Terroir

[sharksoup]

In wine, terroir is at best a redundant concept.

Of course wine comes from a place. As does every foodstuff made from plants. And of course each place is different - who would be so naive to assert otherwise?

We aren't all starting from the same color palette when it comes to wine, so let's accept that wines made in different places will be different by default.

Let's put aside the notion that terroir is somehow so much more relevant to understanding wine than evertything else that goes into the winemaking process.

This does a tremendous disservice to the novice wine drinker who wants to learn more about wine, but is somehow intimidated into believing that what she tastes cannot be explained by wineMAKING, but instead can only be understood after years of study of soil types and climates and every other pretentious notion espoused by the terroirists.

In grape growing and winemaking, there is so much more than the dirt and climate that defines a wine. All of these are DECISIONS by the grape grower and winemaker, NOT mothernature.

Let me list nary a few...

Vine spacing

Irrigation

Pruning

Trellising

Dropping fruit

Pesticides

Ground cover

Harvest time

Pressing

Stems

Whole clusters

Yeast type

Cold soaks

Carbonic maceration

Fermentation tanks

Open fermentations

Barrell fermentations

Type of wood

Size of wood

Age of wood

Length of aging

Acidification

Chaptelization

Blending

Fining

Filtering

I submit that for 99.9999999% of the wine drinking population, these factors have infinite more bearing on the character a finished wine than simply the place where the grapes are grown.

[balex]

(some of my earlier posts seem to have disappeared from above )

I think some of the things you mention were until recently considered part of terroir -- particularly yeasts. It makes sense that as our understanding of the components of terroir improves, our artificial control of those factors will improve, which would tend to decrease the relevance of terroir.

[badthings]

Sharksoup, I believe the argument is that every factor you list, until the last 5, are in fact components of terroir, and that how you handle the final 5 is simply a product of all of the other variables of terroir up to that point.

I suspect that everyone here knows -- I certainly drink the results nearly every day myself -- that the vast majority of grapes are made into a consistent product in the vat, by winemakers concerned not with such niceties but the demands of the market. I don't think anyone is being done a disservice by the suggestion that there is, or can be, more to wine than a succession of microbullage, Burgundy RC212, and American oak inflicted on grape juice. Perhaps you find the flightier fancies of terroirism irksome, but they are better than a purely functionalist approach to the subject -- at least if you want to persuade people to spend more than $10/bottle.

[sharksoup]

Sharksoup, I believe the argument is that every factor you list, until the last 5, are in fact components of terroir, and that how you handle the final 5 is simply a product of all of the other variables of terroir up to that point.

Your assertion that how you handle the final 5 points I list is a product of terroir variables is positively ludicrous. There is tremendous variation in the style of grape growing and winemaking in every important wine region in the world. Some Burgundy producers go for the heavy extracted style, achieved by many decisions both in the vineyard and in the winery, and some go for something far different. You seem to believe that some larger karma called terroir moves everyone in a region to do things the same way which is far from reality.

Please explain, how the following DECISION POINTS, are elements of "terroir":

Vine spacing: how close does the grower space the vines when they are planted, both within a row, and how far are the rows apart? Are you suggesting that every grower in a climate spaces exactly the same? If so you are out of date with modern practices.

Irrigation: does the grower water the vines or not?

Pruning: how much or how little vegetation is removed from the vines? When?

Trellising: what system is used to hold the vines shoots in place?

Dropping fruit: how much fruit is dropped during the growing season to result in a certain yield?

Pesticides: are they used or not to control pests?

Ground cover....

Harvest time... How ripe are the grapes when picked? Are multiple picks made?

Pressing: full press, gentle press, free run juice, first tie, etc.....

Stems: left in the crush/fermentation or not?

Whole clusters...

Yeast type: NATIVE OR ADDED???

I don't think I need to go on.

Cold soaks...

Carbonic maceration

Fermentation tanks

Open fermentations

Barrell fermentations

Type of wood

Size of wood

Age of wood

Length of aging

Acidification

Chaptelization

Blending

Fining

Filtering

I submit once again that two growers/winemakers who farm and make wine next door to each other can do many/all of the above things so differently as to make any inherent differences in their mutually shared climate meaningless in the final product.

[baphie]

Sharksoup,

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it is not possible to remove terroir from the finished product. At least 95% of wines on the market either do this or had none to begin with. So what?

To people who appreciate it, that remaining 5% is of profound interest and much investment of time and money. Earlier you suggest that discussing such matters only serves to confuse the beginner or dilettante. Well, screw 'em! Are you suggesting we lower our discourse to the lowest common denominator? The initial writer posted a brief, flawed, but useful entrée into the discourse of terroir. This should not be dismissed so cavalierly wth a list of winemaking trends and techniques.

