what you're doing kind of full-time?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you working for yourself here for the most part?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean you're working for clients, but you're like a consultant or contractor.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that kind of what's going on?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, absolutely.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I do it kind of, you know, it snowballed.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_04: And so it it really started by doing a lot of education work, a lot of kind of behind the scenes things with importing and exporting and educating, you know, wine professionals, someliers, winemakers, and kind of how to help them understand the basics of geology.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_04: And that eventually slowly led into me being able to do my own fieldwork, so do my own vineyard explorations, which was what I really wanted to do from the beginning, but I didn't feel totally qualified.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: So I dipped my toe in kind of slowly to being able to help people understand their actual properties and help people understand how to, you know, farm more responsibly, more precisely, and kind of with respect to the the geologic basis of of each place.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, I think that provides a nice framework to dive into the case.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: But I want to know how long the transition took.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like, was how long was this process?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: If you you said dipping your toe in and like, all right, I'm in, this is what I'm gonna do.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And and I'm assuming too, like, are are you a consultant?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Is that okay?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so it's probably been almost eight years.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_04: So it's going on eight years.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're uh I mean you do a bunch of of things uh based on your website.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you do some really cool drugs.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Your artwork is very is very cool.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I really like those.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but a winery or a vineyard comes to you, presumably vineyards would come to you mostly.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is that mostly the case?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what happens?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: Well, usually they it's a good question.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, usually they come to me and they just want to learn more, or sometimes they just want to communicate better what they already have.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's a lot of what we do, where they're just kind of like, you know, we understand our property, but we are having a hard time communicating what makes it really unique and special.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's kind of the simplest kind of projects that I do.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_04: And that's why I started doing the drawings, is because it was just kind of like, how can we, how can we take something complex?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like wine is already kind of snobby, and so you don't really want to like then also get too technical and snobby and like really push people away.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_04: But it's kind of how can we, how can we really bring people in to just appreciating the place and appreciating this like little sliver of the earth as much as you possibly can in a simple, kind of beautiful, approachable way.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so that includes uh sort of mapping.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You said you you're doing field work and going and and doing some mapping of the soil, of the geology of the terroir.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe yeah.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so, I mean, like I said, I spent a long time just doing whatever someone wanted.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: So maybe someone would say, I want a summary of the geology, someone would say, I want a map, someone would say, I want to actually understand the terroir and what it is that is making, like they're like, we know our property, we know this hill slope tastes like this, we know this one tastes like this, we don't know why.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so it was kind of like, okay, like let's actually dig in.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so as I kept doing that more and more, then it would be like, all right, let's dig a hole in the ground and check it out.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so then more involved studies that are usually pretty long-term studies will be, you know, digging holes, either auger holes, and usually both auger holes and like soil pits that dig into the earth in between the vines, and using that, and then taking soil samples, but also under, you know, we really try to go to the bedrock so we can kind of understand what's really controlling all of this, and using that to kind of then come up with a story of what's going on on that property and how it really might relate to the rest of the factors of terroir, to the you know, slope aspect, that kind of thing, and also maybe the taste of the wine.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to talk about that.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have so many questions.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're just bubbling too.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: I really do.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going, Jesse.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, beach with a bunch.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: So, Brennan, um, same grape, different slope, and you're saying different taste, and the vineyard wanted to know kind of why, right?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: So, can we talk geology then?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like what have you found?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: How can the same grape, same vineyard, so really the same slice of land, just you know, subtle differences, tell us what you found.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us why.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_04: So my main thing is that I always say, you know, terroir is this complex uh thing with lots of different pieces to it, but the geology is the first, the main, the like uh immovable, unalterable, literally like the bedrock, pun intended, of what makes a place what it is.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_04: And so, as you know, the different types of rocks are gonna weather at different rates and in different ways.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's going to shape the topography.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's going to control the way the weather and climate is able to move around the topography.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: And then more precisely, different types of bedrocks are gonna form different soils with a different chemical makeup.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_04: Some will weather quickly and have really deep, rich soils, some will be super, super shallow.