1. What Are Vineyards Made Of? -- A Glimpse of the Very Basics: Elements, Atoms, and Ions -- What Exactly Are Ions? -- Introducing Minerals, Rocks, and Soil -- Functional Yet Beautiful: Geologic Maps -- The Big Backdrop: Plate Tectonics -- 2. How Minerals Work -- Minerals as Crystals -- The Shape of Crystals -- A Span in Composition -- Identifying Minerals -- Identifying Minerals by Hardness and Cleavage -- Intricate but Vital: Cation Exchange -- Explaining Cation Exchange -- Some Minerals of the Wine World -- Native Elements -- Oxide Minerals -- Sulfide Minerals -- Sulfate Minerals -- Carbonate Minerals -- 3. The Minerals that Make Rocks and Soils -- Seeing the Light - While on Vacation! -- The Secrets of the Rock-Forming Minerals -- Olive Green and Garnet Red -- Dark Horses: Pyroxenes and Amphiboles -- Minerals in Sheets: Mica and So On -- Tiny Minerals with Huge Effects: The Clay Minerals -- Kaolinite -- Smectite / Montmorillonite -- Illite -- Vermiculite -- The Workhorses: Feldspar and Quartz -- 4. Igneous Rocks -- Molten Rocks Beneath Our Feet -- Below the Ground and at the Surface: Intrusive and Extrusive Rocks -- Naming Igneous Rocks -- Some Rocks You May Meet in Vineyards -- Thrown from Volcanoes: The Volcaniclastic rocks -- 5. Sediments and Sedimentary Rocks -- The Detritus We Call Sediment -- Easily Overlooked: The Dissolved Component -- A Contribution from Biology -- Hardening Sediment into Rock -- Concretions in Sedimentary Rocks -- Rocks from the Detritus -- The Dissolved Component Makes Rocks -- The Biology Input and the World of Limestone -- Sedimentary Rocks Come in Layers -- 6. Metamorphic Rocks -- The Drive for Change.

The Diverse Dynasty of Slate, Schist, and Gneiss -- Marble, Quartzite, and the Mysterious Serpentinite -- 7. The Rocks Change Shape: Folds, Faults, and Joints -- Even Rocks Can Change Their Shape -- Rocks Can Fracture and Rocks Can Flow - What Decides? -- Bending and Bowing: The Folding of Rocks -- Cracking and Moving: Geological Faults -- "The Earthquake Had a Magnitude of 6." What Does That Mean? -- Unsung but Ubiquitous: Joints in Rock -- 8. The Lay of the Land -- Sculpting the Land: Some Features Due to Erosion -- The Influence of Bedrock -- The Kind of Rock -- The Shape of the Rock -- The Sediment Settles: From Ice, Wind, and Water -- River Valleys -- Rivers in the Hills -- Out on the Plains -- Three Favored Terrains -- Alluvial Fans -- River Terraces -- Hillslopes -- 9. Weathering, Soil, and the Minerals in Wine -- Rock Weathering, or Where Does Soil Come From? -- Soil: What Is It? -- A Growing Vine Needs Nutrients -- A Look at the Nutrient Minerals -- Geologic Minerals, Nutrient Minerals, and Misunderstandings -- A Mineral Taste in Wine? -- 10. Soil, Water, Sunshine, and the Concept of Terroir -- What's Beneath a Vineyard? -- Crusts, Pans, and Hardened Layers -- From Springs to Quicksand: Water in the Ground -- Acid Soils, Alkaline Soils, and the Mysterious pH -- pH Unveiled -- Sunshine Warms the Soil -- Bringing It All Together: Terroir -- 11. Vineyards and the Mists of Geological Time -- The Dawn of Geology and the Ages of rocks -- Relative Geological Time -- Some Principles of Working with Geological Time -- Putting Numbers on the Ages -- The Geological Timescale -- Some Vinous Idiosyncrasies -- Tortonian, Serravalian, and Helvetian in Barolo -- Urgonian -- Muschelkalk -- Kimmeridgian -- Primary Rock -- A Word on Fossils and Wine -- THE Age of Bedrock versus the Age of Soils.

12. Epilogue: So is Vineyard Geology Important for Wine Taste? -- The Label Tells Me the Kind of Soil, So... -- But We Can't Taste Rocks in Wine -- The Taste Reminds Me of Stones -- Science Begins to Show Some Connections -- The Future: How Else Might Geology Affect wine? -- The Wonder of It All .