Your DECISION POINTS (sic) are actually extremely relevant to terroir. A winemaker who decides to express terroir is faced with decisions every step of the way. These decisions can either obliterate the unique character of his or her vineyards or express it. Sometimes only trial and error can show the way. That is why the great terroirs of someplace like Burgundy have a pedigree of hundreds of years.

Yes, terroir has been and still is used as excuse for deplorable winemaking techniques. Yes, it is not relevant for a large amount of the table wines consumed around the world and for a goodly amount of the best wines as well. It does exist nonetheless. I have a report from a friend of mine, a geologist who recently attending a symposium on the matter, of tastings between identically viticultured and vinified wines from a contiguous slope with differing substrata that show distinct differences between the two wines. Personally observations and prejudices aside, there is a gathering of real evidence for the idea of terroir.

A.

[badthings]

Are you suggesting that every grower in a climate spaces exactly the same?

Why are you so angry? I am mystified by how bent out of shape wine seems to make people (though I have certainly been guilty of my own rants on the subject).

While there is no need to go into detail on your list above, since I was basically agreeing with you, the one point that I have quoted above is illuminating. Intentionally or not, you conflate "climate" with "terroir," which is funny because it is precisely the latter, more complicated understanding which ideally informs the grower's decision on such matters as spacing. The fact that, in reality, the decision is just as often based on what he can get away with is irrelevant.

[sharksoup]

A winemaker who decides to express terroir is faced with decisions every step of the way.

How does the earth and climate of a particular place tell anyone what a finished wine should taste like?

[baphie]

A winemaker who decides to express terroir is faced with decisions every step of the way.

How does the earth and climate of a particular place tell anyone what a finished wine should taste like?

I suggest you delve into the topic a little deeper before writing. It would help to avoid the superfluous redundancies of your arguments.

Any predictive powers of terroir have been developed empirically from tasting a range of wines from a particular geographic locale. Chablis is a classic example - the Kimmeridgian substrate does appear to impart a particular quality to the finished product. The classic AOC boundaries of Chablis do have a remarkable correlation with the geological properties, surveyed independently. A winemaker can easily over-oak some Chardonnay that is too high yielding. The end result is something that is Chablis in name only and is of little value to those who seek terroir.

I really get the feeling you have never tasted a proper Chablis or a Bourgogne Blanc from Kimmeridgian soils or a Daganeau Silex or ... If tasting is too much to ask, I suggest you read something like Wilson's Terroir and gain an actual understanding of what you are attacking. The ideas are certainly not without reproach, but you are not even in the ballpark.

A.

[tcizma]

Yeah, what baphie said...

Nicely put.

[Scott]

I have drunk far more great wines from Joly than anything else.

Really..?

[ctgm]

Earlier in this thread someone was questioning whether a Chablis-esque wine could be made elsewhere in the world. I happened to be at a tasting of Billaud Simon a week ago (and before reading this thread) and I put the same question to the owner. He (maybe rather typically) said that he didn't know anywhere in the world that could achieve the same characteristics.

(PS Britcook - in your opening thread, you mentioned that 2nd wines came from "inferior" parcels of vines and that is why they were not as good as the "Grand Vin". I think that you should also take into account press wine that is not usually used in the 1st wine in any great quantities (if at all)).

[balex]

Earlier in this thread someone was questioning whether a Chablis-esque wine could be made elsewhere in the world. I happened to be at a tasting of Billaud Simon a week ago (and before reading this thread) and I put the same question to the owner. He (maybe rather typically) said that he didn't know anywhere in the world that could achieve the same characteristics.

Exactly. I just read Jancis Robinson's article on terroir in the companion to wine, and she points out that both parties to this debate have strong financiall incentives to argue their sides: the new world types will claim that if you really understand the wine making process, then modulo gross climactic factors you can do what you want, and the people that own valuable real estate in Burgundy (for example) will claim that it is all terroir.

My only financial interest is buying good wine without having to pay too much for it. So I guess I have an intrinsic bias towards the new world school.

[melkor]

My biggest problem with the terroir argument is that it's used to justify the endless supply of absolute swill being produced in burgundy and elsewhere.

[jddoyle]

How does the earth and climate of a particular place tell anyone what a finished wine should taste like?

So by your reasoning, why hasn't anyone with enough talent saved their money, bought a ton of land here in Missouri and made a wine that equals that from other prestigious areas? According to you, it doesn't matter where it's grown, it is the talent of the winemaker that decides the wine's taste and character. I can't buy that, place has to have an effect.

When I think terrior and of a great example I think Cote Rotie, syrah doesn't taste like that anywhere else. Why not? No one wants to do it?