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then they'll also weather into different textures.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_04: So more clay, more sand, more rock, less rock, which will influence things like how that piece of the property is able to hold heat or is able to hold water.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought about the heat aspect.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and so the rocks really, I like to think they control everything.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, or at least they start.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: We agree.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can speak for Chris.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: We agree.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: They control everything, they control the biology.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Biology is mostly getting in the way, unless it's a you know, a nice grape.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Unless it's grapes for wine.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's right.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then they can they can stay there.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: So continue.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really interested in what you're saying.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_04: So the other thing that I have to make a point of saying, especially to geologists as opposed to wine people, is that vines and vineyards are super unique in that they actually grow on rock, which is amazing.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_04: And so sure there's terroir to other crops, certainly.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: But what's really exciting, and I think also why wine people are so into geology, is that if you're growing tomatoes, they're probably going to be grown on a more typical silty loam that's at the bottom of an alluvial valley and it's 50 feet thick, and there's bedrock is really far away.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, can you define what a silty loam is?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_04: So loam is just a mixture of textures of clay, silt, and sand.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_04: And a silty loam would be like has a little extra silt.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you're talking about like uh, you know, these things are growing on places that have a lot of soil and not a lot of bare rock, like bearing.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Not a lot of bare rock, maybe not even any little cobbles, but like they're just deep, homogeneous, water-holding, rich, luscious.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: They're just there to like feed food, you know, like they're there to make food.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: They they hold all the stuff, they've got everything.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, vineyard soils are classically really, really weak soils.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: They're hard to compare to other agricultural soils.
• 31:32
  unknown: Yep.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And weak soils by meaning they have lots of cobbles and and uh this brings up a little real quick questions, just so we can like all visualize this.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: How deep do grape vine roots go?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: How thick does it matter?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like how when you're augering, how deep do you go, I guess?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or can you just kind of give us a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of you said you go down to bedrock, so yeah.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: Well, so we go down to bedrock and beyond.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_04: So the roots travel through the fractures in the bedrock.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've seen soils that have, you know, 10 meters of quote unquote soil on top of them, and then there's true solid bedrock with vertical fractures through it, and you can dig down deep and you see the roots.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I don't think anyone really knows.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: You can find the examples.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, you can see 10 meters deep.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I don't know how people know that number.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm like, yeah, did you dig a 10-foot hole into the rock?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: Or basically it's they will go down as far as they can until something stops them.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_04: And so often that happens.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing for a vine to have I'm blown away.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking, you know, it's like a foot, maybe, or something.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it matters.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have to go down to bedrock and deeper to really evaluate, you know, what the grape is seeing as far as the geology is.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: So possibly.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, one thing that we look for is, you know, they don't always go down that deep.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_04: There are things that can stop them.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: So there can be like a hard pan, there can be too much clay that they can't make it through, or that constricts them.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there can be like a chemical barrier, especially in areas that have a lot of limestone where it just gets to be way too alkaline and too harsh.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, water, they don't like to have their feet wet.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_04: So if there's a water table, they'll kind of like pull up.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then also that's a cute little uh image there.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're fine pulling their feet up out of the water too.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: And um the other one last thing is that you also have to, you may have to encourage them.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_04: So if people are fertilizing and watering their vines, they're actually irrigating them.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_04: You tend to get most of the roots in just like a little cone right around the vine.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: But you can encourage them.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: It also makes them more resistant to changes in climate or to, you know, extreme weather.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: If it's best if you encourage them to push their roots as far down as possible because then they have more consistent access to water when they need it.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Burn, I have a question that just popped into my head.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, do grapes then and their deep vines, they must help slope stability quite a bit then, right?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean It's a good question.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: You probably don't have a lot of mass wasting.