Dan Berger’s Commentary

Those who believe in terroir must take a lot on faith. Those who detest the idea say it is blind faith to accept it as fact. Basically, the theory states that the soil and weather have as much of an influence as does the variety of grape.

What makes the concept so hard to grasp is that there is no direct parallel in other fruits or vegetables. An Early Girl tomato grown in Bakersfield smells and tastes pretty much the same as it does when grown in Ukiah. Or does it? No one ever stages a blind tasting of Early Girl tomatoes from different regions. It may be that soil does impart a special character to all sorts of other plants and we simply haven’t seen it at this point. How many professional tomato tasters are there? And, more to the point, does it matter? Even if there were a significant difference between the same variety of tomato grown in different regions, would one be worth more than the other? Tomatoes are a commodity and price is set by the market, not generally on its quality.

But if terroir does exist, as so many people say, then it is obvious that it competes with varietal character for the dominant feature in a wine’s character. And which is more important, the regional or the varietal? This question perplexes philosophers more than wine purists.

The Terroir Fallacy (?) - The French, notably in regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy, believe that terroir is an essential element in the makeup of a wine. But why on earth did they restrict the grapes that may be grown in the primary (prestigious) growing regions when they didn’t restrict them in such “lesser” regions such as Provence or Alsace. (Incidentally, the concept of terroir is far less ingrained in the wine growers of these regions.) Why restrict the varietals allowed if it is terroir that is crucial, not varietal? They could well have permitted Riesling to grow in Montrachet, with their faith in terroir giving them the confidence that the resulting wine would be reflective more of Montrachet, the region, than of the grape or grapes that made the wine.

Still, I believe in terroir, since I have seen it often enough to verify its presence. The French adherence to this notion may be a chicken-and-egg proposition, but it explains much about how the French justify calling certain characteristics elements of greatness in certain wines from certain regions. Those same characteristics might be termed “odd” or “atypical” from wines from another region.

This brief look at terroir does not reveal any new truths, but it does unveil some of the inconsistencies in the concept, how it can be viewed with some skepticism without destroying the entire idea. In the following excerpts from a speech given by Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Winery, you will see a list of the enemies of terroir. I believe the most important is related to the harvesting of grapes later and later to achieve a richer, riper, more concentrated wine. This tastes artificial to me, a result of the quest for higher scores to justify a wine’s higher price. Instead of regional and varietal character, we get higher alcohol and the ultra-ripe flavor associated with raisins and port. This trend has happened slowly, allowing wine makers to justify their “new” style of wine by arguing that things haven’t changed radically over the years.

Sure, but if you pick Cab at 24 brix in 1990 and pick only .1 brix higher each year, by 2000 you’re at 25 brix. Duh! When did you last see a California Cabernet with 12.5% alcohol? And whoever said that 22.5 brix was going to make lousy wine? We did it for decades and made great wine. But the concept of “great” 15 years ago is radically different from our use of the term today. Riper is now better. So is oakier, more alcoholic and less acidic, characteristics that make a wine taste softer, sweeter and fuller, even if the flavors are not fruit-derived. This is the International Style of wine so popular today that even Chablis makers employ tactics to make their wines in a manner that will gain them precious points from Parker and the Spectator.

As you read through Randall Grahm’s speech/essay, be aware that his concerns about a loss of terroir are not the least bit worrisome to many of today’s “bigger is better” collectors, some of whom still believe that terroir is merely an excuse for wimpy wine.

I note for the record the huge difference between wimpy and sublime. Wines of real character, notably those with perfect terroir components, can be far more classic than some clumsy, raisiny/porty, overly weighty wine whose main aim is to impress, not necessarily to please.

The Reign of Terroir
by Randall Grahm
(from a speech given May 21st at Terroir International 2000, a two-day symposium)

I am a lover of terroir and my passion burns with a white-hot geek love supreme, largely in virtue of the fact that it remains utterly unrequited. I am proud to call myself a terroirist, but more as one who has sought terroir than has ever definitely basked in all of its calcaire-infused, mud-soaked glory.

Matt Kramer (writer for the Wine Spectator) has given us the most poetic definition when he called terroir “somewhereness.” That is to say, it is the sum total of all of the natural features of a site (topography, geology, exposition, microclimate) which impart a distinctiveness to the wine, independent of (or perhaps I should say despite) the stylistic imprint of the wine maker. The terroir of a site is its qualities that outlive the wine maker and one hopes outlive the stylistic manias du jour. The animist in me believes that terroir is like a soul or a conscience that hovers above the site. Sometimes it will descend into the corporeal body of the wine maker if it finds him a worthy vessel for terroir’s expression.

I believe that in the modern world of wine making, terroir is in flight and its gradual disappearance is provoking a longing in us to comprehend it before it disappears altogether. Terroir speaks quietly and there is very little in modern culture that is apprehended beneath the blare of the superficial and the obvious.

