What would you prefer, access to a particular plot of vines/land? Or Aubert de Villaine spending time with you as a mentor for an entire cycle of wine growing/production?
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I am not a winemaker, but I would prefer to own La Tache than to have Aubert de Villaine as a mentor. If I own La Tache, I can hire someone really good to grow the grapes and make the wine. But, there is only one La Tache.
So, if you are buying a wine, say a Ridge Cabernet, you would always buy the estate Cabernet rather than Monte Bello because the terroir of Monte Bello is pure marketing and the estate Cabernet is just as good?
Bingo. Terroir matters.
Merrill,
I may not be saying anything different from you, but I think of the climate of a plot of land (longer term weather characteristics) as part of the terroir but actual weather in a year as being vintage differences, not terroir differences.
[/quote]Vintage weather affects the vineyard, but it is secondary to terroir: land plus weather. Vintage differences (weather during that vintage year) affect the yield and quality from the vineyard. But the vineyard is the vineyard: it is where it is, it has its rootstock and clone, and it has the person who calls the shots for it. You can replant or graft, you can use chemical fertilizer (not me), you can do a lot of stuff. The land is the land, with an overlay of who is managing it, and to which target or focus.
Without question, I would much rather have the plot of land. I have spent a good amount of time with Aubert and have enormous respect for him. He is a great man, leader and ambassador. He has been a tremendous steward to some of the very best vineyards in the world. This stewardship has positioned DRC for years to come. But that execution is all replicable and some New World wineries execute their business and winemaking equally as well.
What is utterly unique and non-reproducible about DRC is the quality and character that their Vosne Grand Crus are capable of. And Aubert would be the first to explain that.
To quote Terry Theise: âAnybody who says he doesnât believe in terroir is afraid he doesnât have the right one.â
Unless something changed quite a bit, the âsecondâ Cab based wine from Ridge is simply a barrel selection. Maybe something changed when they changed the title from âSanta Cruz Mountains Estateâ to âCabernet Sauvignon Estateâ that I am unaware of. Clearly they are focusing on the Cab portion where as the SCM bottling would often have a lot of Merlot in it. But at that time it was barrel selection. The better barrels that were to go into the Monte Bello bottling were kept in barrel for another year or so. The other stuff was pulled after a year post selection for bottling.
Thatâs a great one.
I think the title of the article was a bit unfortunate and I donât think anyone would say that terroir is irrelevant. A better title might have been something discussing geology and terroir. As Eric posted, there are fairly well understood relationships between pH and nutrient availability, and thereâs clearly an interface between the geology that created the soil and the local pH.
We have many claims that the gravel, galets, sand, schist, granite, slate, llicorella, or blends like chalk that is covered with iron-rich soil are responsible for the qualities of a wine. I donât believe the author was claiming that terroir doesnât exist, just that blithely attributing it to a soil type is overly simplistic. Of course, thatâs why people can become experts in the subject overnight and decide to arrange wine lists by vineyard soil type.
When you do walk the vineyards and see ribbons of differing soil types, you are a bit out of luck because very few people harvest and vinify each row separately, which would be the logical move if you have a vineyard on a mountainside where the earth shifted 90 degrees at some point in the distant past and the stratification is visible. But they donât and yet the wine from that hillside is distinguishable from that of another. Itâs not necessarily the geology or make up of the rock, but the exposure, the angle of the sun in the afternoon, the fog that comes from the valley below, the cooler nights, the wind that blows a little more steadily than farther down, the drainage, etc. In other words, a lot of things unrelated to the rock type.
I, for reasons of practicality and interest, decided to wait this out a bit.
Geology is important. It is not the defining character but it does provide definition. The soil is the plantsâ home. While your home, especially one you lived in all your life, may not define you it does lend, letâs say, a baseline to oneâs character. How one is treated, whom they associate with, the conditions in which they exist and the care they receive over time shape and mold that baseline character but it is there.
Can I explain why the 4 Dundee Hill sites have similar textures, albeit spread over a broad range of the definition of the word similar, and that the 2 non-Dundee Hill yet still Jory soil sites share that baseline nature? Scientifically speaking, no I cannot. Nor would I care to or am even interested in making the attempt. I have no interest in chasing the serpentâs tale in a futile effort to prove or disprove what I believe and have experienced over nearly half my life.
I am not a religious person at all but it does not mean I donât have or do not believe in faith. I have a belief that what I see, touch, smell and taste inform me at a level that I believe I can rightfully, honestly and with all manner of integrity communicate to people interested enough to hear what I have to say about my wines as they experience them.