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: Probably not, but I think it really depends.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's actually something I should know more about.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: But in some areas you're allowed to terrace the vineyards because then it stops things from like if you put your rows going straight down, you do get a lot of erosion in between the rows.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's also another farming question where, you know, because the vine roots can handle so much, there's a lot of really horrible kind of chemical farming that's done to get rid of everything except the vine roots.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's like if you ever see a vineyard that doesn't have like any grass around it, that's probably not a good sign.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um because they're getting rid of it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: And if you allow cover crops to grow in between, that's one thing you can do to encourage the roots to go down farther.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_04: And it can also help stop erosion and increase slip stability.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um can I go or are you gonna go?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you can go.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I I approve it.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's just this one.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: All right, all right.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Brenna, is there a perfect recipe for a terroir for growing grapes for wine?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: So people think so.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_04: People think people are on a constant search for it.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: And uh one of the main things that people go back to is burgundy.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_04: So in sort of northeastern France are some of the finest, some of the most expensive, the most famous, the most literally like mythological lines in the world.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: And there's other regions that kind of compete as well.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_04: But the main key that people think is limestone.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: So people really, really think that shallow limestone soils are kind of the key and like the holy grail.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_04: I have had so many people ask me and just do anything they can.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: Like people are desperate to find limestone in California.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: And unfortunately, there's just not a lot of it.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: Almost none.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's so interesting.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: I would have thought slope direction, slope angle, moisture content, but you're saying limestone's more important.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: So they crave a basic soil, basically, is like so.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't really agree with that.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_04: I think that like the wines of Burgundy are exceptional for many reasons.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_04: And also aspect has to do with it.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: So in Burgundy, there's you know, Jurassic limestones on this kind of like perfectly, almost perfectly east-facing slope.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: And so in that part of the world, east facing is a really important thing because their summers are so humid.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's kind of, you know, like in the in the northeast where you know it's really humid, and that contributes to a lot of mildew and stuff.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_04: You don't want like gross things growing in your grapes.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_04: So those east-facing slopes, the sun when it rises in the morning, allows that to kind of burn off right away and kind of get some like early morning heat.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: The basic soils tend to actually there's papers about this.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_04: I don't remember all the details, but more basic soils tend to produce wines that are higher in acidity.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_04: It has something to do with the um ability to uptake potassium or something.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's kind of a role.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_04: So you get kind of acidic wines, and then the limestone thing is pretty amazing because the limestone actually, as it weathers, the pure limestone, just dissolves, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_04: And all it leaves are impurities.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can get 10 inches of soil, but that's something that's come from the weathering of I'm totally making this up, but the weathering of 10 meters of limestone and has concentrated all of these, like it's really, really, really rich soil, but it's really thin.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so it doesn't get too rich.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like a deep clay soil that would have a different expression than these kind of, you know, it's but it's really it's like a Goldilocks thing.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's like all of these pieces that interact together in the right part of the world.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like you can taste the soil?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: Does that sound stupid?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is that I mean that's actually a really good question, Chris.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could you say, oh, this is a limestone soil wine and this is not, or or what is the the thing that you can taste if you can't taste soil of these terroir you know parameters, I guess?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I think that you can to some degree.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, wine people love to blind taste, like that's just our favorite thing.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_04: And because you learn, you learn about things without uh any sort of preconceived ideas about what they are.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so I've done a lot of blind tasting for soils, and sometimes I've done really well, and other times I, you know, have been totally wrong.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of reasons.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's a lot of reasons behind it, but um, I do think, and what I learned early on is that I I think the main correlation that you'll find between certain wines and the specific soil or or the specific geology is in the texture.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think it's a mistake to say, like, you know, limestone smells like raspberries or something.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like a lot of the aromatics that are developed in making a wine come from complicated interactions during the fermentation process.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_04: But a lot of things.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of different variables at play.
