Whiskey/Spirits and 'Terroir.'

I attended a trade tasting yesterday and there was a seminar on NY whiskeys and ‘terroir.’ Things went off the rails pretty quickly when Master Distiller #1 came up and said, 'We find that the terroir in our grains express cinnamon and clove elements, so we embrace those flavors and go with that."

The second speaker reeled things back in a bit by discussing how he tries to use as much as possible from local sources, and he will also begin using NY oak for his barrels next year. In the loosest interpretation of ‘terroir,’ imparting a sense of place, I can see how using all local ingredients will come close, but as far as the definition we use for wine, none of these guys came anywhere near to forming a cogent argument that spirits express unique terroir. My feeling is that the company spirits manager tried to roll in a buzzword as a seminar topic but for me and a couple of other more knowledgeable folks this seminar was pretty much a disaster, these 4 guys seemed to have no idea of what terroir really means.

Anyone have any comments regarding spirits and terroir?

I think that there is terroir in Scotch, where the water and (at least traditionally) the peat, offer an actual flavor of the place where it was made.

Cognac and Armagnac appear to show fairly good terroir.