For the French, the existence of terroir is an absolute article of faith. I shouldn’t really say “faith” -- it is more a feature of their experience. The French are very particular and scientific about organizing their sensual experience. This derives from the fact that they are at the same time both highly analytic Cartesians and utter horn-dog hedonists who have developed a very precise language to describe the complete range of their sensual experience.

Certainly, they taste wine (or historically have tasted wine) very differently than we do. They are (or I should say were) far less interested in whether the wine is “clean,” “fruit-driven” or contains hedonistic gobs of up-front jammy fruit. Their more relevant question is, “Does the wine express typicity?” i.e. the revelatory signature of its origins. For the French, the tell-tale expressions of bitumen and pet de cheval bespeak the schistous soils of St. Chinian in the Languedoc; the fingernails on the chalkboard, limey minerality of Chablis virtually shrieks its eponym. In Germany, the steep slatey vineyards of the Mosel valley produce, especially with very old vines, wines of immense concentration and extract, with unmistakable terroir shining through all of the riotous Riesling razzmatazz.

Unbelievably, there are still some who doubt the existence of terroir, but this is merely a function of ignorance and pride. One simply has to taste the wines made by Deiss in Alsace, Raveneau in Chablis or others I might mention, where the expression of the mineral quality of the wine can be far more dominant than any discernible varietal characteristics.

For those who have grown to appreciate it (and it is definitely an acquired taste as I will explain), the expression of terroir is arguably the most interesting element of a wine, one that for me provokes intellectual engagement. But perhaps as a culture, intellectual engagement with our wines is no longer what we seek.

The notion of terroir is endangered on a number of fronts. If you imagine terroir as a greater or lesser set of defining characteristics that differentiate one site from another, many of us can still perceive the larger, more obvious differences, the difference between limestone and granite, for example. But the very fine differences that once distinguished one small sub-parcel from another have, I fear, already mostly been lost. Perhaps it is the curse of modernity; the Burgundian or Alsatian farmer is not spending his every waking hour focused on his vines. His precious psychic resources are squandered on worrying about what web sites his kid is visiting or how many cases he should set aside for his Japanese importer.

There have been many viticultural developments in France and elsewhere that I think have rendered differences in terroir progressively less distinct. I will discuss them shortly. But the bigger problem is that as an increasingly international culture, we are progressively less attuned to fine detail. We take in our information in gross and broad outline, suitable for mass consumption -- a sort of one-size fits all kind of epistemology. Many of the so-called “great wines” have begun to lose their identity and like vast Hollywood productions have become increasingly formulaic. With the exception of the very fine small estates, modern “chateau” wine making at least in Bordeaux and Napa has largely gone the corporate route. There is increasing pressure to get the big score at all costs and to make wines in a certain style that an influential critic might deem “collectable.”

But by following this path, modern Lafite is beginning to taste a lot like Mouton, which tastes a lot like Margaux. It is my fear that a wholesale alteration of our tasting Gestalt has taken place, largely unremarked; we now attend to the (voluptuous) figure of the flavors of hypermaturity instead of the soil. Hedonistic fulfillment is everything; we live in the age of the “bomb” -- the vinous equivalent of the blonde bimbo bombshell. We confuse the richness and sweet texture of new wood and big alcohol for real depth and extract. I detest the current fashion, but I often find myself getting inexorably sucked into the seductive vortex of vinous easy listening. One tunes into the soft, ripe flavors of a wine made in the international modern style as easily as one finds oneself tuning into yet another mindless program on TV in favor of spending some time with a great novel. (Modern New World wine making is to real wine what Keanu Reeves is to Laurence Olivier.) Make mine the Cuvée Bruce Willis.

The shallowness of much of modern wine making simply mirrors the shallowness of our culture. We can’t seem to get beyond our compulsion to give people what we think they want and ultimately we permit ourselves to be led by an unknown, faceless wave-force that has itself little sense of where it is headed. If we don’t as wine makers resist the immense pressure to internalize the programmed appetites of the thirsty masses, we will certainly lose our way and it will be very difficult to find it again. Terroir is one path that enables us to remain honest; if we are true to terroir, we are making wines in service of something beyond our own egos, we are subordinating ourselves to a greater reality.

Most of us New Worlders believe it would be amusing, rewarding or interesting from a marketing perspective to make wines that express terroir. We are fooling ourselves. I doubt that many of us are actually prepared to do what it takes to fully embrace terroir as it really is and not as some idealized fantasy. It is a little bit like meeting God. We like the concept, but none of us is quite ready for the reality.

