What is Terroir?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Luiz Alberto - TheWineHub on January 5, 2009 at 5:52am

Hi Russ,

This was posted on my "True or False?" discussion by Ken Payton:
"But for our limited purposes terroir 'simply' means the sum total of circumstances of a vineyard's growing season; heat days, slope, soil composition, insect/pest load, seasonal rainfall, depth of the water table, soil compaction, inter row plantings, a myriad of subtle to aggressive definitional inputs. But, again, in all of this it remains true that the hands of people are never completely absent. Indeed, people are an element of terroir as well, which is what I meant by 'unbalanced' above. The old division nature/people does not apply. Think of the very idea of monocropping or irrigation!"

I think it applies to any region where grapes are grown (new or old).

Happy New Year!!
LA
www.thewinehub.com

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Permalink Reply by VintageTexas on January 5, 2009 at 6:14am

Thanks for the sanity check. The more I researched the topic the less I read about the human element which over the past 1100 years appears to have been a substantial influence on the supposedly great terroirs we know and love. This was until I found reference to the old works of the mid-late 1800s which appear to place more emphasis on humans and culture and cuisine in determining terroir than do recent texts.

Russ

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Permalink Reply by Jo Diaz on January 5, 2009 at 7:51am

Hello Russ,

This was posted on my wine blog by winemaker Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of wines.

"Terroir: Reality or just hype? by Jeff Miller"

Jeff does discuss the winemaker in the process, because he is one; he's definitely dialed into this factor as a element of terroir.

"Trying to find terroir in a bottle runs into another major problem. Once harvested, grapes have a long way to go before becoming a finished wine. If every winemaker made his wines exactly the same, then perhaps it would be easier to distinguish one from another (though I tend to doubt it). But they don’t (and no one would really want them to). So if one cabernet sauvignon is “softer” than another, does that mean the grapes were in some way softer? Or does it mean that one winemaker made a larger acid addition than another (lower acid translates into a softer wine)? Or that one winemaker reduced the amount of tannin in his wine by using more egg whites? (The list of different winemaking techniques goes on and on, but you get the idea.) The point is that there are many winemaking factors that affect what ends up in the bottle. Who is skilled enough to ferret out the influences of terroir from among all these other extraneous factors? No one."

For his entire post on terroir, and what led into this paragraph: wine-blog.org

-- jo

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Permalink Reply by VintageTexas on January 5, 2009 at 7:57am

Great thoughts......which prompts another question.

How does one go about trying to separate the natural and human elements of terroir of a region?

Russ

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Permalink Reply by tom merle on January 5, 2009 at 8:36am

As I've written elsewhere on this forum, I prefer to replace the opaque term "terroir" with "territoire" or territory. "It goes withe the territory" would include all the elements we associate with the natural features of a place, including those that involve human intervention such as vineyard management techniques. Then when the grapes arrive at the winery the "cellar" kicks in (winemaking "style"). Territory also has the advantage of being an English word which is pretty readily understood.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Wark on January 5, 2009 at 1:53pm

The more important question is can a specific "Terroir" be reliably identified by a taster...even the most experienced. If not...what's the point?

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Permalink Reply by VintageTexas on January 5, 2009 at 2:01pm

That is a good question for all but a few true terroirs and particularly with the present mass-market mind-sets.

How would one go about defining terrior by tasting - what are the requirements. Can it be like a bulls-eye withb ever smaller concentric rings of defining finer and finer characteristics of the wine?

If so, how would you categorize the target (large to small areas)?

Russ

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Permalink Reply by VintageTexas on January 5, 2009 at 2:13pm

P.S.

Tom,

We have a lot of talk in Texas right now about regional differences and qualities of grapes and characteristics of wine. It might be like it was many years ago in California. Yes, no?

Is the discussion still around in CA or has it been over taken by a high quality but mass-market view of reality?

Russ

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Permalink Reply by Laurence Davidson on January 11, 2009 at 3:01pm

Tom,
I believe that this is the whole point of blind tastings that are held for both the MW and the various M Sommelier practicum tests for those certifications. I do believe that certain terroir do have identifiable characteristics that I'll grant can be tipped off by the grape itself... for example, when I took my level 2 somm tasting practicum, one of the wines was obviously chenin blanc. I ran through a quick mental checklist of predominant CB growing regions... Loire, South Africa, US, Australia (to a much lesser extent.) It was then pretty easy to determine it was a South African because it definitely did not have many characteristics that I would apply to a Loire CB but had some beautiful acidity and bolder fruit in balance than either US or Aussie styles. I believe that I was fortunate to get a grape that was not only readily identifiable but also had much fewer regional strengths in terms of vineyard distribution globally. With that said I also find it fairly easy to pick out Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah from different parts of the world and I know many tasters that can pinpoint pinot noir - some down to vineyard level (not me - not even close.)

I think terroir is identifiable and I think that many of the MW's out there have trained their sense memory to the point that some terroir are really easy to pick up on for them. I struggle with blind tastings - usually getting 30 - 40% close... but with enough exposure to enough wines from enough regions, I think terroir certainly can have a signature.

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Permalink Reply by tom merle on January 11, 2009 at 5:12pm

Isn't this the "point" of Appellation America's program: to determine which wines in a given viticultural area are most representative of that area. And isn't or wasn't AA a client of yours. Just curious how you represent an entity whose fundamental premise you disagree with... {8^)

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Permalink Reply by Arthur Przebinda on January 12, 2009 at 1:18pm

AS I have it, the BoA is intended to first to identify the commonalities of character in a given AVA (or possibly its subsections) and then look at future wines in that context. This respects the descriptive nature of the AVA system (as opposed to the proscriptive nature of, say, the AOC). In this way, it fills in the blanks and connects the dots that remain after initial awarding of the AVA.

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Permalink Reply by Arthur Przebinda on January 12, 2009 at 1:24pm

"The wine industry here profits by maintaining consumer ignorance"

I couldn't agree more!

But it would be shooting itself in the foot if the industry tried to educate the public. It would expose the inferiority and flaws of some wines and strip away the mystique which is the basis of the bloated price tags on many wine bottles.

Then, there is the inevitable offense of the consumers' tastes: if over ripe, raisiny wines with no varietal character, searing alcohol levels and gobs of residual sugar are flawed (bad/inferior) and don't reflect terroir, but people like them, then what does that say about those consumers?.....

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