• 38:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, keep in mind there's so many things that can happen to a wine after those grapes are picked.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_04: But the consistent things are in textures.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, you can kind of imagine it if and it's not just in the rocks.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like, so if you have a really deep, really, really rich soil, like say you have a vine planted where you would also grow tomatoes, the wine's probably gonna taste pretty like fleshy and rich, versus to an extreme of that, say you have a vine at the top of the same hill, the deep soils at the bottom, and you go to the top of that hill, and there's 10 centimeters of soil, and it's windy, and the vine has to work really, really hard.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna get a wine that's a little bit more austere and a little bit more powerful, probably.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: It really had to fight to get there.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can kind of do that on really broad scales, and then you can kind of get into like crazy little details that are, you know, maybe we're making it.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh on that detail, I mean that's really interesting, and that's a perfect.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that what a great visual right there.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess one of my questions that I wanted to ask before Chris so rudely interrupted me earlier is um how uh how localized are differences in terroir?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm standing on one row of of grape vines, how far can I see different parts of terro things with different terroir characteristics, or is it the next row over?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I guess what is the scale of differences that you would map as a geologist walking around a vineyard?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: So I always start by saying that you know there's terroir at every scale, kind of like how there's geology at every scale, right?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like you can look at structural shapes in mountain ranges and you can see those same kind of shapes under a microscope.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_04: So that happens with terroir too.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can totally talk about terroir in terms of the terroir of Napa Valley versus Sonoma versus Santa Barbara County, or name any French wine region.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_04: You can talk about the difference between this vineyard here and this vineyard 10 miles south.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_04: And you can also go to a vineyard and you can see sometimes they're pretty homogenous, but you know, it's like you can always kind of find differences.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, sometimes it's right in your face.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_04: Like sometimes, especially in Burgundy, you'll the top of the slope, you'll be standing on white soil.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: You walk 10 feet down and all of a sudden it's bright red, like blood red.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: And then you walk another 10 feet down and it's just like deep brown.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it doesn't take a genius to identify some of those differences.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_04: But what I like to approach things by are, you know, where if you have experience with the property, like what are the vines doing?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe that'll help us start.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe there's something that looks significant to us, but the vines aren't behaving differently, or the wines taste the same.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_04: Or maybe there's something that we can't quite understand why just from walking on the surface.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_04: But it they're really weak here, they're struggling, they're super vigorous here.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_04: Let's find out why.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_04: Or, you know, sometimes that like that's why people will call me, is they'll be like, I don't know how to explain it, but these two parts of the property are just totally different.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: And then there's also the metrics of how carefully are you tasting.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_04: So you can probably find differences because there's literally infinite ways that things could be different.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_04: And so you kind of have to decide and you have to like put your box around it in a way that makes sense, that is farmable, that is manageable, that's understandable and communicatable.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: So, Brenna, you go and do this for for farmers.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: I really have two questions that I'm burning to ask.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: One is do the great farmers change their practices based upon your analysis of the terroir?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's the first question.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, in short, yes.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm one person, and so I don't work with like tons and tons and tons of people.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so usually one of the qualifications of me working on a project is that it should be a thing that we're in together.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so the goal is we'll work together, they'll help me understand their property, and you know, I'll help them tell a story.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think that there's always that piece to everyone that I work with because it's certainly not like a requirement if you own a vineyard that you have to do terroir studies.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_04: So they're they're probably pretty nerdy already, like they're super into it already.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um people we love.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_04: But then, you know, more practically, I think the things that I get really excited about working on or developing more are things like, you know, different terroirs hold water in different ways.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_04: So how can we use that to mitigate irrigation?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_04: Especially in California, almost everyone irrigates their vines.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, how can we more precisely irrigate vineyards so that we're wasting less water?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_04: And where are maybe certain vineyards that are or certain parts of a vineyard that maybe you could experiment with dry farming and not have to irrigate and baby those vines into kind of sustaining themselves?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_04: Or you know, how are there parts of the property that would be easier to transition into organics or into biodynamics or into you know things like that?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: Or so those are the projects that are that get really exciting for me.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Can I can I also follow up on the on that real quick, Chris, before I just interject your so that's describing like you you you've worked with sort of in place vineyards that are currently active, right?
