The Lone Volcano in California's Central Valley | Hacker News Reader

The Lone Volcano in California's Central Valley

nytimes.com

65 pointsbenbreen42 comments

There's a vineyard in that area, Sobon Estates, that has a unique feature. If you look up into the vineyard from the winery, there's a dividing line between volcanic soil and alluvial soil. The same varietal of grape produces a noticeably different wine depending on which side of the line it was grown on.

Do they actually market their wines that way? I thought it would make an interesting comparison, but when I looked on their web site I didn't see any indication of which wine came from which type of soil.

(I'm a wine aficionado who happens to believe that most wine marketing is BS. I'm particularly skeptical of terroir, so a chance to do a proper controlled experiment would be really interesting.)

My position on wine BS is that it comes from two sources:

1. Lack of a robust language to describe taste and smell

2. Variation between people in taste and smell sensitivity levels for individual flavor/smell compounds. It’s like how it would be difficult to talk about color if there were thousands of different kinds of colorblindness and everybody was randomly one kind.

You have to train yourself for a very long time to isolate and identify the many many different flavored compounds and then when you do there isn’t any universal language to have a conversation about them.

The terroir business is similar. Clearly fruit grown in very different places tastes very different, anybody can experience this. When it comes to the fine details though the signal to noise goes way down because of the same lack of language and taste consistency.

Add on the people trying to appear like they know what they’re talking about and you get this mass of nonsense which is very loosely connected with reality.

The same professional taster will at times assign different ratings and features to five glasses poured from the same bottle, and they consistently give typical red wine characteristics to white wine with added odourless tasteless dye.

It's 90% bullshit science and 10% basic measurable characteristics.

Interesting how in the beer industry it's much less bullshity, with multiple characteristics objectively measured both at raw materials stage (hops alpha/beta acid content, essential oil etc, yeast alcohol limit , malt diastatic power) and different stages of beer production (wort specific gravity, fermentation progress etc).

Agree with everything you say. Wine experts do try to use a common vocabulary, but it's a bit of the competing standards problem [relevant XKCD goes here]. Most of the wine training I received working in the restaurant industry was vocab words to generate up-sells, and most amateur wine snobs don't know enough not to fall for it.

I did have a fascinating experience, a bit more than twenty years ago, which pulled back a curtain onto a more interesting reality. I was working in private dining for a winery, one of the perks of which was getting to take home quite a bit of wine and food. One time I got offered the leftovers from a vertical tasting - that's every vintage of a particular wine - from their top-end estate-grown bottling. It was 15-20 bottles, I can't remember exactly, all half to three-quarters full.

Anyway, we decided to do it properly, and tasted them all blind. (I mean, how often do you get a chance to do that with close to five retail figures of wine? Most of us were in wine or food or associated industries, anyway, so it was going to be a good story, and bragging rights, if nothing else.) I think there were six or eight of us - me, my flatmate, the three girls from next door, and a couple of hangers on - and we all (without conferring) agreed on the three best vintages. Some of us ranked them ABC, some BCA, etc, but it was those three in all cases.

I went back to work a few days later, and told the wine maker 1) Thank you, and 2) you might be interested to know, blah blah blah. His immediate response? Oh, yeah, it was years ABC, wasn't it? Which it exactly was.

So, there's a lot of wine bullshit, but not all of it is.

Xkcd 927

Thirty years ago I started a wine-tasting group with the person who is now my wife. There were twelve of us, and one day we did a blind tasting of six California cabs, with Barefoot on the low end ($3/bottle at the time) and Silver Oak at the high end ($50). Everyone in the room ranked the Barefoot first or second, and everyone ranked the Silver Oak dead last. That experience knocked the wine snobbery out of me for good.

It's possible we just got a bad bottle, but I don't think so. I think a dry full-bodied wine is just an acquired taste which none of us had yet acquired. Thirty years on I like Silver Oak better than I did then, but I can list a dozen wines I like better that cost half as much.

There is no such thing as a good wine in any absolute sense except in a few very broad brushstrokes. Beyond that it's all a matter of personal taste.

Even if they are of the same variety (California Cabernet Sauvignon), there is a vast difference in flavor profiles and it would be surprising if the ranking would not come down to personal preference. It would be more fair to compare wines from the same year, variety, and terroir.

Not sure Silver Oak is the best choice for this. It’s a super mass produced wine that basically occupies the market niche of “expensive” at chain steakhouses. I actually like it but it has sort of a specific taste that’s intended to match with big greasy meals.

> Not sure Silver Oak is the best choice for this.

At this point I can confidently say that Silver Oak is overrated, at least as far as my taste buds are concerned. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Has Silver Oak changed much in the past 20 years? It’s been a long while since Ive lived in CA, or really been “in to” wine. But I do recall quite liking silver oak as a “go to” cabernet circa 2000-05, alongside compatriots like jordan, ridge, or alexander valley vineyards.