[KatieLoeb]

Monsieur Joly spoke quite a bit about the yeasts used during his lecture. He claims that the "canned and added" yeasts that are used in Beujolais, for example, are what are contributing to the banana scent on the nose and the "artificial grape bubblegum" flavor that is what turns a lot of folks off to Beaujolais the last few years. He's all about using the natural yeasts that already exist on that particular type of grapes, in that particular place, to help preserve the sense of terroir with the native yeasts as well. Certainly it works for him. Having never actually MADE wine I can't even begin to presume to answer that question, but certainly what he's saying makes a degree of sense.

Joly is such a brilliant madman. My favorite anecdote about him is where he burns the bodies of dead rabbits and scatters their ashes in the vineyard to ward off pesty lapin.

I didn't know about the dead bunnies That might be a bit much.

[tcizma]

Check out the Dressner website mentioned earlier in this thread. Jean Paul Brun ( Domaine des Terres ) talks about the yeast issue and says the exact same thing.

[ctgm]

Monsieur Joly spoke quite a bit about the yeasts used during his lecture. He claims that the "canned and added" yeasts that are used in Beujolais, for example, are what are contributing to the banana scent on the nose and the "artificial grape bubblegum" flavor that is what turns a lot of folks off to Beaujolais the last few years. He's all about using the natural yeasts that already exist on that particular type of grapes, in that particular place, to help preserve the sense of terroir with the native yeasts as well.

Katie - totally agree and find that R2 (one of the more common packet yeasts) is making alot of wines taste similar.

I used to work in a vineyard in Bordeaux and the owner did a lot of work with yeasts (and was in fact partly responsible with Brian Crossier) in developing R2. He also did a lot of work with (bread) bakers.

After I left the property, I went back and visited them and took a mystery bottle for them to taste. The owner thought that Leasingham Semillon (from Oz) was a Semillon that he had made in the Graves!!!! So much for terroir!!

[balex]

How does the earth and climate of a particular place tell anyone what a finished wine should taste like?

So by your reasoning, why hasn't anyone with enough talent saved their money, bought a ton of land here in Missouri and made a wine that equals that from other prestigious areas?

Well maybe not Missouri, (or Antarctica) since climate clearly does have an effect. But I think people are doing, and have doine exactly this in Chile, and California and even in Italy. Sassicaia, for example, was originally a conscious attempt to make a Bordeaux-style wine.

[badthings]

Sassicaia, for example, was originally a conscious attempt to make a Bordeaux-style wine.

... in order to take advantage of the unique terroir of the maremma.

The "argument" can get pretty circular. I don't see why it has to be an argument, though -- can anyone seriously argue that either terroir or the techniques are irrelevant to wine?

I guess the more extreme view, which so offended sharksuop when I articulated it, is the these techniques, like trellising systems, cluster thinning, and on into the vat, are either literally part of the terroir or else dictated by what the terroir has given you. Gallo and Tenuta San Guido, among many others, have demonstrated that you can ignore this idea in favor of a much more mechanistic approach, and still produce good or even great, inoffensive wine. Inoffensive unless you are a true believer in the all-embracing concept of terroir I just described.

Personally, I just like to drink wine. (I happen to believe, based on a relatively small amount of organoleptic evidence, that a certain degree of attention to the terroir by the winemaker enhances the wines I drink, but I don't really want to fight about it.)

[balex]

Sassicaia, for example,  was originally a conscious attempt to make a Bordeaux-style wine.

... in order to take advantage of the unique terroir of the maremma.

The "argument" can get pretty circular. I don't see why it has to be an argument, though -- can anyone seriously argue that either terroir or the techniques are irrelevant to wine?

I guess the more extreme view, which so offended sharksuop when I articulated it, is the these techniques, like trellising systems, cluster thinning, and on into the vat, are either literally part of the terroir or else dictated by what the terroir has given you.

I agree that both are relevant. I am not sure that the elements that are in the control of the winemaker are strictly part of the terroir; could you amplify this point which seems counter-intuitive to me?

[badthings]

Ok, returning to sharksoup's useful list, things like:

Cold soaks

Carbonic maceration

Fermentation tanks

Open fermentations

Barrell fermentations

Type of wood

Size of wood

Age of wood

Length of aging

are dictated by terroir in an ideal-type view of the matter. Obvious examples would be CM in Beaujolais, giant chestnut vats and long aging in Barolo. They are human practices that have evolved in response to the juice of specific regions. Yeasts are always wild (or cultivated versions of local strains). I admit, I don't know what he means by cold soaks, but the fermentation temperature is determined by the terroir of the cave, the local yeasts, the type of vat used, etc. Let me stress again that I am trying to represent what I think of as an extreme position on the spectrum of terroir, without necessarily claiming that it is true. It is also important to realize that this is a "world we have lost" understanding of the history and development of winemaking, not an accurate description of contemporary practice.

