Very few wines see no wood at all. In CdP, Charvin is one and it ages quite well within the context of CdP. If you allowed foudre and very old oak barrels, the numbers would increase astronomically. Since one of the points of wood is to allow more oxygen exchange than INOX or cement, one would not guess that elevation in wood would increase ageability in any case.
Larry - in Tokaj the forests for the barrel wood are just a little higher up the mountain, so it’s grown in the same “terroir” if you will, although they’d argue that each vineyard is special.
Like most of you, I cannot see the term “winemaker’s terroir.” For me, this is not limited to oak. Nothing a winemaker does, IMHO is terroir.
I think of there being a number of elements to wine:
terroir (which I think of as soil, exposure, climate, drainage, slope, etc.)
weather (vintage)
farming (to me a winegrower is a guy who farms the land and makes the wine, a winemaker makes the wine but does not farm the land)
winemaking
Each is important and influences the wine. But they are not all terroir.
I get Larry’s original jibe. But, yes, it is part of a winemaker’s style. When used what I consider excessively, it can overwhelm terroir and sometimes really ruin a wine for me, especially when applied to high alcohol wines.
But with racking, there can be a lot more nuances to the process. For example, I came to like new oak in the first barrel the wine aged in, but then I would change to pretty close to neutral barrels at the first racking. That way, there was some oak influence but it was both limited and had a lot of time in barrel to integrate with the wine. There are some winemakers who go from new to new when they rack, at least to my understanding. With one of my wines, I started out with twice-used barrels but switched to new oak at the second racking, which helped ameliorate a “green” factor in the wine. It worked pretty well.
So I guess I’m saying that while it’s tempting to use a broad brush on the subject, it’s a lot more complicated. But for me, new oak is a handy tool but I don’t like to overuse it.
![[winner.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/07ec25c9fd71159fe15d7f1ba5fad64e91238d0e.gif "winner"){kind=small}
This.
Mies van der Rohe: “Less is more”.
One of my favorite wineries, Levet from Cotie Rotie, makes some of the most traditional, and arguably backward wines, in the market. These wines have huge structure and age effortlessly, most vintages requiring considerable ageing. Very little new oak is used. Large oak casks are used in the first year and then the wine is transferred to demi-maids, French oak, only 10-15% is new.
Levet has a gorgeous, pungent signature. More oak would not be good.
I am still waiting for somebody to define terroir.
Aubert de Villaine once told me that terroir emerges after the wine has been in barrel a while.
Terroir - the vineyard I have, and not the vineyard you have.
It’s a perfectly good French word that refers to a locality in terms of what makes it special: qualities of soil, weather, and also cultural practices that have endured for a long time. Applied to agricultural products (not just wine, but cheese, meat, etc.), it refers to the special qualities the locality gives the product. It cannot refer to what an individual grower or maker adds because the concept, by definition, refers to what the locality and its culture give.
The idea that certain practices hide terroir is of course a position about how winemaking should be done. I doubt anyone doesn’t know what that position entails though they may disagree about whether either it’s a good goal not to do this. Trying to do away with the concept or the position with metaphysical questions about what is natural, what does terroir mean, etc. isn’t really engaging the argument, though.
Aubert de Villaine surely meant that the wine only takes on the character of its terroir after time in the barrel because when it is too young, it tastes too raw. I fail to see how that makes the concept difficult or even meaningless.
Jonathan,
My old Larousse dictionary defines terroir as taste coming from the soil…weather was not mentioned nor were cultural practices…About ten yers after I bought the book somebody added weather to the definition…now we have cultural practices…
No, that is not what Aubert meant. He meant that terroir emerged after 10-12 months in barrels, much after the rawness went away.
What you say Aubert said is just what I said he said.
I don’t know about your old Larousse. But I have heard sentences along the lines of “the dialogue of Pagnol’s plays is redolent of the terroir of Provence” for many years and such sentences really do not mean that they speak like dirt. And the online Larousse, at least, has this definition:
Ensemble des terres exploitées par les habitants d’un village.
Ensemble des terres d’une région, considérées du point de vue de leurs aptitudes agricoles et fournissant un ou plusieurs produits caractéristiques, par exemple un vin.
