Drunk on Mineralogy - Ruby Hard Cider

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Ruby Hard Cider from the Mountain West Cider Company. 

Although often referring to the strong red color, the ruby is a gemstone that comes in a pink to blood-red hue. The name "ruby" comes from the Latin ruber, meaning red. A ruby is the red variety of the mineral corundum, whereas all other colors of corundum are known as sapphires. Corundum itself is an aluminum oxide mineral, with the chemical formula of Al2O3. 

Ruby crystals from wikigempedia.com

Corundum is one of the hardest minerals on Earth and serves as the 9 index mineral on Mohs Hardness Scale (of which a diamond is 10). This high hardness means many things about the mineral, one of which is that it is very difficult to erode, often being left behind after the host rock has eroded away, but also that it can be used readily as an abrasive. Corundum also has a very high specific gravity (density), especially for a non-metallic mineral, making it fairly easy to identify. Corundum is frequently found as a metamorphic mineral in marbles, gneiss, and schists but can also be found in igneous rocks such as granite and nepheline syenite. 

Looking at the ruby specifically, the red color is created by the addition of small amounts of chromium into the crystal structure. The color can be variable though, depending on the amount of chromium and iron, with the colors themselves often ending up being region specific. Terms like "Burmese" ruby for those found in Myanmar or "Thai" ruby for those found in Thailand are then sometimes used, but the color is not always a great indication of source. 

Natural rubies, however, are extremely rare. And even when they are found, they are often imperfect specimens that require heating and chemical treatments to perfect them for gem purposes. Because of that, artificial rubies are more often used for gemstones. Artificial rubies had been produced for over 120 years and produce very high quality looking gems for a fraction of the cost. 

Text on the back of the can:

"Ruby: the cider that started it all. We sold our very first bottle back in 2015 and it's been flying off the shelves ever since. This carefully-crafted traditional dry cider is complex, yet balanced and crisp, and pairs well with just about anything. Now that it comes in a can, we hope you and your friends will find fun new places to take it."

Rubies in marble from Vietnam. Image courtesy of irocks.com.

Historically, the places most well known for ruby deposits are in Asia, however they have been discovered well outside of Asia including Africa, Australia, and the United States. The most notable ruby deposits are in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. It is because of the rarity of the natural ruby, as well as the beauty that a perfect crystal possesses, that lends the natural ruby such a high price point, even if it had been heat-treated to remove flaws.

References
https://geology.com/minerals/corundum.shtml
https://www.wikigempedia.com/ruby.html
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/ruby-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/

Drunk on Mineralogy - Lucky Rock Pinot Noir

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Lucky Rock Pinot Noir from the Lucky Rock Wine Co.

A "Lucky Rock" is gold or a rock containing gold, as mentioned on the Lucky Rock Wine Co.'s website. The chemical symbol for gold is Au, and gold is one of the unique minerals that, in its pure form, is composed entirely of one element. It has a hardness of 2.5 to 3 on the Mohs hardness scale meaning that it actually is very soft (your fingernail is 2.5). For this reason most gold jewelry is mixed with another metal to prevent scratching and bending easily. The karat rating of the gold represents it's purity, where 24 karat is 99.9% pure, 22 karat 91.7%, 18 karat 75%, and so on. Gold naturally does not corrode or tarnish, so even when it is mixed with other metals it usually has a resistance to tarnishing, enhancing its value for jewelry. When gold is found in place, the highest grade of gold is often found in association with quartz veins. Currently gold is considered one of the most valuable metals on Earth, being used as the standard for most money (gold standard).

Lucky Rock logo description from the Luck Rock Wine Co Website.

Gold is often formed initially in relation to volcanic regions, where fluids associated with volcanoes carry the heavy metals up towards the surface and deposit them in rocks. These are found in areas of current or former subduction zones, places where two plates came together forcing one place down and melting it, while the other plate is forced upwards into mountains. Afterwards, erosion will take the gold out of the mountains and carry them down stream. However, since gold is so dense it does not travel easily down rivers and will often settle to the bottom of the river within the rocks and mud within the river sediment. These gold deposits are known as placer deposits and are the primary place where gold panners find gold. They can then use the locations of these placer deposits to backtrack to the original sources of the gold within the streams.

The website also mentions that "Lucky Rock Wine Co., (is) named after one of the more memorable mines they grew up at." So I decided to send them a message to see if I could find out a little more information. This is what one of the owners of Lucky Rock sent back:

"My dad started prospecting and mining in the early 80's in Siskiyou County. He and a partner filed claims for two mines in the Klamath National Forest around 1984 - the hard rock mine was called Lucky Rock. In addition, my dad and a partner sourced funding for their mining efforts and eventually had several investors from Southern California. The company was named Lucky Rock Mining Company and operated for a few years. The "Lucky Rock" mine was just outside Seiad Valley."

