On today's edition of United We Ag, I sit down with Professor Alex Maltman. Alex is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University, in Wales, U.K. He has a long and decorated career in university teaching and research, on topics ranging from high mountains to drilling below the floors of the deepest parts of the oceans, and with a lot of geological matters in between. At the same time, for over forty years he has grown vines and made wine at his home in Wales. It’s strictly a hobby and there are only twenty vines – but the basic principles are the same as dealing with twenty thousand of them!
Right from the start of this viticultural odyssey, Alex’s scientific curiosity questioned why things were done in certain ways and, inevitably, to the much mentioned but poorly understood relationship between wine and vineyard geology. This has led to publications in the popular press and academic journals, and to presentations around the world. Alex was responsible for the geological entries in the Oxford Companion to Wine and has advised on the geological content of a number of wine books, including the World Atlas of Wine. He is author of the acclaimed book: “Vineyards, Rocks, and Soils: A Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology”.
In part one of this two part episode, Alex give us a lecture on the complete history of wine.