Tuesday morning musing: which grape(s) is best suited to transmitting terroir? The answer I’ve always heard is Pinot Noir, which I can certainly see. I’ve heard Riesling, not sure how I feel about that. My answer might be Chardonnay, which has such a wide array of expressions. Although, as a somewhat “neutral” grape, perhaps the different expressions are more the result of winemaking technique than terroir. Am I tasting the terroir or choices made in the cellar? Surely a bit of both, but am curious what you all think. Pinot Noir? What about the other Pinots (gris and blanc)? Riesling? Chardonnay? Something else? Thanks!
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You don’t feel Riesling would be good in expressing terroir even though two virtually identical Mosel vineyards can produce two strikingly different wines? Alrighty…
I think those three varieties (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling) are definitely some of the best varieties in transmitting terroir from the soil to the glass. Chenin Blanc as well.
Pinots Gris and Blanc also do exhibit stylistical variation, although I feel to less so than Noir. Nevertheless, in Germany Grauburgunders and Weissburgunders can be surprisingly different depending on in which part of the country they are grown. And Pinot Blanc seems to produce its best expression in Alto Adige, so I guess it must have to do something with terroir, not just winemaking practices.
And of course Nebbiolo - different single-vineyard Nebbiolos of one single producer can be drastically different to each other.
It’s always such a tough question to answer for one truly needs to separate ‘terroir’ from ‘winemaker intent’ and that is not always an easy thing to do.
I do believe Pinot Noir can wear its sense of place and clone on its sleeve IF winemakers do not intervene too much; I believe the same to be true for Grenache for sure and have seen it firsthand.
I’ll leave discussions of Riesling and Nebbiolo to others . . .
Cheers
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Turning the question around: is there really a grape that does not convey terroir noticeably?
I’ve been told even Merlot has been said to end up producing different wines: Colli Orientali del Friuli, anybody can confirm if this is true indeed? And then, this assumes we are able to find wines where the “winemaker’s intent” (thank you Larry) is easy enough to abstract that we are comparing terroir vs terroir.
Tough question this is… I’ll leave it to the experts.
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I guess I’m just in a mood today but the use of the word best bothers me when I think normally it wouldn’t. I don’t know that there is a best and I don’t even know if there is better. Consider Cabernet from Napa which according to many isn’t at all close to the best at letting place show through. However, it seems to me that there are fairly distinct differences between the mountain fruit and that coming from the valley floor. Likewise Howell Mtn tastes nothing like Spring Mtn to me.
Sure some producers make it harder to distinguish but that can happen regardless of grape.
I guess a test would be, when you want something do you only think that you want a Pinot or do you think you want a California Pinot or do you know you want a SRH Pinot or is it only a Sanford and Benedict Pinot that will scratch the itch. Substitute other grapes and regions and see where you stop and that probably tells you which grapes most translate terroir to you, which may be different for me.
This depends on the definition of terroir. Virtually all grapes produce very different wines if grown in distinct enough regions, where you basically change everything from the viticultural point of view, even if you don’t change the winemaking.
However, I’d argue that the amount of grapes that can exhibit notable differences in the resulting wine when the grapes are sourced from two different vineyards that can be even right next to each other. We all know how Pinot Noir, Riesling, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Nebbiolo can do that - but how about the thousands of other grape varieties? I doubt all varieties can exhibit similar kind of expression of terroir as these varieties, but I’ll be glad if I’m proven wrong.
Kermit Lynch has some wonderful discussion in his memoir, discussing grapes that tend to be more “transparent” and allow terroir to show through. Many that Otto mentioned are there – Pinot Noir, Riesling, Chardonnay, Chenin, Nebbiolo … and notably not Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s an interesting discussion to have. I haven’t fully formed where I sit on this yet. Whether a wine shows terroir can have so much to do with what happens during a growing season and, especially, what occurs after picking – winery treatment, etc. – that you can mask or enhance terroir. I certainly feel like I’ve had many grapes that show beautiful expression of terroir, including Cabernet.
+1
And I would take it a step further and say that with Pinot Noir, and probably Chardonnay and Riesling, even Blocks within a single vineyard can and do exhibit notable differences. I started bottling the different blocks at Whistling Ridge independently just to be able to enjoy the specific differences each of the blocks offers. Patricia Green also does this with their estate vineyard directly next to Whistling Ridge, and the two vineyards produce at least 8 different site specific micro-lots. All with notable, and consistent, differences IMO.
I think it also comes down to a sample size issue. There aren’t many grape varieties where you have long history of a wide range of bottling from different sites, which you need to be able to see if those grapes consistently express themselves differently.
