Deep Time
Ancient forces pulsing through the vineyard.
Quail Run’s Vineyards sit in the foothills of Southern Oregon’s Siskiyou Range, an ancient land of immense geological contrast. Spanning two distinct terrains—Talent and Jacksonville—the vineyards rest on a foundation shaped by hundreds of millions of years of tectonic upheaval and volcanic activity. The soils here are not just dirt but the remnants of vanished worlds.
The Talent area is built upon geological formations that are nearly a half billion years old, among the oldest in southern Oregon. These soils were oceanic terranes, metamorphic bedrock that was formed deep beneath primordial seas, then thrust onto the continent through tectonic collisions. Composed of basalt and shale, these soils offer a foundation of mineral complexity that vines draw upon to shape their character.
In contrast to Talent’s ancient terranes, Jacksonville’s landscape reveals a younger chapter in the region’s geologic past. The sandstone and conglomerate formations here belong to the Cretaceous period (145–66 million years ago), when this land was a prehistoric seafloor. At Crater View Vineyard, layers of fossil-rich sandstone preserve the remnants of that era—ammonites and other marine fossils embedded in rock, silent witnesses to a time when marine reptiles ruled the oceans and dinosaurs walked the earth.
This contrast—between Talent’s deep-time origins and Jacksonville’s fossilized seascape—imbues the vineyard with a rare geological complexity, one captured in every harvest.
