May is Volcano Preparedness Month in Washington State – important in a state that has five active volcanoes, most within close range of populated areas. In fact, the entire west coast of the Americas, down to the southern tip of Chile, is lined with volcanoes, various groups following the fault lines that trace the coast.
Wine-wise, however, the Americas don’t tend to get much play in talk about volcanic wine regions. Let’s look at why not.
Washington State’s volcanic wine areas
The volcanoes that get all the attention are slightly inland from Washington’s coast, behind the non-volcanic Coastal Range, because they are tall and accessible – but it’s cool and damp over here, so this isn’t where the state’s major wine regions are. Winegrowing happens mainly on the warmer, drier eastern side of the Cascades.
There are no active volcanoes on this side – in fact much of it is quite flat, some of the land even below sea level. But under the soil is a giant slab of basalt – some 81,081 sq miles/210,000 km2 – from cataclysmic lava flows that occurred mostly about 1.1 million years ago. These lava flows extended across the Columbia Basin all the way down into what’s now Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The thickest part is in the Pasco Basin, estimated to be 13,000 ft (nearly 4,000 m) thick.
As if that isn’t dramatic enough, at the end of the last Ice Age came the Missoula Floods, when an ice dam burst and released as much as 600 cubic miles (~2,500 km³) of water in two days. This completely rearranged the earth’s surface, carrying sand, soil, gravel, rocks, boulders and depositing them along the way. As a result, the Columbia Valley – Washington’s largest AVA – has an enormous array of soils, but it’s all underpinned by basalt.
The wines we tasted from Washington came from two AVAs within the Valley: Walla Walla and the Columbia Gorge.
Walla Walla may be the state’s most recognised wine region, with almost 3,000 acres (c 1,200 ha) of vines and 135 wineries. Elevations range from 400 to 2,000 ft (122–610 m), and the AVA breaks its soils into four types, all but one incorporating basalt. The wines we tasted come from L’Ecole No 41’s Ferguson Vineyard, a 42-acre (17-ha) plot on a high (1,350–1,450 ft/411–442 m) outcropping of fractured basalt covered with a thin layer of loess.
Between the dearth of actual dirt for the vines to grow in and the strong wind, the reds grown here (Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc, Merlot and Malbec) tend to be concentrated and thick-skinned – characteristics that read in the dark, savoury wines they produce.
The Columbia Gorge wines come from Loop de Loop, a 9-acre (3.6-ha) regeneratively farmed vineyard at 1,250 ft (381 m) up the side of Underwood Mountain – actually a volcano, though extinct. This area also sits on deep basalt – up to 590 ft (180 m) deep on the mountain – but adds a component of well-draining volcanic soils made of volcanic ash and basalt alluvium. The elevation, soils and slightly damper environment make for wines completely different than those of Walla Walla, some 170 miles (274 km) east, as you can tell from the pale, brightly acidic Pinot Noir we tasted.
Oregon
Follow the Columbia Basin basalt flows south-west into Oregon, past Portland and into the Willamette Valley, the state’s largest AVA. Several of the sub-AVAs within it are defined in part by their volcanic soils – for instance the Dundee Hills, often referred to as the Red Hills of Dundee (not to be confused with the Red Hill Douglas County AVA in Umpqua Valley), so prominent is the reddish hue of the weathered basalt clay soils. Referred to as Jory series soils, they drain well but also retain moisture, making them well-suited to finicky Pinot Noir (although they also turn out fine Chardonnay, as Bergström’s version below makes clear).
Jory soils are also found in the Chehalem Mountains AVA, an uplifted land mass that reaches the highest point in the entire Willamette at 1,633 ft (498 m). The AVA is large (62,500 acres/25,300 ha) and claims the most diverse array of soils in the region, but the south-eastern corner is dominated by Jory soils, and, by extension, Pinot Noir. Most of the wines we tasted from Chehalem came from Adelsheim, all of which stood out for their lightness and finesse; from the collection below, see especially Adelsheim’s Boulder Bluff, named for the basalt boulders they pulled from the vineyard when they planted it.