Heh. Yeah, price and quality are tenuously correlated at best. For years, back when I was a starving artist, but went to parties with people who cared about wine, I had what I called a secret weapon. One couldn't show up with two-buck Chuck, of course, but Trader Joe's also carried a Chilean wine, for $4.59 (or something like that. It was cheap, is my point), which regularly gathered approving comments when drunk alongside wines which retailed at 10x or more. (It was Santa Maria? Santa Clara? Santa something, anyway, and they sadly no longer sell it.) I wouldn't let on, but would mutter something about how underrated Chilean winemakers / terroir could be, and no one ever called me out for being poor!

In our case, with the blind tasting, those wines were all from the same grapes, from the same vineyards, made with the same process, and (for the previous decade or so) under the direction of the same winemaker. (For the record, I would neither then nor now ever consider buying that wine. It was and is stupidly overpriced, in my opinion, and isn't a style - fruitbomb California Cab - that I particularly enjoy.) What made it such an interesting experience is that style and flavor profile had been entirely factored out of our preference equation.

What did form the ground of our opinions was something one might best term Interesting, composed of things like depth and complexity and balance. Like, when it hits your tongue you taste a lot of different flavors, as you hold it in your mouth some of those flavors change, after you swallow some flavors linger and/or change, but none of them ever dominate or become unpleasant. That's still somewhat subjective, of course, but much less so (and more broadly recognizeable) than anything to do with the vocabulary words for particular flavors.

I think that's most of what "experts" are looking for in things they call Good, even though they seldom explicitly put it that way. I can identify those qualities even in foods and drinks that I don't particularly care for, and recognize their absence in things I do. For instance, I can't stand hoppy beers, but Pliny (Elder and Younger) has those qualities, so I can acknowledge that it's good, from a culinary perspective, even though I'll never order a pint; I can crush an order of tater tots, but they're not any of those things, so I'll happily call them crap, with my mouth stuffed full.

I've found my best bet for getting a solid, enjoyable wine for whatever occasion is visiting my local wine shop, telling them what we're eating/celebrating, and letting them pick (I give them a price range too). They haven't let me down yet.

Or for just a drinking wine, any of the Trader Joes Reserve bottles.

I went to a wine tasting party about 15 years ago. All blind and everyone was to bring a red. I think that was the only requirement. Silicon valley techies so most the wines were in the $30 to $50 range with a few closer to $100 and 20+ total bottles. The most chosen bottle was 7 Deadly Zins, a not particularly expensive old vine zinfandel.

I agree. In my humble opinion, there's two general red wine tastes:

1. jammy (like a fruit spread jam)

2. earthy

Over time I've moved more to earthy, but in reality, red wine taste changes drastically with food or other items added to your palette, including other wines, so I've never prescribed to one ideology. Just find what you like and there you go.

The flavor dimensions I can distinguish are:

1. Acid

2. Sugar

3. Tanins (in reds)

4. Malo-lactic acid (the buttery flavor in some chardonnays)

5. Oak

6. An aroma that I call "barnyard" that is present in many old-world wines. I think this is what others refer to as "earthy". Some people seem to like it but I find it very disagreeable.

7. Everything else. Many of my favorite wines have a certain je-ne-sais-quois that I can recognize but not quite put my finger on.

I like low acid, tannic, oaky, and just the tiniest hint of residual sugar. I think this is what most people call "jammy".

I think there’s a third source, which is that it gets you drunk. We like to pretend it doesn’t, and that we can hold our alcohol or that were supposed to spit it out when doing a tasting, but let's be real. Alcohol does a number on your senses and thought patterns, and any conclusions drawn from subjective experiences while intoxicated are automatically suspect.

> Alcohol does a number on your senses

When I was a poor undergrad (and my friends were mostly poor undergrads), we'd buy (say) a six pack or twelve pack of good beer, and (say) a case of a budget brand.

After you've had a few of the good beers, the cheap stuff doesn't taste nearly as bad.

(note that I said as bad. I'm not claiming that it actually became good)

It turns out that this is a very old strategy. From the Bible:

'Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.'

The Bible does have the odd nugget of Wisdom.

Funny how we don't get into wars over this one. It's universal.

John 2:10 New Living Translation (NLT) “A host always serves the best wine first,” he said. “Then, when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine. But you have kept the best until now!”

Backstory. Jesus's Mom invited him to a kicking party, and it was a major drag not having enough wine, so Jesus was like 'hold my beer, I've got this', turned water in the 'good stuff', and they partied all night. Mary, the original MILF, even God couldn't resist.

I've always wondered why I have never seen that marketed or recommended as it's a real thing. This is great first bottle, but that wine over there is just a fantastic third bottle. I wouldn't start off with it but...

I don't know it they market this way. I learned it at the winery, from someone who clearly loved the wine. It was a, "Try these two. Taste the difference?" thing, followed by the story. And then you walk outside the tasting room, look up at the hill, and see it.

