I was at the Wallula Vineyard last week with Alan Busacca, a very knowledgeable geologist that has been studying Eastern Washington for many moons. Our goal was to dig some 7-8 feet deep to see what our soils where made of exactly on that site. What we saw was straight windblown loess for 8 feet with a darker top layer from organic matters mixed with the silt and then a whitish layer from calcium carbonate deposits. Very uniform, packed with minerals soils. We did not see any ash layers trapped in the silt that would have helped us dating the soils (about 1 inch of soil is deposited by the wind every 200 years in this part of the Columbia Valley). For example Mt Saint Helen had a major eruption 14,000 years ago and a white ash layer can often been seen that help dating the soils above or below the ash layer. No matter, I have learn tons from Alan on that day and I can tell you that we have some pretty special dirt up at Wallula that will help produce some very distinctive wines with high mineral characters.