Preconditions of Terroir
As I have said, I am a seeker of terroir, not a finder. But I would like to explore what some people have felt to be some of the preconditions for its expression:

a) Yield restriction. In Europe, the magic number hovers somewhere around 40-45 hecto-liters/hectare, which is about 3 tons/acre.
b) Plant density. In Europe we see a much denser plantation than what we typically see here in the New World, and an individual vine might carry only 1-2 kg. of fruit. In any event, there is a much higher root mass per volume of fruit, and perhaps this leads to a potentially greater concentration of soil characteristics expressed in the fruit itself. To take this to the ultimate extreme would be the “plantation folle” -- the ultra-dense plantation that was practiced in the pre-phylloxera era. It is utter speculation, but perhaps these legendary ultra-concentrated wines were even more expressive of terroir than the wines of our modern era. (At the very least we know they weren’t over-oaked.)
c) Cool climate. Grapes grown at the limit of their possibility (the coolest area where they can still ripen) will yield wines with the highest theoretical aromatic potential.
d) “Smart” or homeostatic, self regulating soils. Continental climates are by definition unsettled climates. Soils with the drainage/water retention characteristics to perform (that is to say produce wines that express finesse and typicity) in conditions of either drought or inundation are “smart” soils.
e) Relatively low vigor/low nutrient, old weathered soils. Old soils are like old souls; they have attained a sort of wisdom in virtue of their extended tenure on the planet.
f) Genetic diversity of vine population. Massal, rather than clonal selection in the vineyards yields wines of greater finesse and harmony. Wine makers talk about attaining a sort of “trans-parency” in the wine to allow the terroir to speak. I take this to mean that there is no single dominant taste element -- even a lovely flavor like primary fruit may be too dominant.
g) Deeply rooted vines. The vines must periodically experience significant water deficit to induce deep rooting. There are still a very, very few fanatical terroirist growers who will actually practice root pruning to encourage deeper rooting.
h) Normal maturity: neither under-ripeness nor over-ripeness.
i) Mono-cépagement (single varietal). I think that this is purely a function of the limitations of our cognitive abilities. One keeps one variable (the grape variety) fixed, the better to observe the subtle variations due to the contribution of terroir. In regions where blends are the norm, at least keep the percentages roughly equivalent.

Enemies of Terroir
a) Drip irrigation. Clearly one of the mortal enemies of terroir, as it tends to restrict the depth to which the roots will grow and, thus, the volume of the soil in which the plant will root.
b) Young vines. The vines are not yet in equilibrium, nor have the roots penetrated to any depth.
c) Compacted soil. Any practice that limits the rooting depth is non terroir-philic.
d) Pesticide/herbicide treatments that kill off the soil’s natural ecological balance. Lest this talk be taken as an unqualified paean to French viticulture, the French have in modern times been guilty of killing many of their great terroirs through intense herbicide use. Yet the practice of biodynamique (organic) viticulture is growing in France.
e) Extensive inorganic fertilization. Among other things, this tends to increase yields.
f) Sandy soil. Sandy soils are generally poor in exchangeable minerals; furthermore, grapes grown in sandy soils will typically experience severe water stress on an annual basis, compromising the finesse of a wine.
g) Over-ripeness. That intrusively dominant cooked or raisiny quality couples with staggering alcohol degree character insisted upon by the so-called vintelligencia.
h) Overcropping. Duh!
i) Over-extraction. Ultra-long maceration (the length of time the skins sit in contact with the juice during fermentation) enhances some flavors at the expense of terroir. It makes for a “look at me!” type of wine.
j) New Oak. Don’t get me started!
k) Wine Additions. Adding “ameliorants,” especially tannin and acid, is like putting the wine’s clear and distinct voice through a scrambler.
l) Botrytis. A beautiful complexing element, but too marked a flavor component.

Final Thoughts
Making a wine that expresses terroir involves an element of risk. If one wishes to control all of the variables of wine making, one cannot make a wine that expresses terroir. Growing grapes at the limit of their possibility, at the very edge of their ripeness threshold, definitely carries some risk. In some years the wines will be perceived as hard, mean or austere. Wines that express terroir have a strong personality and will be found extreme or offensive by some people. Producers can’t be paralyzed by fear of making some of our potential customers unhappy.

Terroir is the quality of wine that keeps us coming back, enabling us to maintain a lifetime of interest. It is that difference between wines that makes a difference, clearly distinguishing one wine from another, and in so doing, adding immeasurable value. Terroir is the quality that confers uniqueness and ultimately gives wine a sort of soul, an element that persists long after the wine maker has passed on.

Why are we ultimately willing to pay the breathtaking prices we do for great wines? It is more than the fact that they simply taste wonderful. Great wines possess elegance and balance that take our breath away. They inspire us to believe that perhaps anything might be possible. Great wines affect us in a manner similar to the way that poetry creeps into our brains, that is to say through metaphor, the holding together of two elements from disparate realms that normally would never be able to shake hands. And what is a more powerful poetic trope than the identity of a special place and a distinctive taste. Terroir is a mediating agent of the mystical property of transubstantiation where a wine can be both a wine and a place at the same time. It enables us to have our wafer and to eat it too. Terroir thus confers the gift of identity, of presence. It is the poetry, the linkage, where the unified whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts in the same way that a friend acquires a special meaning to us beyond a mere collection of his or her quirks and idiosyncrasies.

E-Mail: beekman@conversent.net

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