Text from the back of the bottle:

"We grew up in a mining family, digging through the soil for a "Lucky Rock." Now our search has turned to discovering California's lucky vineyards from which we craft this tasty Pinot Noir."

With this information I was easily able to find the Lucky Rock mining claims.

Lucky Rock Mining Co mining claims. Map and information from The Diggings.

And as usual, let's take a look at the geologic map of that region, just to get a handle of what we are looking at.

Geologic map of the Seiad Valley region. Map courtesy of the NGMDB. 

The dominant geological features of this region are by far the Slinkard Pluton, identified as unit Mzd, and the blue unit listed as MzPz towards the north of that. On that specific map Mzd is identified as Dioritic Plutonic rocks and MzPz is some Mesozoic and Paleozoic undifferentiated metamorphoric basement rocks. The Slinkard Pluton however is the major producer of the gold identified within the region. A pluton is a igneous body that formed from the cooling of a body of magma below the Earth's surface. 

Diagram of a subduction zone. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Off the west coast of northern California, as well as Oregon and Washington, is what is known as a subduction zone. In a subduction zone one plate goes beneath the other. As the one plate sinks down, it starts to heat up and melt. That melted plate then rises up and forms a line of volcanoes.

Plates along the northwestern coast of North America. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Along the western edge of northern California is the subduction of the Gorda Plate, which is the remnant of the much larger Farallon Plate that used to be subduction along the entire Californian coast. 162 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic, the melted portions of the Gorda Plate produced the Slinkard Pluton as well as the related Wooley Creek batholith (which is a much larger pluton). 

As the magma body was cooling, the heat from the magma also heated up the surrounding groundwater. This groundwater, as it was heated rose to the surface, cooled, and descended back down to the magma body, creating a cycle. As the hydrothermal fluids moved from the magma towards the surface and through the surrounding rocks, they moved the heavy metals (such as gold, copper, silver, etc.) from within the magma and redeposit them within the surrounding landscape. Over time the gold would weather out of the surrounding landscape and get transported within neighboring streams and rivers. But due to the density of gold, it would often sit at the bottom of streams until a strong enough current came along to move it further along. These deposits, known as placer deposits, are what the Lucky Rock Mining Co. was searching for.

Drunk on Mineralogy - Miner's Gold Hefeweizen

 

The next up on the Drunk on Geology series is Miner's Gold Hefeweizen. Miner's Gold Hefeweizen is produced by the Lewis & Clark Brewing Co. out of Helena, MT. 

Although the beer is clearly named after the golden color of the beer itself, the town of Helena was actually founded by four gold miners from Georgia. So the name is not only in reference to its color but also an homage to Helena's rich gold mining history. 

Starting off with what gold is in general. Gold is one of the unique minerals that, in its pure form, is composed entirely of one element, also call gold, with the symbol Au. It has a hardness of 2.5 to 3 on the Mohs hardness scale meaning that it actually is very soft (your fingernail is 2.5). For this reason most gold jewelry is mixed with another metal to prevent scratching and bending easily. The karat rating of the gold represents it's purity, where 24 karat is 99.9% pure, 22 karat 91.7%, 18 karat 75%, and so on. Gold naturally does not corrode or tarnish, so even when it is mixed with other metals it usually has a resistance to tarnishing, enhancing its value for jewelry. 

When gold is found in place, the highest grade of gold is often found in association with quartz veins. Currently gold is considered one of the most valuable metals on Earth, being used as the standard for most money (gold standard). Gold is often formed initially in relation to volcanic regions, where hydrothermal fluids associated with volcanoes carry the heavy metals up towards the surface and deposit them in rocks. These are found in areas of current or former subduction zones, places where two plates came together forcing one place down and melting it, while the other plate is forced upwards into mountains. Afterwards, erosion will take the gold out of the mountains and carry them down stream. However, since gold is so dense it does not travel easily down rivers and will often settle to the bottom of the river within the rocks and mud within the river sediment. These gold deposits are known as placer deposits and are the primary place where gold panners find gold. They can then use the locations of these placer deposits to backtrack to the original sources of the gold within the streams. 

Mining towns of Montana. Image courtesy of RareGoldNuggets.com.

Gold deposits are found all over Montana, but primarily along the more mountainous southwestern part of the state, as seen in the image above. Gold had first been discovered in 1862 in Montana and eventually in 1864, the four Georgians had made their way to the Helena area to look for gold. The miners were unlucky in other areas, however their last try was at a claim they named the "Last Chance Gulch". The Last Chance Gulch ended up a winner, supplying more than $19 million worth of gold over four years. Last Chance Gulch actually falls now within the city limits of Helena and many of the placer deposits that were found were found during excavation of the town itself.