Acidification

Chaptelization [sic]

Blending

Fining

Filtering

are winemaker interventions that are, again, dictated by what kind of juice he or she is dealing with, which is a product of the terroir. The other factor that influences these decisions is of course the market, but -- theoretically -- the market for a given wine is defined by a kind of typical ideal of what the wine from that terroir tastes like; so the winemaker intervenes in these ways if necessary to approach that ideal. The human genius element comes in here in that the winemaker makes these decisions to capture his unique terroir as perfectly as possible, within the the overarching ideal of his region/style. (The whole theory works best if you always think about very specific and well-defined appellations, like Cornas, or Corton-Charlemagne).

All of these are DECISIONS by the grape grower and winemaker, NOT mothernature.

I think perhaps this false dichotomy is the source of the violent feelings on the subject. Terroir doesn't just equal "mother nature". It is the total environment of the grapes, which is by definition determined by human intervention, because they are a cultivated crop.

Sorry to blather on so long, but I wanted to try to represent accurately a position that seems to invite attack by being poorly-understood and maybe a little too mystical. If anyone feels that I've done a poor job, please correct me.

EDIT:typos

Edited November 21, 2003 by badthings (log)

[balex]

I think this argument slightly reduces the utility of the term "terroir" -- everything ends up being terroir.

You are right that the wine make choices are to some extent determined by the propeties of the grapes, and by the traditions and regulatiosn of the region, but that is only partial. The wine-maker can make a huge difference; and these traditions do change. E.g. Barolo used to be a semi-sweet wine, and now is changing to a lighter style, with a lot less wood etc,

[Rebel Rose]

I thought I would bump this thread up as it contains some interesting comments and questions, and I have a few questions of my own.

As someone who works closely with wine producers, I can attest, as many wine consumers here already have, that soil character is definitely expressed in a well-crafted wine. Coaxing that character into the wine involves first making a wise marriage of vine and rootstock to the soil and climate, and then making correct growing and stylistic decisions every step of the way.

Ten years ago, only a handful of California wineries bothered to make vineyard-designate wines, nearly all of them in Napa. Now, if you open a Wine Spectator, there's vineyard after vineyard in the reviews. Do you think this burgeoning production of vineyard-designate wines is a result of marketing and media hype, or a real interest on the part of wine producers and consumers in the idea of "place"?

[Daniel Rogov]

Several comments:

In 2002, partly to answer this question, a group of winemakers within Tuscany cooperated in a small experiment to deal partly with the question of terroir. Small quantities of Sangiovese grapes were harvested and sent to the same winery, there to be handled by the same winemaker, each wine receiving identical treatment from the crush to the barrel and on to the bottling, this eliminating as many of the "human intervention" factors in the winemaking process as possible.

At the tasting, attended by more than 20 winemakers and a few journalists, the impact of the different areas was clearly demonstrated.

More important, the issue of terroir vs that of winemaking influences has something distinctly akin to the nature-nurture discussions in regard to human intelligence. In intelligence, it is clear to anyone save the worst racists that both genetics and environment have their impact, but as only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun, only a fool would try (as Arthur Jensen and others did) to say that this or that percentage of intelligence comes from one or the other of the many factors involved.

So it is with terroir. As the denial of the impact of the winemaking processes involved would be foolish, so is the denial of the impact of terroir but to define precisely what extent each plays its role is no less a fool's mission.

Is the concept of terroir used to "sell" wine. Of course it is. But so again are label and the French paradox. Everything can be used or abused. But then again, we're not talking about sales techniques. We're talking about wine.

[Mallet]

Several comments:

More important, the issue of terroir vs that of winemaking influences has something distinctly akin to the nature-nurture discussions in regard to human intelligence. In intelligence, it is clear to anyone save the worst racists that both genetics and environment have their impact, but as only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun, only a fool would try (as Arthur Jensen and others did) to say that this or that percentage of intelligence comes from one or the other of the many factors involved. 

So it is with terroir.  As the denial of the impact of the winemaking processes involved would be foolish, so is the denial of the impact of terroir but to define precisely what extent each plays its role is no less a fool's mission.

Is the concept of terroir used to "sell" wine.  Of course it is. But so again are label and the French paradox.  Everything can be used or abused. But then again, we're not talking about sales techniques.  We're talking about wine.

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Exactly!

My question is, should winemakers in the New World focus on developing new varieties which better take advantage of their particular terroir? To what extent is this already happening?