Terroir

I
studied for the
Master of Wine exam during the early 199Os. At that time,
the concept of terroir seemed to be a flash point for all
sorts of discussions. As a fledgling blind taster, I
desperately wanted to know more about the connection between
a wine’s organoleptic profile and its place of origin. The
growing gulf between the production philosophies of “fine”
manufactured wine and “fine” artisan wine had a lot to do
with the terroir issue. Kermit Lynch’s book, Adventures on
the Wine Route, crystallized the camp favoring artisan
wines. Above all, he warned that stabilization strategies
such as filtration stripped a wine of its identity. On the
other hand, the growing partnership between larger and
larger wine distributors and larger and larger wine
companies focused the public on brand identity. Branding is
the antithesis of terroir. Brands are free and flexible
market entities. They usually have few connections to people
and place, preferring the language of symbols devised by
strategic marketing.

While I was
studying for the Master of Wine exam, within the program
there was constant reference to an “Old World” and a “New
World”. On one hand the argument seemed forced. The divide
of temperament and purpose between those countries that
traded in wine previous to the17th century and those that
began to do so afterward seemed forced. On the other hand, I
could not help but find that the distinction was a powerful
tool in helping me understand important issues of the day.
One of the key ones was encapsulated in the concept of
terroir. While the Old World wine producing countries had
built their industries on a system that gave great
importance to place of origin, the New World did not. More
specifically, the Old World gave credence to the empirical
observations of generations of wine growers who believed
that a particular piece of land produced a wine with a
unique taste. Without the benefit of this patrimony, New
World producers relied on scientific research to help them
site vineyards and to pair these vineyards with grape
varieties. They scientifically assessed cultivation and
vinification methods.

The first time
that I ever encountered the word, terroir, was in 1992, when
I read The Vintner’s Art: How Great Wines are Made by Hugh
Johnson and James Halliday. This groundbreaking book devoted
a whole chapter to terroir, attaching the provocative
question, “Does man matter more than the natural
environment?” to the heading, “Terroir”. Warning their
readers that there was no precise definition or translation
of the term, Johnson and Halliday presented the famous
definition of Bruno Prats, at that time the proprietor of
Chateau Cos d’Estournel. “The very French notion of terroir
looks at all the natural conditions which influence the
biology of the vinestock and thus the composition of the
grape itself. The terroir is the coming together of the
climate, the soil and the landscape. It is the combination
of an infinite number of factors, to name but a few. All
those factors react with each other to form, in each part of
the vineyard, what French wine growers call a
terroir.”

I put this
definition to memory, hoping to use its eloquence to spice
up one of my Master of Wine examination essays. Those exams
came and went. Eventually I passed and became a Master of
Wine, but the word “terroir” and Prats’ definition and those
of others have remained percolating in my mind ’til this
day.

After coming
into contact with the Prats definition, I discovered that
there could be more dimensions to the word. At a Masters of
Wine Exam preparation course held in New York City, Larry
Fuller Perrine, a shy, thoughtful winemaker in the middle of
a professional leap from Long Island’s Gristina Vineyards to
nearby Channing’s Daughter presented a more expansive
definition. I learned that Prats’ viewpoint expressed the
traditional French understanding of what terroir meant. That
definition did not include man’s interaction with the
growing environment. Perrine not only included the impacts
of all those individuals who somehow had a direct impact on
the wine, but included less immediate human-based impacts
such as those of history and culture. The concept had become
more exciting, but more difficult to grasp and use with
precision. The term’s context became grander, but also more
amorphous and expansive.

France, and most
of all Burgundy, had always remained terroir’s touchstone
during my many discussions. Halliday, in 1993, in an article
entitled “Climate and Soil in Australia”, published by the
Journal of Wine Research, Number 4, said, “The seemingly
precise and logical correlation between grape variety and
terroir in France has come about as the consequence of many
centuries of experience which no amount of money could buy
and no amount of research duplicate. Of all the wine zones
in France, Burgundy became the point of reference, the place
where the concept of terroir had real meaning.” Then in the
May 1994 issue of The Wine Enthusiast, Randall Graham
attached the terroir term to California: “California has
reached macro-terroir status in much the same communal way
as Bordeaux, but there is obviously a long way to go before
we have identified our best micro-terroirs.” Meanwhile, The
New World scientific community gave little credence to the
concept, particularly the fundamental determining factor of
soil chemical composition. Ron Jackson’s comments in the
1994 edition of Wine Science typified the New World view
within the scientific community. He wrote, “soil type is the
least significant factor affecting grape and wine quality”
and “geologic origin of the parental material of the soil
has little direct influence on grape quality.” He also
suggested that France’s Appellation Control laws, a system
inspired by the concept of terroir, tend ” to increase the
scarcity and prestige of the wine from those regions, potent
attributes in increasing both the price and profitability of
the wines.” . . . Those sly French!!!

