Geology, Frontier History, andSelected Wineries ofthe HillCountry Appellation, Central Texas QE 168 by H55 R67 R. Rose Woodruff, 1999 Peter and CM. Jr. GEOL AGS Guidebook 25 Geology, Frontier History, and Selected Wineries of the Hill Country Appellation, Central Texas Peter R.Rose and Charles M. Woodruff, Jr. April 23, 2005 UNMERSrfYOFTEXAS "The sun, withall those planets revolving arounditanddependent on it,can still ripen a bunch ofgrapes as if it had nothing else in theuniverseto do." Galileo II Foreword This field trip has predecessors thatdate back to 1992. Atthattime a trip wasled for the Austin Chapterofthe Society of Independent ProfessionalEarth Scientists (SIPES), the first field trip to explore the common ground between geology and winein Central Texas. The accompanying guidebook (Rose and Woodruff, 1992) gave special attention to historical sites and events along the route. Similar trips were run for the 1994 meeting of the Gulf Coast Association of Geologic Societies, and in 1997 for the 34th Annual Meeting of SIPES; the guidebooks produced were variations of the 1992 version (Rose and Woodruff, 1994;1997). In 1998, Austin Geological Society sponsored another in this series of field trips, but this excursion visited a different set of wineries, and the guidebook gave greater emphasis to geology and less on history while retaining key papers from the previous volumes (Woodruff andothers, 1998). A similartrip for GCAGS in 2002reverted to the 1997 route. Today's trip, and the accompanying guidebook represents a combination of these various previous works, and the wineriesvisitedinclude aselection from thesitesvisited during the previous field trips. The guidebook is arranged in the following way: After a series of short topical papers, a road log presents the route taken and various geologic, geographic, and historicalnotes along the way. Using this log, the route may be retraced via automobile. At the end of the road log are brief discussions of the geologic and pedologic settings of the vineyards at each of the three wineriesvisited. Following the sitediscussions is a compilation of references onhistorical sources, wines, and geology. Andat theend of the book are appendices that include a guide to key wineterms and techniques of wine-tasting, blank "tasting forms," and on the last page, names and addresses ofcontributors tothis book and addressesand telephone numbers of the three wineriesvisited. Acknowledgments We are indebted to the owners and operators ofthe wineriesvisited today. We thank them for their courtesies and warm hospitality— both on the day ofthe tripand during previous visits whenthe trip wasbeing developed. These men and womenare pioneers; they are on the frontiers ofknowledge, and theyhave incurred significant financial risk. They exemplify the courage and determination typical of the Texas pioneer spirit, and we salute them. We are indebted to geologist and ex-Shell Vice President, James E. Wilson, for kind permission to include his article on terroir, which is an excerpt fromhis book, "Terroir: TheRole Of Geology, Climate, AndCultureIn The Making Of French Wines/'. We also thank Elizabeth E. Sherry for her organizational (and computer) skills in keeping track of the various versions of manuscripts dealing with winesand geology. We thank MikeReagor, Rangeland Management Specialist in the Liano Field Office of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service for providing maps and interpretive text from thesoil survey of Llano County. Finally, we thank Woody de Luna, of Block Distributing Company of San Antonio, publisher of the Wine Gazette, for permission to use the wonderfulcartoon by John Branch. Charles Woodruff, Jr. Peter R.Rose Austin, Texas April 2005 111 IV Table of Contents FOREWORD iii THE HILL COUNTRY APPELLATION REVISITED-COMMON GROUNDBETWEEN GEOLOGY AND WINE IN CENTRAL TEXAS by CM.Woodruff, Jr 1 THE BALCONES ESCARPMENT-WHEREEAST MEETS WEST by CM.Woodruff, Jr 3 GROUNDWATER, SONGBIRDS, CAVE CRICKETS,ANDLANDOWNER RIGHTS - A CONTEMPORARY TRAGEDY OFTHECOMMONS INCENTRAL TEXAS by James Sansom, Jr. andPeter R.Rose 11 FRONTISPIECE 18 FRONTIERHISTORY, LLANO UPLIFTREGION by Peter R.Rose 19 TRIBAL CONFLICT ANDVENGEANCE IN THEFRONTIER HILL COUNTRY byPeter R. Rose 27 THEY BURNEDTHE COURTHOUSEDOWN: PRAGMATIC VS. LEGALISTIC APPROACHES TO COMMUNITYHEALING by Peter R.Rose 37 FRONTIERHISTORY AND WINE by Peter R.Rose 39 GEOLOGY AND WINE byPeter R.Rose 41 THE UNIQUE FRENCH TERM TERRORby James E. Wilson 45 GEOLOGICTIME SCALE 47 ROCK UNITS ALONGFIELD TRIPROUTE 48 ROUTE MAP 50 ROADLOG by Peter R.Rose and CM. Woodruff, Jr 51 HistoricalReferences 85 Wine References 87 Geologic References 87 GEOLOGYAND SOILS OF SELECTED CENTRAL TEXAS VINEYARDSby CM.Woodruff, Jr 89 FALL CREEK VINEYARDS 89 