The gold from Helena and nearby Butte both come from the formation of the Boulder Batholith. The Boulder Batholith is a small batholith on the scale of batholiths, but a major gold producer. In general, a batholith is a very large rock that formed from a magma body deep within the Earth. The Boulder Batholith, named after the boulders that occur as the rock breaks down on the surface, is a large granite body that formed from an igneous intrusion 76 million years ago. The intrusion of the magma produced a hydrothermal system, heating up the groundwater and melting the metallic minerals within the area rocks, including the granite. These metallic minerals, now mobile within the water, were then reprecipitated within the older sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the area surrounding the granite, producing rick metallic ore veins in conjunction with quartz veins. Not only are these Boulder Batholith related rocks rich in gold, but nearby Butte has one of the richest copper producing zones in the world. 

References

https://www.goldrushnuggets.com/godiatlachgu.html

https://www.mdt.mt.gov/travinfo/docs/roadsigns/BoulderBatholith.pdf

http://www.geolexmt.com/helena-geo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

http://www.umt.edu/this-is-montana/photos/stories/The%20Boulder%20Batholith.php

Drunk on Mineralogy - Amethystos

The next up on the Drunk on Geology series is Amethystos from the Domaine Costa Lazaridi Winery in Adriani, Drama, Greece.

And yes, in case you were wondering, "amethystos" is the Greek translation of the mineral amethyst.

Our puppy Oreo, back when she was a puppy, wanting to get in on the photography action.

Amethyst is the purple variety of quartz, which is one of the most common minerals on Earth, primarily due to its simple structure and chemical formula, SiO2. Quartz also has an extremely high hardness, 7 on Mohs hardness scale, meaning that it doesn't scratch very easily and therefore does not break down easily. 

As the rocks on Earth are slowly eroded over time, most of the other minerals will break down into clay while quartz grains will generally just gets smaller and smaller. The result is that most beach sand is composed of quartz that has a slight hematite (rust) stain to it to give the sand grains their slight yellowish color. Although quartz is a simple mineral, it can come in a variety of colors depending on what type of impurities are present in the crystal structure; pure quartz crystal is clear, milky quartz is white, smoky quartz is grey, amethyst is purple quartz, citrine is yellow quartz, rose quartz is pink, as well as some other colors and varieties. Quartz does not have any cleavage, meaning that when it breaks it doesn't form along perfect surfaces. Instead as the quartz crystals grow, individual mineral molecules of quartz are added to the outside of the crystal from water rich in dissolved SiO2 or mineral melt (liquid rock like lava or magma).

 

The purple in amethyst comes from the integration of trace amounts of iron into the crystal structure as the mineral crystal is forming. After crystallization, gamma rays produced from radioactive materials in the host rock irradiate the iron to produce the purple color. 

Amethyst from Uruguay. Image from mindat.org.

To get a smidge more technical, quartz will often contain some trace amounts of iron ( ~10 to 100's ppm of iron). Some of the iron will be where the silicon (Si) sits and some located interstitially, where there aren't normally atoms. The iron that is sitting in for Si is usually in the +3 valence state, however gamma radiation from local radioactivity can knock out an electron making it a +4 Fe. The Fe+4 in the lattice absorbs certain wavelengths of light creating the purple color of amethyst.

But why amethyst? I can see the purple color reminding people of grapes and some varieties of wine, but is there something more? Turns out there is:

The Greek word "amethystos" can actually be translated as "not drunken" or "not intoxicated". This is because the ancient Greeks believed that amethyst crystals themselves prevented people from getting drunk. This is also the reason many Greeks made wine goblets carved out of amethyst crystals.

One of the earliest records that we have of this is the poem by Asclepiades of Samos (born 320 BCE) Windflowers of Asklepiades:

"Drunkenness am I - a gem worked by a subtle hand. I am graven in amethyst, and the subject and the stone are ill-sorted.But I am the precious property of Kleopatra, and on the finger of a Queen even "drunkenness" should be sober.* 

(*a play on words since amethyst means not drunkenness)" 

Another early example is an epigram by Plato the Younger found in The Greek Anthology:

"The stone is an Amethyst; but I, the tippler Bacchus, say- 'Let it either persuade me to be sober; or let it learn to get drunk."

One last example from Asclepiades also in The Greek Anthology:

"I am Drunkenness, the carving of a clever hand; but I am carved upon an Amethyst. Now the stone is alien to the art. But I am the holy possession of Cleopatra. For on the hand of a queen it behoves even a goddess, when drunk, to become sober."