Province, campagne considérées
comme le refuge d’habitudes, de goûts typiquement ruraux ou régionaux : Un écrivain du terroir.
You will not that even the bare bones first definition specifies that it is the lands as they are cultivated by the inhabitants of a village. The second three definitions have progressively more reach. If terroir just meant “soil,” we would hardly have had to import the word from French.
Jonathan,
Your answer has earned you a.prizr…a book on tasting for terroir.
I just talked with a Burgundian.
He,says their views here have changed…another problem I have w the notion of terroir.
Our views on gravity have changed as well.
Yes, it appears gravity is a myth… the earth sucks
I’m very sorry about that joke 
Since you don’t tell me what the views of the nameless Burgundian are, it’s hard for me to parse this response. Are they really views about the meaning of the word, which is all I have been commenting on? If so, is he a lexicographer?
If you PM me, I will be happy to give you an address to which you can send me my book.
I am traveling…will clarify soon.
Alan Rath,
that means you don´t like the Grands Crus Burgundies of DRC, Rousseau and Roumier? They rest in 100% new oak. As do most of the Premiers Crus Classé Bordeaux, Haut Brion included.
I doubt that anybody can define the % of new oak a wine saw in a blind tasting. I participated in an experiment the famous barrel producer Taransaud organized. It was obvious that not the % of new oak made the difference but the the origin of the oak and it´s quality. The better the wood the lesser the obvious influence on the wine.
While oak is not part of the terroir it´s part of a certain characteristic. A Bordeaux or a Burgundy made in stainless steel wouldn’t´t be the wine we know anymore. At the Tranasaud experiment we tasted always the same wine once from stainless steel, 100% raw oak with no toasting, lieht, medium, dark toasting, different oaks (US, French, Slavonian), 100% new, 60% new, 30% new and so forth. The type of oak has a huge influence on the final product.
I think oak and the vintage have the most influence. Fruit unripe, barely ripe, ripe, very ripe (% of alc., acid, tannins). High or low yields. Good oak or cheap oak. Light, medium or dark toasted. Oak coming from the US, France or elsewhere in Europe. This is mainly what you are tasting.
Good comments Jürgen.
I do wonder what has caused the backlash against oak. I am not a fan of drinking wine that tastes like a vanilla milkshake, but oak plays a significant role in numerous important, and justifiably acclaimed, wines.
Speaking in terms of generality, I think the backlash comes from the pendulum swinging too far, to modern wines pushing the outer boundaries of taste and balance with more overt use of oak (200%, new, toasted, etc.), later picking of fruit to achieve greater ripeness, with the consequence of lower acid and higher alcohol, among other things. Many of the Rolland estates have reallocated the balances of grapes used by some historic chateaux, seeking more plushness from the merlot. Even very traditional estates have fallen prey to these shifts. I am not averse to oak, but I do not want overt oak. I think many acclaimed wines, including Ridge, Cos, Leoville Poyferre, are over-oaked (the presence, at least). I don’t drink LaLa, I’d take Levet over that any day of the week. I know longer buy Cos or LP (well, I did grab some LP 2014 in 375s). My purchasing decisions don’t necessarily show a backlash as the bulk of my purchases tend to be more traditional estates, though my buying has become more focused. My attitude about what some wineries are doing, however, I guess that is indeed a backlash.
Robert,
after the Taransaud test we all agreed that heavy tasted oak isn´t more obvious necessarily. The most oak influence came from oak with zero tasting. The wine tasted awful and undrinkable. The toasting must fit to the wine you will produce. Is there a lot of Cabernet in the blend or is it mainly Merlot. Is it a wine meant for long cellaring or for earlier consumption.
It is an art to produce a wine not that different from a master chef. And furthermore – it´s not easy to predict how a wine will taste when it´s actually mature and ready for consumption. I. e. Mouton Rothschild is known for a lot of oak influence when you taste the wine as a baby. But after 25 years in bottle – which is the normal time a Mouton needs until it´s ready – no obvious oak any more. Even the LaLa´s turn into balanced wines if you wait long enough. I had a 1987 La Landonne not long ago that was a terrific wine, sublim and balanced and certainly no oak monster.
I really think this entire oak debate is full of prejudices and misinformation. Unfortunately. IMHO.