We also tasted quite a few wines from the Eola-Amity Hills, where the basalt bedrock is overlain by shallower soils than the Jory series soils, creating what’s called the Nekia series. A long, narrow AVA running north–south, it’s cooled by the Van Duzer Corridor, a gap in the Coast Range mountains that channels in cold air from the Pacific. Pinot thrives here as well as Chardonnay – there’s more vineyard devoted to Chardonnay here than any other Willamette Valley AVA. Cristom and Bergström were particular standouts.
California
California is dotted with volcanoes, both extinct and active, from the towering Mount Shasta in the far north to the Salton Buttes in the far south. Most of the wines tasted for the Volcanic Wine Awards came from Lake Country, Napa and Sonoma.
Lake County, 90 miles (145 km) north of San Francisco, is defined by the Clear Lake Volcanic Field, which last erupted between 8,500 and 13,500 years ago, spewing volcanic debris all over the place. You can see this easily in the chunks of obsidian in the vineyards at Obsidian Ridge; you can see it in the High Valley sub-AVA, where the west end of the AVA is defined by volcanic ridges created by the Round Mountain volcano; you can hear it in the name of the Red Hills Lake County sub-AVA, a string of volcanic hills in the northern Mayacamas at 1,350–3,000+ ft (410–900+ m) shaped by the eruption of Mt Konocti some 11,000 years ago.
We also tasted quite a few wines from Napa and Sonoma, which owe their complex geology to shifting tectonic plates – not just along the San Andreas fault but also the Hayward, Rodgers Creek, Mayacama and several more fault lines – allowing for repeated eras of volcano formations and eruptions, leaks, land-mass folding and general geological chaos. Depending on location, you might find hard white ignimbrite, soft white rhyolite tuff, gravelly breccia, basalt, shiny black obsidian, light, bubbly pumice and more. Generally, higher concentrations of volcanic rock are found in the regions’ higher elevations. Sonoma’s Moon Mountain, for instance, stands out for its abundance of volcanic rocks compared with the alluvial soils of the valley at its base; Rockpile, Sonoma’s northernmost AVA and another volcanic-soil hot spot, starts at 800 ft in elevation, is mostly over 1,000 ft and rises to 1,800 ft (240–550 m). One of our standout wines was Laurel Glen, from east-facing slopes at 850–1,100 ft in elevation in rocky volcanic soil.
On the Napa side of the mountains, Domaine Helena’s vines grow on the side of Mt St Helena, not a volcano (and not to be confused with Washington’s Mt St Helens, which is a volcano) but covered with much volcanic material from an ancient eruption of a nearby volcano. And then there’s Storybook Mountain, a remote winery perched at 1,250 ft (381 m) in the ruddy, rocky volcanic soils of the Mayacamas mountain range, where Zinfandel excels.
There are of course many, many more volcanic spots up and down the California coast as well as east, into the Sierra Nevada; just follow the hot springs, from Calistoga in Napa to Paraiso in the Santa Lucia Mountains, Montecito in Santa Barbara and many more – and then study the vineyards nearby.
Chile
We tasted only a handful of wines from Chile, which was too bad, as the country has a stunning number of volcanoes: at least 90 Holocene-era volcanoes – a handful active, the rest dormant but threatening (see map from ArcGIS here) plus thousands more, according to Volcanes de Chile, a winery that specialises in wines from volcanic soils. We tasted their Parinacota cuvée, a Carignan/Syrah blend named for a 20,787-ft-high (6,336 m) volcano on the border with Bolivia; the grapes, however, came from Loncomilla in Maule.
We also tasted wines from Cachapoal – but there are volcanic patches all the way down into Patagonia. As in California, the diversity of soils is due to millions of years of tectonic action along the faults that underline the country, and the rocks and soils have subsequently been weathered and jumbled together by glaciers, earthquakes, landslides and water. To find the wines from volcanic soils, you’ll have to do your homework, but it’s safe to say that there’s never one too far from wherever you are in Chile.
As with all our tastings for the Volcanic Wine Awards, the wines below were presented blind, grouped by region, to a panel of wine experts headed by Szabo, our own Sam Cole-Johnson or me. Here are the volcanic wines from the Americas that the panels deemed medal-worthy or worth an honourable mention.