It's not that it's bullshit, it's more that it's possible that you are not able to discern or inclined to care or a combination. And it is perfectly reasonable and something that everyone does for most things they consume or use - beer, food, films, cars, sound, furnishings, etc. For countless categories, you can keep it practical or you can delve further. With a film, you can just watch things and like or not like them, or you can pay close attention to particular directors or techniques in structuring a story or presenting a visual.

I do think though that if you have even a passing interest in wine, and are likely to drink wine through your adult life, that a quick course to become familiar with it unlocks something in what you get from it - identifying varieties, faults, etc.

> it's possible that you are not able to discern or inclined to care or a combination

I definitely care. I started a wine tasting group thirty years ago with the person who is now my wife, and today we have several hundred bottles in our cellar. We're not hard-core winos, but we definitely enjoy it, and know our way around a wine list. It's possible that there's something wrong with my taste buds, though I can definitely tell the difference between different wines. I'm no master somme, but I've tried a lot of different wines from a lot of different places over a lot of different years. From what I've been able to glean from my data, the difference in regional flavors has a lot more to do with wine making technique and climate than terroir, which is why I would welcome the opportunity to do a controlled experiment.

Further, perhaps quite a lot of marketing is certainly exaggerated and I wonder how wine gets singled out. Think about how feminine hygiene products are marketed with frolicking white-dressed women, or cars tearing across the landscape, Apple tech, sports drinks, fashion. Here are some phrases from just one particular hiking shoe!

  Mud Contragrip® outsole with chevron lugs
  EnergyCell midsole
  Moulded Ortholite sockliner
  Sensifit™ system cradles the foot
  Advanced Chassis insert

!

Well vintages are definitely a thing.

In your experience, what makes you so skeptical of terroir? As a naive enthusiast, it makes sense to me that drainage, at the very least, would impact the way the fruits grow , and fruit yield, impacting the final product thusly. A large watermelon and small watermelon from the same vine/garden have different flavor

Yes, I agree that theoretically it kind of makes sense, but I've gathered a lot of data over the years and the best predictor of quality that I've found is the wine maker. We've had it happen a number of times now that a wine that we really liked suddenly started tasting different, and it turned out that the wine maker had changed. So this is a confounding factor. I really like California reds, but mostly from Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles. Is that because of the terroir? Or the climate? Or the varietals? Or because there's a community of wine makers that all copy each other? It's really hard to tease these apart.

I grew up in one of the towns near the Sutter Buttes. They serve as a backdrop and are a key geographic feature of the area... but since they're privately owned and access is so limited, very few people have ever interacted with the area in any way.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've been into the interior of the area (most/all via the Middle Mountain Foundation), but they've all been fun experiences. I especially recommend the North Butte hike -- on a clear day you can see pretty far!

https://archive.ph/fsXSP

https://web.archive.org/web/20240322034212/https://www.nytim...

There's also a slice of marine sediment in there along Pass Rd, turned up as the volcano poked through. There are natural gas wells along it.

The Middle Mountain Foundation used to organize hikes in the mountains which were fantastic. Not sure if they still do.

Only a small part of the Buttes are publicly owned.

There's a state park there, or at least one under development. There's no public access to the park land yet. https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23452

Some more history of the park effort: https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=23786

A map of the park land: https://mapcarta.com/26856230

Geology Hub on this feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmfi2JaThSE

https://imgur.com/a/NcBtroN

Stone Mountain near Atlanta, GA evokes a similar bewilderment how it pops from the earth among a completely flag forest. I included a picture of the Atlanta skyline for a sense of scale.

I've driven by that on I-5 a number of times.

Another one that jumped out at me were the cinder cones north of St George Utah. We were driving through to go to Zion National Park, which is not at all volcanic looking in terms of the formations, so it was quite odd to see some volcanic stuff that would look perfectly normal here in central Oregon.

That's in the Basin and Range province (most of Nevada is in this province).

It's a zone of crustal extension, with the crust being pulled apart on an east-west axis. This leads to the characteristic horst and graben geography, with valleys interspersed with mountains. It also means the crust has become thinner. This has brought hot rocks closer to the surface, where some have melted due to decompression, allowing magma to flow up through all those normal faults, creating volcanism.

Google Maps satellite view: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hfQpWZVQRj22Avsd6

You can really see the flatlands around them and why they'd be a refuge in times of flooding.

Surprised there isn't a mention of the Titan silo complex there.

I've driven by these before and they're so strange to see amid such flat surroundings.

You might appreciate my picture of Stone Mountain near Atlanta, GA for a similar feel.

https://imgur.com/a/NcBtroN

Shasta does not count? Isn't it at the end of the central valley/ start of the cascades?

I don't think Shasta is considered part of the valley -- there are 20-30 miles of hills/mountains separating it from the northern end of the central valley (Redding).

That far north is definitely outside the central valley. Once you travel north out of Redding, you're climbing up into the mountains, and it's 60 miles of that before you get to Shasta. Lassen is better candidate, since it actually erupted recently (1921) and is only ~40 miles east of Redding... but it's also part of the Cascade range like Shasta, which sn't really IN the valley.

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