The Elusive Quality of Wine Terrior
You’ve probably heard it bandied around in boardrooms, seen it in the pages of pretentious periodicals, and even read about it on your favorite winemaking Web site.
No, it’s not just another term cooked up by Wine Snobs Inc. to stymie would-be winemakers in their pursuit of a greater, Zen-like relationship with the fruit of the vine. Believe it or not, “terroir” actually means something, even though few folks seem to understand it or use the term correctly.
What Is Terroir?
Terroir is a French word meaning soil or earth. It is pronounced “tare-wah.” In the wine world it means the combined influence that the soil, sun, wind, and climate have on the growth of the grape and the finished product.
As simple as this concept might seem, the larger definition and connotation of “terroir” differs across philosophical as well as international boundaries. The French, especially the Burgundians, assert that “terroir” is an essential element, possibly the most essential element, in any wine worth its salt. They believe that if the finished wine does not express the essence of the land that gave it birth, then it is at best a soul-less product, one that can only be tolerated and never thoroughly enjoyed.
Many “new-world” grape growers (and wine drinkers), on the other hand, are more apt to be pleased with the finished wine if it is of itself distinctive, never mind where the fruit came from. For these relatively new winegrowing areas, terroir only comes into the picture if a grower has been in business long enough to recognize the particular personality of a certain vineyard or vineyards and has been able to track those changes, subtle as they often are, over the years. Even then, the “terroir” of a site is treated as only one factor in the greater winemaking process.
Why Do Winemakers Care?
Hence the crux of the great terroir debate. Is it the land that produces truly fine wines, or is it the skill of the winemaker in taking the produce of the land and working magic with it? In Burgundy, the Mecca of carefully nurtured “terroir wines,” grape growers will certainly chose the former. They are not alone.
In France and many other European winemaking countries, grape growing and winemaking are governed by a rigid body of laws originally put in place during the 19th century as protection against fraudulent practices. A good idea in an unscrupulous grape and wine market that often tried to peddle off Le Plonk du Jour as a Grand Crus, the French Appellation Controlee system and many others like it have since morphed into juggernauts of legal hoops through which vintners must jump. These laws dictate which varieties can be planted where and which grape-growing and winemaking techniques can be used when, not to mention countless other minutia dealing with bottling, labels, and sales.
Many happily enslaved vintners like to lord over other countries their own commitment to excellence, to tradition, and to fine “terroir” winemaking. They disparage many “New World” wineries and winemakers for seemingly higgledy-piggledy planting techniques, for using non-traditional vine and row spacing, for introducing revolutionary growing practices, and for using innovative technology in the care of the vines and the making of the wines. The terroir-heads like to claim that these unschooled wines have no soul, no life, no tie to the land from which they sprang, in essence, no “terroir.”
However, the question begs whether the balance among grape, climate, and soil known as “terroir” was achieved before the hand of the law came crashing down upon the European grape grower and insinuated itself into every aspect of his farming and winemaking regimen. Perhaps the grape growers did have the time to figure out by default which kinds of grapes grew best and which winemaking techniques jived with the fruit before the imposition of these laws. But is the terroir of today just a reflection of 19th-century farming practices, or could more of the hemmed-in wines of Europe be even better if the grape growers and winemakers were allowed to experiment and try new things? That’s not to advocate an all-out state of winemaking anarchy. But could it be that in some cases the idea of terroir, and a legally imposed sense of it at that, might actually hamper quality as opposed to sustaining and promoting it?
Unfortunately, many of the present-day “terroir” wines are expensive, rare, and have inflated market value, all because their producers are generally of the small and exclusive set. Some wineries in the United States like to talk about terroir in their wine marketing programs, not necessarily because they believe in the concept itself but most likely because they believe the term carries a hefty amount of marketing cachet.
Why Should Home Winemakers Care?
If those that hold fast to the brass ring of terroir look askance at “New World” wineries, then what must they think of home winemakers? Those of us who buy our fruit from a different supplier each year and see how creative we can be in turning it into a great wine are surely misunderstanding the call to be a vintner. Those of us who make wine from non-grape fruits or, heaven forbid, grape-concentrate kits must lie only a step above a heretic.
Thus we flip the coin and come back to the other side of the terroir debate. Home winemakers are among the most vocal advocates for the view that great wines are crafted by the hands of creative and skilled winemakers, not simply sprouted from the chalky hillside of some obscure European village.
While it is true that we cannot make great wines with poor grapes, many of us would argue that it is possible to make great wines from a variety of sources, including non-Vitis vinifera grapes and other fruits and vegetables. In addition, while it is always the job of the winemaker to serve as a hands-off supervisor to what is essentially a natural process, we home winemakers would be the first to admit that creativity, inventiveness, and flexibility are the keys to our success.
For home winemakers the only way to truly make a wine that can be said to have a recognizable terroir is to buy fresh grapes from a reputable source. If the vineyard has been well tended and if the site is unique, then it is likely that your resulting wine will have a recognizable terroir, one that will distinguish the finished product from wines grown in other locales.
Unfortunately, unlike sugar, acid, and oak, terroir is not one of the components that make a great wine that can be adjusted at the whim of the winemaker. Terroir is an ephemeral quality present in some wines almost, it seems, by chance.
The wine snobs (and this includes some critics, consumers, and producers) of the world would have it that the word terroir only be applied to wines that are rare, expensive, or hard to come by and would never think of deigning to imagine that a humble home-made wine could even show the slightest hint of terroir. Hence the grain of salt that must be taken whenever we hear, read, or use the word ourselves.
As home winemakers we have the freedom to blend, ameliorate, and chaptalize as we please. We can buy grapes from whomever we choose, or even decide to make a sparkling wine from a Chenin Blanc kit. Do our wines always come from the same place every year and express the unique soil and climatic combinations of that specific terroir? Sometimes, but not always.
Is the quality of the wine indiscriminately better because it does express said characteristics? Again, sometimes, but not always. If a wine you make can be said to have “terroir,” does this necessarily mean that the wine can command a high price or be in a higher “glamour” bracket?
Unfortunately, in today’s wine marketplace, yes, it usually does.
The good news, however, is that home winemakers, unlike commercial winemakers, are neither hemmed in nor hampered by strict production laws or the vagaries of the market. Whether our wines exhibit terroir or not, we are equally proud of, and equally enjoy, the fruits of our labor.