BELLMOUNTAIN VINEYARDS 93 BECKER VINEYARDS 97 WINE TASTING NOTES FORMS 101 AFFILIATIONSAND ADDRESSES OF CONTRIBUTORSAND WINERIES 109 V "The relation between maps and wine is a very intimate one. Wine is, after all, the unique agricultural product whoseprice depends entirely on whereit comes from. The better the wine, the more exactly it locates its origin-down, eventually, to onediminutive field..." Hugh Johnson TheWorld Atlasof Wine (Fourth Edition,1994) VI -- TheHill Country AppellationRevisited Common GroundBetween Geology and Wine in Central Texas CM.Woodruff, Jr. This field trip may seem to be an unconventional geologic excursion,but there is much logic behind it— beyond the sheer pleasure of tasting local wines and enjoying a bus tour of splendid Hill Country scenery. The rationale goes literally to the root of the nascent wine industry of Central Texas. As with any vascular land plant, therootsof the grape vineextract water and nutrients from the soil zone to sustain the plant. The uptake of soil moisture is ofspecial importance to a fruit-bearing plant such as Vitis vinifera, the wine grape. Clearly, wine is fermented juiceof the grape. And as succinctly noted by Johnson (1994), "Every drop of wine is rain recovered from the ground by the mechanism ofthe grape-bearing plant..." With this in mind,one can readily appreciate the connectionbetween geology and the growing ofgrapes. Geologists are trained in recognizing the great diversity of substrate materials and the constructional and destructional processes thatacton Earth materials tocreate and altersoils, iandforms, sediments, and rocks as the Earth evolvesthrough time. Geologists also are generally familiar withthe hydrologic cycle as a keynexus of processes acting at and near the Earth's surface. This cycle includes the fate of rainwater on the land— the routing of incident rain through the circuits and buffers within soils and substrates to produce, from place to place, varying amounts of runoff,recharge, and evapotranspiration. This knowledge of Earth materials and the cycling of waters thus provides the connection between the professional concerns of the geologist and thoseof the growerofgrapes and the producer of wines. The near-infinite site-by-site permutations between bedrock, soil, landform (including relief, slope, position on slope, and slope aspect), micro-climates associated with the varied slope conditions, and the overall prevailing climate, as well as local weather (which, of course, changes day-by-day)— all combine to impart distinctive characteristics to a vine's fruit, and tothe bottled product. Furthercomplicating theissue are the varietals, the many different kinds of grape that mayrespond quite differently to the complexities of substrate and soil and slope. The French have a word for the subtle, but inalienable, influences of the ground on the grape. That word is terroir, whichroughly translates to the English cognate, terrain. But it means more,and iteludes exact translation. It certainly includes cultivation, which in the great vineyards of France has involved centuries of husbandry. The implications of this word are discussed in this guidebook by Peter R.Rose and by James E. Wilson. Suffice it to say that the variables that contribute to the qualities of wine are many, and in the end, reductionistscience can never analyze nor fullyunderstand whatmakes agreat wine. The rise of Central Texas as a commercial wine-producing area dates back only to the mid-19705. But notwithstanding this recent emergence of the region, Texas has a long historical wine-making tradition that goes back tothepioneer German andAlsatian settlers, who produced winemainlyfor family consumption. And even in the twentieth century, wines were produced commercially in Texas, withmore than a score of wineries in1920 (Johnson, 1994). Butprohibition killed the industry,and it took special action of the State Legislature in 1977 to allow thereemergence of viticulture and winemaking inTexas. Texas, however, possesses an even more fundamental grape-growing tradition: As noted by Johnson (1994), the state'ssize and expanseofecological nicheshas resulted in Texas truly being America's"Vineland." Of the 36 species of the genus Vitisknown world-wide,15 are native to thisstate. And as discussed herein by Rose, a Texas-native variety of Mustang grape provided the disease-resistant root stock that saved the European vineyards from thephylloxeraepidemic in the late nineteenth century. 1 Today, the Central Texas Hiil Country is denoted as a distinct American Viticultural Area (AVA), which in America, is the formal appellation of origin. The Hill Country, however, is a vernacular name, and its boundaries are a bitfuzzy (see discussionby Woodruff, 1997). As ageologic province, it is