Text from the back of the bottle:

"Produced from the noble white variety of Sauvignon Blanc, this dry white wine has a brilliant green-yellow color and complex bouquet. Its smoky hue and the aromas of wood, nuts and vanilla are a perfect match for the fragrance of the grape. This full-bodied, rich, well-balanced wine has a highly aromatic finish. Served at 54° F, it perfectly complements smoked salmon, fatty fish and shellfish."

Glamour shot.

So there you go; amethyst is the patron mineral of the wine lovers. 

References

https://geology.com/gemstones/amethyst/

http://www.geologyin.com/2018/05/what-causes-purple-color-of-amethyst.html

https://www.mindat.org/min-198.html

https://www.domaine-lazaridi.gr/en/product-category/amethystos-en/

https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026460844#page/n17/mode/1up

https://books.google.com/books?id=FDgRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA369#v=onepage&q&f=false

Drunk on Mineralogy - Black Opal

The next up on the Drunk on Geology series is Black Opal. Black Opal is a wine from Australia made by the Bronco Wine Company. 

To start off, what is opal? 

The chemical composition of opal is a hydrous silicon dioxide (SiO₂^.nH₂O). Silica, SiO₂, is more commonly known as quartz, and is one of the most common minerals on the planet. Opal then could be considered the hydrated form of quartz, however the water ends up making the properties of opal very different from quartz. Although quartz itself can come in a variety of colors (i.e. white, pink, purple, grey, clear), the colors within a crystal of quartz are usually pretty consistent. Opal on the other hand can often come in a wide range of colors, anything in the rainbow and beyond really, all within a single sample. And while quartz is often found in crystals, opal is amorphous, meaning it has no crystal structure. Also, since opal can have varying amounts of water (the "n" in the chemical formula), this actually makes is a mineraloid, and not a true mineral (minerals have a set chemical formula). Another primary property of opal is that it has a hardness on the Mohs Hardness Scale of 5.5 to 6, making it much softer than most gemstones (quartz is a 7). 

Text from the back of the bottle:

"Black Opal is a collection of contemporary wines names after the alluring black opal gem found only in Australia. The Cabernet Sauvignon is packed with ripe black cherry characters and a smooth, soft taste - a benchmark wine, Aussie style."

Opal forms from the seasonal rains that drench dry grounds in desert regions. The rain soaks into the ground surface, carrying with it dissolved silica. After the water evaporates, the water imbued silica is left behind, forming opal. There are two types of opal, common and precious. Common opal doesn't have a wide array of fantastical colors and typically can be confused for quartz or chalcedony. The precious type of opal is very different though, with a wide array of colors within a single specimen. Due to the formation of opal, it is often formed as sub-microscopic spheres that are stacked in a grid-like pattern. These spheres bend the light creating the array of colors, known as "play-of-color". The size of the spheres directly relates to the colors that you can see. 

An Australian black opal from Lightning Ridge. Image from Geoscience Australia. 

There are many different types of opal depending on the play-of-color that you can see. 

• White or light opal has a play-of-color against a white or light grey background. 
• Black opal has a play-of-color against a black background. 
• Fire opal has a body color of brown, yellow, orange, or red and doesn't typically show a play-of-color. 
• Boulder opals have fragments of surrounding ironstone, which become imbued within the gem
• Crystal opal has a play-of-color against a clear background, making the colors most striking.

 

A black opal.Image from Opal Galaxy.

So what is a Black Opal? Apparently it is "the rarest and most valuable type of opal." Is it a darker greenish opal variety with black and golds flecks. Black opal often contains a rainbow type iridescence, making it a very pretty gemstone. One of the world renowned locations for black opal is Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, Australia, which have sold for up to $10,000 per carat. And although black opals are most commonly from Australia, unlike what the bottle says, black opals have been found in other locations, most notably Ethiopia.

References

https://geology.com/gemstones/opal/

https://www.gia.edu/opal-description

https://broncowine.com/product-category/national/national-all/blackopal-national-all/

http://www.blackopalmine.com/black_opal.htm

https://opalgalaxy.com/3-64-carats-midnight-dream-top-gem-black-opal/

https://www.ga.gov.au/education/classroom-resources/minerals-energy/australian-mineral-facts/opal

Drunk on Mineralogy - The Logo

  The next Drunk on Geology category I am ready to announce is:

Drunk on Mineralogy

Mineralogy is the study of minerals and I thought what better use of minerals in drinks than the salt on the rim of a margarita glass. And any geologist could tell you that salt is a mineral, the mineral halite. When halite is examined up close, you can see that the pieces always break off in cubic chunks, called cubic cleavage. And if you were able to look even closer, the mineral structure would also be cubic with alternating sodium (Na) and chlorine (Cl) atoms.

Halite (salt) from the Solno Salt Mine in Poland. Image from Spirifer Minerals.