What science is beginning to tell us
- alessiabizzarri
- 6 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Can You Taste a Volcano?
What science is beginning to tell us about volcanic terroir
There is a moment that happens surprisingly often around a tasting table.
Someone takes a sip, pauses, and says:
“You can taste the volcanic soil.”
It sounds wonderfully convincing.
We talk about smoke, ash, flint, salt, iron, wet stone. We describe an Etna wine as volcanic, an Assyrtiko from Santorini as mineral, a wine grown on black basalt as though somewhere inside the glass we could still detect the ancient eruption beneath the vineyard.
But can we?
Can a volcano really leave a sensory fingerprint in a wine?
The scientifically safe answer used to be rather frustrating: it's complicated.
A fascinating recent study suggests that we may now be able to say something more.
A rather clever experiment in Auvergne
The setting is the Côtes d'Auvergne, in central France.
Here, vineyards sit on a geological patchwork created by very different histories. Some grow on sedimentary clay-limestone soils; others on soils derived from ancient basaltic volcanic formations.
That gave researchers an unusually useful natural laboratory.
They selected eight vineyards across four areas of the appellation. In each area they compared the same grape variety — Gamay — growing on two fundamentally different soil types: clay-limestone and basalt-derived volcanic soils.
And they didn't simply taste the wines and look for smoky aromas.
They followed the story from soil to vine to wine.
They analysed soil texture and elemental composition. They measured the vines' water status. They analysed the resulting wines chemically, including their elemental composition, acids, tannins, anthocyanins and colour.
Then they tasted them.
For the second vintage, they went one step further: the grapes from all eight vineyards were brought to one winemaker and micro-vinified under standardised conditions, with identical maceration time, temperature and inoculated yeasts and bacteria.
In other words, they tried to turn down the noise from the cellar so that the vineyard could speak more clearly.
And it did.
First surprise: the volcano changed the water
The basaltic soils weren't simply chemically different.
They also behaved differently.
The volcanic vineyards showed greater water availability to the vines than their sedimentary counterparts during both vintages studied. The researchers suggest that these soils could therefore potentially offer greater resilience during drought conditions.
This is an important point because it changes how we should think about terroir.
We often imagine soil influencing wine because substances somehow travel from rock → root → grape → glass.
But soil can influence wine in much less romantic — and potentially much more important — ways.
How much water does it retain?How does the vine experience drought?How does the fruit ripen?
The geology beneath a vineyard doesn't have to taste like anything to change the wine growing above it.
But then things become really interesting
The resulting wines were chemically distinguishable too.
Among the elements analysed, concentrations of manganese, strontium and lithium in 2020, and zinc in 2021, differed significantly between wines from the two vineyard types. The researchers are careful to point out that vintage also plays an important role and that longer studies would be needed before drawing broader conclusions.
And then came the tasting.
The volcanic and non-volcanic wines did not simply divide into a neat category of “mineral” versus “non-mineral”.
Reality was far more interesting.
Differences appeared in colour, acidity, astringency and certain flavour perceptions.
And two descriptors caught particular attention:
peppery and smoky.
In several comparisons, Gamay from the volcanic vineyards was rated significantly higher for these characteristics.
Before we get too excited, however, there is a wonderful detail in the study.
One non-volcanic wine produced in 2021 actually received the highest smoky score of all the wines tested.
That single glass should probably be compulsory reading for anyone tempted to declare:
“Smoky = volcanic.”
It doesn't.
The authors themselves explicitly warn that smoky and peppery characters cannot yet be attributed simply to volcanism; climate, viticulture, vine material and winemaking all need further investigation.
And that is precisely what makes the study so interesting.
So, are we tasting the rock?
Not quite.
The study does not demonstrate that basalt moves through a vine and produces the taste of basalt in a glass.
Nor does it establish a universal sensory definition of “volcanic wine”.
What it does show is subtler — and, to me, much more fascinating.
Geologically different vineyards produced wines that could be distinguished chemically and, to some extent, sensorially.
Using the complete dataset, the researchers found that the wines separated according to vineyard typology. Their modelling suggested that vineyard geology contributed to the expression of sensory differences, although the authors explicitly caution that the results cannot simply be generalised to every volcanic region.
That distinction matters enormously.
Because perhaps the wrong question has always been:
“Can I taste basalt?”
A better question might be:
“Can geology alter the conditions in which a vine grows sufficiently to leave a detectable signature in the resulting wine?”
Here, the evidence becomes much more intriguing.
And what about “minerality”?
This is where wine language and science occasionally talk past each other.
When a sommelier describes a wine as mineral, they may be communicating a perfectly genuine sensory impression: saline, stony, flinty, austere, smoky, chalky, tense.
But that does not necessarily identify the chemical origin of that sensation.
A sensory descriptor tells us what something reminds us of.
It doesn't automatically tell us why it tastes that way.
“Strawberry” in a wine does not require strawberries in the vineyard.
And “wet stone” does not require dissolved stones in the bottle.
Yet this study also gives us good reason not to swing too far in the opposite direction and dismiss geology as irrelevant.
The researchers found relationships between vineyard typology, wine elemental composition and some sensory characteristics. Four descriptors — colour, acidity, astringency and smoky character — were sufficiently predictable from the chemical dataset to warrant further investigation.
That's a far more sophisticated story than “minerals don't have a taste, therefore soil doesn't matter.”
One volcano does not speak for every volcano
There is one final caution — and it is an important one.
This research concerns Gamay, in the Côtes d'Auvergne, over two vintages.
It does not tell us that Etna, Santorini, Tenerife, Vesuvius or the Aeolian Islands should produce the same sensory characteristics.
In fact, expecting them to would almost defeat the idea of terroir.
A volcanic vineyard is not a soil category in the same way that “stainless steel” is a winemaking vessel. Different volcanic regions have different rocks, different stages of weathering, climates, altitudes, water regimes, grape varieties and centuries of viticultural adaptation.
The researchers themselves conclude that these findings need to be investigated in other volcanic regions before broader conclusions can be drawn.
And perhaps that is where the real excitement begins.
Because science isn't telling us that volcanic wine is a myth.
Nor is it telling us that we can taste lava.
It is beginning to give us the tools to understand the much more complicated journey between geology, soil, water, vine, grape, chemistry and perception.
So the next time someone pours you a wine from a vineyard growing on an ancient volcano and says:
“Taste the basalt.”
Don't argue.
Taste the wine.
Then ask a better question:
What, exactly, is the volcano doing here?
That is where the story of terroir becomes really interesting.
Source: Coelho C. et al., A 2-year exploratory study to elaborate a methodological protocol for evaluating volcanic terroir influence in Gamay wines in the French PDO Côtes d'Auvergne, Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, Vol. 139 (2025), 107115.
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