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever worked with anybody who's you're thinking about building a vineyard somewhere and they're sort of asking you to survey.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Preempt before they plant the vines and stuff like that?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_04: A little bit, but it's pretty casual.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: Usually at that stage, I because there's so much that goes into it, and it's such an expensive thing.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's like selecting rootstocks and you know, which is the whole thing.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's a lot of super expensive things.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: I tend to get nervous, and that's more stuff that I'll do really collaboratively, like with friends, where it's kind of like I'm not quite comfortable not getting sued.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm like in my ability to not get sued.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that that's uh it's a fair reason to not do something.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_04: But that doesn't mean that, yeah, you know, like there's fun things that you can do, but I I there's always a lot of caution with that kind of stuff.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, sorry, Chris.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: Brenna, my second question was I mean, there are a lot of vineyards out in the West, you know, Washington, Oregon, California, but even we have them a we have them in Michigan, and I'm sure Minnesota does too.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: They're all over the place, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: How big of a market are we talking about for your line of work?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like is that a great question.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: Is this an opportunity for geologists to go into?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: I actually want to double down on that one because you know, there's some people in my research group who will probably listen to this and want to, you know, perhaps do an internship with Brennan Quigley.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, how I yeah, that's a great question.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: How big is the job market here?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think it's both.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that it's huge.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: I think that there's so much potential, and I am like constantly trying to recruit more geologists.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, like I said, I'm one person, there's only so much that I can do.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that there's also just endless avenues for different kinds of ways to approach it and different like things that you can do to help, you know, build a better understanding of how geology is related to you know, growing grapes.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: And there are vines everywhere, you know, they're all over the world.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great opportunity to travel, it's a great opportunity to be outside, you know, doing the things that like helped us all fall in love with geology in the first place.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_04: The trick is that the science, and you know, the science is kind of like moving slower than the industry is itself because it's not an industry that's it's not, you know, like an engineering industry that's based on the slow scientific method way of doing things and published papers and stuff.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_04: So I also think that there's a huge opportunity to write more say this kind of carefully, write more comprehensive scientific literature on how geology is related to terroir.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there tend to be small departments and they tend from the papers that I've read, they tend to kind of miss the point.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's the same thing where it's like they're not really talking to the wine growers to kind of, you know, really figure it out.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_04: And also it's so complex that I mean, I swear to God, I read one paper that was like, we're maybe this won't sound crazy to you, but that was like, oh, we studied these three vineyards, and then when we had a bunch of like graduate student tasters, they were unable to determine the difference in the wines.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, where is I know plenty of graduate students, and being a former graduate student, I can tell you that is not a signal.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, you know, you do have to have trained tasters.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_04: You do have to, you know, it is a skill.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think that even the even the research side of it has a lot of opportunity.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: But then the kind of caveat to all of this is that there aren't a lot of examples out there.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_04: There aren't a ton of people who are doing it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_04: And it's pretty difficult to, even if people are really interested in, you know, what I'm doing, it's difficult to propose a project to someone or even to kind of talk about budgets when it's not something that they've ever had in their budget.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_04: Even if they have a lot of money to spend, they're kind of like, we don't have a place for this yet.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_04: And so I also think as that gets more common and as more people do it, and as it's successful and as it's helpful, and as it makes a positive impact on people's farming and on meaning, potentially their actual yields and their profitability and their relationship with their customers, then I think that's something that can get built into budgets.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I have projects that I'm long-term with that I've been working with for three years.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_04: So like that can happen, but there's a lot of kind of against the grain fighting because you really have to train the client, as opposed to like if they're hiring a winemaking consultant, they're like, here's the going rate, you know, like here's the industry standard, here's where that fits in our budget.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_04: And so there is a big, there's a lot of work to be done on the business side as well.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, that's really interesting.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you're in a potentially a good position to to kind of grow, you know, outside of just yourself as well, as you've described it.