The Winemaker's Dance: Exploring Terroir in the Napa Valley by Jonathan Swinchatt, David G. Howell

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From about 125,000 to 15,000 years ago, sea level rose and fell, but it never came close to what we see today (Figure 21). San Francisco Bay was dry, except for the Sacramento River, which roared through a complex and perhaps verdant system of valleys. The Napa River THE UNDERPINNINGS OF TERROIR F 43 Sea level 15,000 years ago Napa Valley region 15,000 years ago Sea level beginning 5,000 years ago FIGURE 21. Sea level 15,000 years ago was about 350 feet lower than it is today. At that time, the Napa Valley was being eroded by fast-moving streams and the Napa River.

These were not gentle outpourings of lava that flowed along relatively contained, and avoidable, pathways like those you can approach in Hawaii or on Mount Etna. Instead, these were violent explosions of volcanic rock, ash, and gas that burst high into the atmosphere, darkening the sun and creating their own thunderous weather. Any life in the area would have been engulfed by deathly hot rock and dust, much as the victims of the Mount St. Helens explosion were. The aligned trees at the Petrified Forest west of Calistoga, laid side by side like the downed trees at Mount St.

Eisele put in extra drainage and began a program of planting native grass cover crops in every other row in an attempt to break up the flow of water and decrease its cutting power. These tactics have slowed the erosion, but they have also lowered grape yields: competition from the grasses for water and nutrients has dropped his production by 40 percent, a yield that will not sustain the vineyards economically. The situation illustrates not only the constantly changeable life of farming but also the way the energy of water works continuously to balance erosion and deposition.