"It’s such a good read…" — Decanter
"Rocks and soils haunt our thinking about wine. We see links, sniff origins, taste connections, digest differences. Is this cause and effect -- or fantasy? Alex Maltman is ghostbuster-in-chief. This wide-ranging and clearly reasoned book shines a torch through the cobwebs." — Andrew Jefford

Burgundy thrives on the limestone remnants of a warm, shallow sea while Sancerre and Pouilly wrap their roots around flint. The finest Pomerols bloom in a ‘button’ of blue clay, and Beaujolais famously begins life in granite. Cabernet Sauvignon loves just about any sandstone and Champagne gets on gloriously with chalk. But is the secret to great port really schist? Alex Maltman, Emeritus Professor of earth sciences at Aberystwyth University, finds himself between a rock and a vineyard place as he explains how a wine’s flavours relate to the geology at foot, and discovers that there is more to ‘minerality’ than mud, rocks and the earth’s stark materials... 

Terroir is as intrinsic to the quality of a wine as the grapes it comes from or the intentions of the wine maker. This beautifully produced and illustrated book looks at the many factors that influence, or don't, how a wine tastes. Professor Maltman poses lots of questions and answers, while busting some myths along the way. 

"It’s such a good read…" - Decanter
"With the ironically titled Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate—the second of the one-two punch that began with Vineyards, Rocks, & Soils— Maltman offers ironclad science in velvety prose to challenge the rampant notion that it is possible to taste the rocks beneath the vineyard from which a given wine hails." - The World of Fine Wine
The author of Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate was interviewed by German magazine Effilee. - Effilee
Recommended in the New York Times’ article “The Most Interesting Wine Books of 2025 - Other Titles Worth Reading”: “If The Cynic’s Guide to Wine puts you in the mood for further myth-puncturing, I suggest “Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate: A Geologist Wanders Through the World of Wine” by Alex Maltman.” - NY Times

Alex Maltman is Emeritus Professor of Earth sciences at Aberystwyth University, in Wales, UK, and the author of Vineyards, Rocks and Soils: A Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology (Oxford, 2018).