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, I I said it jokingly initially about like undergrad interns, but you know, I I'm sure there's undergrads or graduate students who would freaking love to do a summer internship, you know, kind of working and thinking about this type of stuff, uh, and and just just for the sheer experience of it, um, and to put it on a resume.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it sounds really cool.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um just last one one last thing, I kind of want to touch on the educational aspect because you know, initially you sort of described it as that was your way in, it was the educational component or the you know wineries or vineyards wanted to convey terroir and see how geology integrated.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that still a major component of what you do, or is it more the sort of technical analysis for the you know internal documents of the vineyard or s or something like that?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, at this point it's definitely still I would say it's definitely about half and half, but the half of education has gotten kind of taken over by the podcast stuff.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_04: Which isn't I mean, it's a great thing, but I I mean I want it to always stay half and half.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: And right now the podcast is taking over that, but I would like to keep doing the maps as well and keep doing, you know, I've I've done a lot of kind of like talks at various groups of things, or maybe it's for a restaurant group, maybe it's for you know the wine education council or things like that where you know you can really integrate that.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's a good intro into the podcast, I guess, Chris.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you want to?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on, no, nope, not yet, not yet.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: It is a it's a really good segue, but I have another question, Brenna.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: So screw segues.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's just but this has been burning.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, all right, Brenna.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: What does it look like when Brennan Quigley rolls up to a vineyard, steps out?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Do what do you like?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have your rock hammer?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have your Brunton compass?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have your geology hat on?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what does this look like?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: She's nodding for the listener here.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she's nodding enthusiastically, yes.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: When looking at Chris like Chris, you're a dumbass.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: Paint a picture for what this whole scene looks like because I'm having a hard time with it.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_04: It depends on where it is.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_04: But like, and especially Napa vineyards are pretty fancy.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone has their like fancy vineyard cars, and like I roll up in my field vehicle that is not a fancy, like beautiful pickup truck that looks like it just got washed that morning.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it an old beat-down pickup truck?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what is this?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's a RAV 4, which is a great car.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_04: Nice.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's a great one.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great little thing, but it's in rough shape.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um as a field vehicle should be.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's had some adventures.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it totally has.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I always have my rock hammer, always, always.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_04: My master's advisor taught us early on that he was like, we we did our field work out in like the snake range in northeastern Nevada, and he was like, I don't care if you bring water, I don't care if you bring sunscreen, I don't care if you bring food, but I better not catch you without your rock hammer and your hand lens.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_04: He was just like, I don't want to see it.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: All right, there you go.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_04: Because like you're not doing geology or and your compass, obviously.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's like you're not doing any geology if you don't have those things.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_04: So I still feel that way.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: Good to know.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I feel I feel good now.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now we can segue back into the other thing.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the segue into the podcast, which is called Roadside Terroir.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you're in your second season now, or have you started the third, second season?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a monster of a second season.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a two-year-long second season.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: So give us the pitch on this and also how you know, sort of the uh how you got into it, how it's going, kind of update and and what where you're going in the future with it.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um generally, as obviously we're on a podcast, so we're generally interested in all things podcast.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean, this is easy to explain to geologists too, because it is based on the geologic guidebook series, Roadside Geology.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: And so I had this idea from like the first trip that I went on to France, where you go on these trips, everyone was kind of like, oh, it's amazing.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's like we have our own geologist in our pocket.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_04: And so we would be driving through these wine regions, and people would say, What's this?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_04: What's that?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_04: What is this over here?