Gold
Archery Summit, Arcus Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 Dundee Hills
Bergström, Bergström Vineyard Chardonnay 2023 Dundee Hills
Cristom, Eileen Vineyard Chardonnay 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Cristom, Eileen Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Cristom, Marjorie Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Laurel Glen, Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 Sonoma Mountain
Lingua Franca, Estate Chardonnay 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Lingua Franca, The Plow Pinot Noir 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
L’Ecole No 41, Cellar Selection Ferguson Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Walla Walla Valley
L’Ecole No 41, Ferguson Vineyard 2022 Walla Walla Valley
Obsidian, Obsidian Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Red Hills Lake County
San Pedro, Cabo de Hornos Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Cachapoal Andes
San Pedro, Sideral 2023 Cachapoal Andes
Starfield, Fiano 2024 El Dorado
Storybook Mountain, Bottled Poetry Zinfandel 2021 Napa Valley
Storybook Mountain, Estate Reserve Zinfandel 2021 Napa Valley
St Francis Zinfandel 2023 Moon Mountain District
Van Duzer, Bieze Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Eola-Amity Hills
Volcanes de Chile, Parinacota Carignan/Syrah 2022 Loncomilla
Silver
Adelsheim, Boulder Bluff Pinot Noir 2022 Chehalem Mountains
Adelsheim, Bryan Creek Vineyard Blanc de Blancs 2018 Chehalem Mountains
Adelsheim, Quarter Mile Lane Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Chehalem Mountains
Bergström, Bergström Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 Dundee Hills
Cristom, Mt Jefferson Cuvée Pinot Noir 2024 Eola-Amity Hills
Erath, Knight’s Gambit Pinot Noir 2023 Dundee Hills
The Eyrie Vineyards, South Block Reserve Pinot Noir 2021 Dundee Hills
Loop de Loop, Light Anthology Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Columbia Gorge
Pride Mountain, Vintner Select Merlot 2022 Napa County/Sonoma County
Rose & Arrow Estate, Eola Springs Vineyard Chardonnay 2022 Eola-Amity Hills
Rose & Arrow Estate, Gathered Stones Pinot Noir 2022 Eola-Amity Hills
Starfield Cinsaut 2022 El Dorado
Storybook Mountain, Estate Reserve Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley
Storybook Mountain, Mayacamas Range Zinfandel 2021 Napa Valley
St Francis, Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 Rockpile
St Francis, Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Alexander Valley
White Rock Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Napa Valley
Bronze
Adelsheim, Bryan Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Chehalem Mountains
Appassionata, Andante Pinot Noir 2019 Willamette Valley
Bergström, Bergström Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024 Dundee Hills
Big Table Farm, Sunnyside Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023 Willamette Valley
Björnson, Art Pinot Noir 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Cristom, Chardonnay 2023 Eola-Amity Hills
Domaine Helena, Petite Vine Petite Sirah 2023 St Helena
Obsidian, Half Mile Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Red Hills Lake County
Rex Hill, Sims Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Dundee Hills
Rose & Arrow Estate, Highland Close Pinot Noir 2022 Chehalem Mountains
San Pedro, Altaïr 2022 Cachapoal Andes
Sequoia Grove, Morisoli Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 Rutherford
Starfield, Viognier 2023 El Dorado
Storybook Mountain, Bottled Poetry Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley
Storybook Mountain, Mayacamas Range Zinfandel 2022 Napa Valley
St Francis Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 Moon Mountain District
Wild Diamond, Brisat Moon Tears Albariño 2025 Lake County
Wild Diamond Cabernet Franc 2019 Lake County
White Rock, Chardonnay 2022 Napa Valley
White Rock, Claret 2021 Napa Valley
Honorable mention
Hamel Family Wines, Nuns Canyon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 Moon Mountain District
Loop de Loop, Rock Steady Chardonnay 2022 Columbia Gorge
Pride Mountain, Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 Napa County/Sonoma County
Wild Diamond, Dumb Luck GSM 2019 Lake County
You can find reviews of all the wines tasted, as well as the scores assigned by the JancisRobinson.com editor who tasted the wines (noted in the review). Many of these wines will also be shown at the International Volcanic Wines Conference in NYC on 10 June 2026. For the full results, as well as an explanation of the Awards, see our volcanic wine hub,