I donât think terrroir is geology or geology defines terroir but I do believe that the two are connected and that a lab can not verify that belief is beyond unimportant to me. We understand far less about plants and plant life than we pretend we do. We havenât figured out human behavior, development, emotions and capacity in any way beyond rudimantarily and plants have been around for billions of years longer than we have. Iâm not attempting to engage in magical talk here but I have a firm belief that plants, especially complex fruit bearing plants that work within the context of a network, are far more complicated and interesting than science folk imagine.
Off the top of my head I would say we have around 60 distinct lots in the cellar based upon geology, clone, vine age, fermentation technique, etc. Within vineyards we have it broken down to, perhaps, a level of dork-dom that is beyond most peopleâs ability to deal with. However, I think that has served us well. I can easily guide anyone through a barrel tasting based on a myriad of factors of the discussion of terroir and show them what I think and believe is possible and not have anyone believe itâs BS.
I understand the desire to and rationale behind wanting to define the scientific existence of terroir and question those that talk about their experiences with it at many levels. This is, to me, not the essence or even an interesting part of vineyards and wine. Drilling down to find the answer wonât get you La Tache, Stony Hill, Freedom Hill or any other vineyardâs true nature.
Thanks for the contribution Jim. This sentence especially resonated with me, maybe because I have some of your Freedom Hill wines napping in my cellar.
Itâs quite simple
Donât trust the palates of those who do not believe in terroir
Yes. Other compounds make their way into the grape tissue that same way as smoke taint (guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol) and eucalyptol. One of the native shrubs here is apparently responsible for a signature smell in Santa Cruz Mountains wines.
No, importantly, and Iâm sure purposefully, he says âin the vineyardâ rather than âin the soilâ.
Alan posted above about the importance of a healthy soil web. Iâll add there were some studies a few years ago showing how microbial life on the grape skin interacts with and changes compounds in the grapes, which are expressed in the resulting wines. Older studies show the transitory nature of microbial life on a grape, which makes sense. Itâs a changing ecosystem, so what can thrive and compete there changes as the grapes ripen.
The article discusses nutrients necessary for vine growth. But, the make up of the grapes is much more complex than the woody tissue of the vines. Thatâs where the variations are. Thaâs what you can look and measure variations from one site to another. Some compounds will remain as is in the resultant wine, many are precursors that will be transformed by the yeast, then there are the nutrients that enable the yeasts, transformed or utilized themselves. Importantly, that includes micronutrients, which are harder to study.
Soil specifics are crucial to what microbial ecosystem can exist in it. It wouldnât be surprising to me would be finding some microbe crucial to a specific terroir trait only able to exist in a certain type of soil.
I am sure this is true. If you walk through the brush around vineyards in Mediterranean areas you will find that many of the plants there are wild herbs; in effect you have a wild Herbes de Provence mixture growing all around the vineyard, so itâs not surprising that the wines end up with a background of those flavors.
Thanks for that, Wes.
This sounds consistent with biodynamic principles. Whatever you think of the more occult aspects of hardcore biodynamism (personally, Iâm a hardcore skeptic and empiricist), a core part of the practice in maintaining natural and healthy soils.
It would be nice think that wasnât just romantic blather by writers captivated by the south of France.
Iâd forgotten about smoke taint â another great example.
I visited with a biodynamic practitioner who is at the cutting edge of dynamic, yet pragmatic vineyard practices. Until recently, the norm was a HUGE knowledge gap between organic farming and vineyard practices. Well understood concepts didnât register with grape growers. Iâd been impressed by others, but this was a different level. And, by odd happenstance I was accompanied by a veteran organic farmer. So, innovative training solutions, tailored to the needs of a block, plants around the vineyard to attract beneficial insects, etc. Their opinion of biodynamics is itâs a compilation of time-proven traditional practices with a layer of bullshit on top. Itâs easy to ignore the bullshit.
An inherent advantage of biodynamic over organic is itâs too easy to be a mindless twit with organic. People buy certain products and go down a checklist and thatâs that. And, some bad practices are allowed under organic certification. Biodynamics seems to force people to think and pay more attention. (Still, certification seems like a sophomoric exercise.)
Can you give examples for the first bolded part? And the gap exists among what group? Iâm curious.
As for the last thing you said, itâs also easy for many to dismiss the time-proven practices because of the BS!
It is my understanding that âsmoke taintâ is caused be particles on the grape skins themselvesâŚright?