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and as much as I could, you could kind of explain, like, oh, there's a major fault there, and this is a grabin, and that's why there's the east-facing slope.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so the goal is that it's the original goal was that it's that same feeling of like we want you to feel like the listener feels like they are on a road trip through a wine region with us.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's great.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so for the listeners who don't know, uh, roadside geology are these like, well, in the US at least, they're state-by-state guidebooks that kind of give you the roadside geology tour of the state and all the kind of interesting stuff.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Chris and I love these.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: We have used these on many a rock collecting, rock hounding trip to states other than Michigan.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think I have probably 15 in my bookshelf right now, if not more.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: These are great.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I love the idea.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great, great pitch for it, for sure.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so it kind of like was supposed to be a simple thing and snowballed into something humongous.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_04: And like now we're in Burgundy, which is a huge, huge task.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so we started in Santa Barbara because that's where I was living at the time.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_04: And it was really just it's kind of, you know, what do you see when you drive down the 101 on your way to a vineyard?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_04: And then when you're driving through the San Inez Valley, what do you see?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: And we do within each episode, we have interviews with multiple producers.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_04: We also talk to a sea urchin diver who talks about and she calls it mare, which is you know, ocean terroir.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, how basically how amazing is our planet, and how this geologic story is underneath our feet all the time, and we can kind of get a sense of of deep geologic time and how it influences farming, how it influences food.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_04: Like we talk to chefs sometimes, and also, of course, a lot of how it impacts wine, and also how it impacts human tradition and culture and history and stuff.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's very cool.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: So in the second season is uh Burgundy, which is harder to do because of the history or because of the size of it.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: What why is it a bigger thing to bite off?
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, it's ambitious because it's, you know, probably one of the most historic and and currently most important wine regions in the world.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a lot of people, you know, I have a book right on the table over here that has like over a thousand pages on burgundy, and there's multiple books that have over a thousand pages.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't really know what I was thinking.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: It was possibly a huge mistake.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that happens.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: That happens.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so Brenna, what is your favorite wine?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's a good question.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, right now I'm drinking a lot of burgundy because I'm working on the burgundy podcast, but that is a pricey habit.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's it's a tough one, but there are lots of affordable and delicious burgundies that you can get.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I love them.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_04: I love them all.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_04: I would say find a producer or find people who who truly, truly care about the land.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_04: And just find any wine that is dedicated to expressing terroir because whoever made it is really trying to tell you a story about what makes this one little piece of the earth really unique.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: So do you have uh one in mind, like uh a vineyard or or uh a winery that you have in mind?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can put in the show notes and you know.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so if we're talking burgundy, I would go with probably Chantreve, who are we did harvest with this past year, and they're incredible.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_04: They also have a whole range of wines, so most producers will also have their like entry-level wines.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_04: And so you're gonna want to look for the word like Bourgogne, which is basically the French word for burgundy, and that'll be their kind of like entry-level regional wines.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um I mean, Chantreve is a f the first name that comes to mind all the time for me personally.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_04: And then if you want to think about California, I would maybe say there are some people doing some really amazing things and Scar of the Sea, so the cider that I'm drinking right now.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_04: They also make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and some other things that are amazing.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um his wife's label is called Lady of the Sunshine, and she does incredible, like some of the best wines, some of my favorite wines to open and drink hands down of anything else, and they are always affordable, which is adaptable.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess a sort of a follow-up a little bit is I guess what other crops you mentioned cider as having terroir.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's curious to me that cider wood does beer do hops have like what what what would you put in this category of like terroir matters versus it doesn't so much matter?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think there definitely is with beer.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's a little bit more complicated because the fermentation is different and they actually you know often add things to the beer to flavor it.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um the conversation with the hops is a little bit different, but I I'm certain that there is a terroir to hops, like especially to like the hops themselves, of course.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_04: And then chocolate is a good one.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_04: There's definitely like terroir to really fine chocolates.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_04: Coffee is probably the one of the main beverages.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_04: Mezcal.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: Which I'm like tempted to do a podcast season on mezcal, which would be super.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, my God, you should.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: You definitely should.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I actually think that there's probably a good conversation to be had about marijuana.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that those all kind of make a lot of sense, actually.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: So Brennan, and we're getting close to the end here.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: So where can people find out more about you?