There may be lots of other grape varieties that express themselves very differently depending on where they are grown, but we simply don’t know because they are not often made into individual cuvees
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Given that it produces exceptional & quite distinctive wines from Beaune, Chablis and Champagne, and can produce drinkable/“pleasing” wines virtually anywhere, I’d argue that Chardonnay gets top honors here. Not that I don’t love the other varieties mentioned here.
Marcus, are all the Whistling Ridge blocks the same clones, or does it vary from block to block?
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Pinot, Riesling, and Chardonnay is what I have always read/heard. And I believe it to be accurate, too.
The very same Mosel vineyard can also produce two (or twenty) strikingly different wines, so differences ≠ terroir. I am a riesling drinker over a chardonnay drinker 95 times out of 100, but I’d still give chardonnay the edge in this question. It’s often difficult in riesling to isolate which traits to attribute to terroir and which to the effects of the numerous style variations that riesling has and chardonnay doesn’t. You can taste a dozen vintages of a spatlese and think you know what the vineyard tastes like and then taste the GG and it bears zero resemblance. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one or the other is more or less suited to transmitting terroir but it does mean that one might require more work than the other to read the transmission of terroir not by virtue of properties inherent to the grape but just on account of how they’re made.
Riesling for sure. Even within a single vineyard, bottlings of individual parcels can quite nicely show differences in soil and climate.
How do we know that the differences are entirely due to terroir and not due to winemaking techniques applied to amplify or correct for the characteristics of the terroir? Are there good examples of producers with different bottlings from different parcels with nearly identical vinification processes applied to them?
That a question that’s always on my mind when the discussion of terroir arrises. You also need to account for other factors like harvesting decisions, are parcels being picked on the same day or are some parcels picked earlier or later than others? Changing ripeness of the grapes certainly has an impact on the final wine as well
Well, basically all quality-minded small producers in Mosel. For a given Prädikat level they tend to harvest more or less at the same time - unless the site is different enough so it needs to be harvested noticeably later / earlier - and the wines are vinified pretty much identically.
For example Weingut Gessinger has only a few hectares in Zeltinger Sonnenuhr, Zeltingen Himmelreich and Zeltingen Schlossberg. All the wines for a certain Prädikat level are vinified in an identical manner. I suppose their wines would be a great exercise in terroir differences, but then again, I guess there are tons of other similar producers.
Can you even find information that granular, at least for German riesling producers? I doubt you’ll see a dramatic difference in vinification between, say, Willi Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese #5 vs. #10. But there may be differences before picking to “amplify” or “correct” for the terroir to ensure a good crop.
Just one example - it would be easy enough to pop Prum Kabinetts from WS, GH, BB, and ZS across the same vintage and see the differences. To Otto’s point, there are many producers in the Mosel you could do this with.
From a clonal standpoint, 3 of the 5 blocks are similar in being multi-clonal selections with the youngest a massale selection of the other two multi-clonal blocks. The House Block, planted first, is Pommard. The second planted block, Experimental Acre, is Wadensville but on 6 different rootstocks(5 grafted plus own rooted). Both are dealing with phylloxera now, so there has been considerable replanting. But the scion portion of the grafted plants remains Pommard or Wadensville respectively, and some own rooted plants remain in production in both blocks.
That said, House Block is the only section of the vineyard with a Western exposure as it rolls slightly West off of the ridge top and down towards Beaux Freres. There is a bowl to the western slope and the bottom is the dampest spot in the vineyard, and the vines stuggle in the low point.
Experimental is the flattest block with primarily a southern exposure but very little degree of slope.
The Long Acre is multi-clonal, but is a much more varied exposure as well. The top portion of the rows is flat like Exp but then there’s a short steeper drop(about 20 plants long) and the lower portion of the rows is slightly sheltered from tye breeze by the drop, has a SE exposure, except that therems also been some uneven erosion many years ago which creates “wrinkles” parallel with the rows. A row on top of or in between a wrinkle is SE expsosure, but rows on the side of the wrinkle will feel more of a due East or due West exposure depending upon which side they are on. Soils are very shallow here as well.
On the North side of the vineyard, the ridge top literally splits the blocks in half. Part facing SE and part facing NW. wind comes through this part of the vineyard first, and the ripening difference between the North end of the block and the South end is significantly different. We crop at completely different levels at either end of the block. Add in that it is a multiclonal block on two different rootstocks, uniformity is a joke. You just have to believe will make good wines. That said, it has been either all of or a mahor portion of the Heritage bottling every year since I began making that selection. Soils here are very poor and very shallow.
The Last Acre is the youngest vines, but a selection massale of the vineyard, and with a similar break in the exposures as the Beloved Acre except a much smaller section has the NW exposure. It has a more succulent feel to the fruit, and also a less complex nature so far. But potentiL should be very high. In between Last and Beloved is the Dijon Chardonnay.
Each really does have a very distinct difference in personality, and clonal material is a part of that but so are all the little quirks of the blocks.
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