In 1995, Master
of Wine Roger Bohmrich reviewed the many definitions and
contexts of the word “terroir” in an essay, entitled
“Terroir: Competing Perspectives on the Roles of Soil,
Climate and People”. He presented his thesis at a MW student
study session. Later it appeared in the April 1996 issue
(Volume 7) of The Journal of Wine Research, a publication
with affiliations to the Institute of Masters of Wine. He
presented his view that understanding the meaning of terroir
is an evolutionary experience. Its meaning in wine
literature is constantly expanding, becoming more inclusive:
its presence, more pervasive. At his thesis’ end, he
presented what he believed to be the latest and most
inclusive definition: in 1995, a researcher, D. Saayman,
proposed the following definition to a group of Masters of
Wine visiting South Africa: “A terroir is an existing (often
still unknown) relationship/interaction between the natural
environmental factors viz., climate, topography and soil
which have the potential (also often unknown) to induce a
specific character into an agricultural product (not
necessarily wine).” In the New World, a key indicator of the
growing interest in the topic arrived when, in 1998,
geologist James E. Wilson’s book was published. It is
entitled, Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture
in the Making of French Wines. It received critical acclaim.
A New World (an American) scientist had prominently raised
the terroir banner.

What I have
described to so far is the way I discovered the concept.
Doing the research for this article, made me curious how and
when the word “terroir” came to the surface in foreign wine
literature. Emmanuelle Vaudour, in her article, “The Quality
of Grapes and Wine in Relation to Geography: Notions of
Terroir at Various Scales”, Journal of Wine Research, 2OO2,
Vol. 13, No.2, pointed out a French dictionary reference
dating back to 1863 which had as one of its definitions of
terroir, “a small area of land being considered for its
qualities or agricultural properties. For example, the poet
Gautier (in Les grotesques, 1844) praised a rocky and
infertile hilly terroir for the production of excellent rose
wine.” What is curious, however, is that even in France, use
of the term in wine and scientific literature did not
apparently occur until the late 198Os. Before that time, the
term must have been used informally by those intimately
connected to the production of wine and other produce.
During the 198Os, Professor Gerard Seguin from the
University of Bordeaux seems to have had a role in bringing
the term into the academic and scientific arena. His
article, ” ‘Terroirs’ and Pedology of Wine Growing” appeared
in 1986 in the Swiss publication, Experientia. In 1989, a
French researcher who focuses on the Loire Valley, R. Morlat
used the word in his PhD thesis for the University of
Bordeaux. In 199O, another French researcher, P. Laville,
presented a study of the terroirs of 3 communes in the Gard
region of France. He collaborated with several other authors
in 1992 in research that defined the terroirs of communes in
the Southern Cotes du Rhone. In 1993, he wrote an article
describing the relationship between “terroir” and the French
appellation system. In 1991, well-known viticulture
researcher based in Bordeaux, Alain Carbonneau, presented
terroir as an important concept interfacing grape variety
and viticulture. In 1994, an Italian researcher, M.
Falcetti, published an article written in French for the
Bulletin de l’O.I.V., entitled, “Le terroir: qu’est-ce qu’un
terroir? Pourquoi l’etudier? Pourquoi l’enseigner?”
(Terroir: What is a terroir? Why study it? Why teach it?).
In 1996, M. Pinchon, in an INRA publication, stated his
belief that terroir was being abused for marketing,
sentimental and political purposes. In the same year, C. Van
Leeuwen 1996, published an “Occasional Paper” for the Ecole
Nationale d’Ingenieurs des Travaux Agricoles. Bordeaux:
Faculte d’Oenologie, Bordeaux University. Its title is “La
Notion de terroir viticole dans le Bordelais” (The
Viticultural Notion of Terroir in the Bordeaux appellation).
He presented an expansive view of what terroir is: “terroir
viticole is a complex notion which integrates several
factors of the natural environment (soil, climate,
topography), biological (variety, rootstock), and human (of
wine, wine-making, and history)”. J. Mesnier gave another
definition in 1997 for the Proceedings of the First
International Colloquium. The references to the word terroir
in literature have grown exponentially, I dare say, since.
Within twenty years, it has become one of the most used (and
exploited) words in winespeak.

Recently three
new books landed on my desk: Great Wine Terroirs by Jacques
Fanet (a Frenchman); The Winemaker’s Dance: Exploring
Terroir in Napa Valley by Jonathan Swinchatt and David G.
Howell (two Americans): and Soils for Fine Wines by Robert
E. White (an Australian). The arrival of this threesome
signals that terroir has achieved global critical mass.
Fannet and White are soil scientists. Swinchatt and Howell
are geologists. Apparently, within the scientific community,
terroir is no longer mumbo-jumbo. It’s a fashionable, even
lucrative, topic.