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I do technically have a website called BrennacQuigley.com, which is shamelessly hasn't been updated in a long time.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_04: But it has the basics.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't updated it in like more than three years, actually, you are pretty searchable though.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's true.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're you're very searchable.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, yes, yes.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: That's good.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then Roadside Terroir has a website that has tons of information.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: We actually do a good job of keeping that pretty up to date with what's going on.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_04: And then I'm on Instagram, just at Brennan Quigley.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we always wrap up our interviews with asking this question.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, what has been your best day as a geologist?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be exploration geologist or wine geologist, whatever you would like to say.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I love this question.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_04: And um, you know, there's probably like a more adventurous, exciting example.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_04: But the first thing that came to mind was over COVID, I was in California and my family was back here in the Midwest.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_04: And my dad and brother wanted to do some field work out at a property that's kind of been in my family forever out in Jackpot, Nevada.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_04: And so we all kind of drove out to Nevada during lockdown, and we got to do like a few days of intense field work in the desert of Nevada, which is just one of the most spiritual places for me.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_04: I think, you know, the desert is a is a special thing.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_04: And in the past few years, prior to that, they'd been helping me with all of my wine stuff.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_04: So they'd been helping me run analyses, helping me kind of analyze them and understand what was going on.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I was able to bring a really special bottle from Napa of uh Heightsellar Trailside Vineyard, which was my first like huge project that I completed in full and was really, really proud of that they helped me do.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, we ate some like cheap desert food and drank really excellent bottle of wine, and it was it was just a really special day.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a great day, right there.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good answer.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a good answer, man.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, good geology, moderate food and great alcohol.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is like everything you could possibly want in a geology day.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, amazing.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I I know we've just passed our final question, but I guess one question that's always kind of uh been in the back of my head is how do you learn about wine?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: I guess is there a good recommendation you would have for somebody who is uh present company included, pretty ignorant about wine, who kind of always was curious about learning more.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a good way to do it, or is it kind of come down to like I've heard that some people can just taste flavors and some people just can't, for instance?
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: What what's your thoughts?
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_04: I think some people are naturally inclined to be like quote unquote super tasters, but I think that's a bit silly.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's a muscle.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that anyone can learn about wine by drinking it and enjoying it and thinking about it and just trying to make conscientious choices about what you drink and taking, you know, it's so it's a fun way to learn.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I think any wine shop that you go to, if you talk to who's there or at a restaurant, if they have assemblier, they love talking about it.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_04: They love teaching people about it.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so just just starting with buying things that you think are fun and thinking about it and using it as an excuse to buy more and think more.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_04: There are a lot of also like really good introductory resources for learning about wine too.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, I mean, I actually started with wine for dummies.
• 1:01:32
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so there is a wine for dummies, there's, and then there's other layers of that too.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_04: And there's really kind of beautiful books written by people that are a little bit more like novels or that are more like textbooks or however your like learning style is.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_04: There's podcasts, there's, you know, I think anything that you can do to be thinking while you're drinking will turn into more questions and more questions and more curiosity, and you'll enter the rabbit hole just like the rest of the people.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, with that, uh, Brennan Quigley, thank you very much for joining us on Planet Geo.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a pleasure.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned a ton, and and you've sort of gotten me excited to learn about wines and the geology of wines.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: Not a little, a lot of actually.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like this was a super fun interview.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you so much for donating your time.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: We really appreciate it.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, thank you so much for having me and for being interested.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll have to have you on sometime again soon to talk about an you know an update again.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, great.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, that's a wrap for Planet Geo this week.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just a reminder, you can follow us on all the social medias.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're at Planet Geocast.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to our website, planetgeocast.com, and there you can subscribe.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can support us.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a support us page, and we always appreciate that.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Please send us an email if you have questions for us or for Brennan Quigley.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Send us an email, planetegeocast at gmail.com.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest, Brennan Quigley, can be found at Brennanquigley.com.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: We'll put that link in the show notes.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you could do us one huge favor, please leave us a rating and a review.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't asked for those in a while, but it really helps the algorithm whenever you do that.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, show us some love that way if you like planet geo.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing is the first link in your show notes is our Camp Geo educational conversational podcast.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have all of the stuff that Chris and I teach in our physical geology classes, basically college level introduction to geoscience with images is there.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: So click on that link in the show notes, and you can listen and learn at your leisure.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.