Terroir does not include the human factor.
It is trendy in France to say it does, but I do not buy it.
Alex R.
It’s a word, not a reality. It means what people say it means. As I said above, French dictionaries regularly include cultural elements in the definition, which is probably why French people use it that way. If people want to distinguish between the effects soil and location have and everything else, they can. But that won’t be precisely the word they want.
I have heard it referred to that terroir + winemaker/harvest method/etc. = “cru”, which tends to fit with the Bdx model of ‘growths’.
My license plate is also “TERROIR” so I get this question a lot, but generally from someone who has not even a guess at it. I always just say that “something with terroir reflects where it comes from.”
Thank you all for the feedback. It looks like, generally speaking, that terroir is understood to be the aspects involved with growing the grapes, specifically the impacts of the location (soil, water availability, climate, elevation, sun exposure, etc), and doesn’t really have anything to do with winemaking decisions once the fruit is in the door.
Like a wine-ignorant FBI agent or someone from the NSA.
Just because you don’t buy it doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. You only need to look at two neighbouring vineyards with the same soil and aspect where one is managed for quality/sustainability and the other is managed for quantity/ease. The grapes from the two will taste very different.
Without human involvement in the vineyard, terroir is just soil and climate. It requires a human to plant the vines, prune them, plough the soil, train the shoots and pick the grapes. A vineyard is not a natural environment like a rainforest, it’s like a garden.
Terroir is pretty much just an abstract concept if you don’t factor in what humans do in the vineyard and in the cellar. Also, I think that terroir is never absolute, but relative instead. There have been endless blind tastings, experiments with vintners “exchanging” grapes from different vineyards, etc. Sure, some very experienced tasters single out certain vineyards in blind tastings, but in my limited experience it only “works” in connection with a certain producer style (e.g. Chambertain from Rousseau or Musigny from de Vogué).
I’d also say that terroir (as an abstract concept) only relates to the vineyard, its exposure, soil composition, wind, temperature, etc. But in my view, this doesn’t mean that you can say what wines from a certain vineyard or region should always or typically taste like. Or that a certain Chassagne Montrachet 1er Cru can easily be identified in a blind tasting, if only the producer is “respectful” of the terroir. In my view, terroir becomes apparent when tasting different wines from a producer from a certain year and comparing them and then tasting the same or very similar wines from a producer in the same sub-region or village and the same vintage and comparing them. Like Combettes and Folatières from Leflaive and then Combettes and Folatières from Francois Carillon.
In those cases, I really do think it becomes visible that e.g. wines from a certain vineyard usually are broader or finer or more or less acidic or tannic than wines from another vineyard. Unless, of course, the producers in question are so stylistically particular that all wines taste roughly the same.
Interesting that cultural influences are part of the French definition of terroir. I get that but it rubs me the wrong way. Something tells me terroir should reflect the place rather than the people. I have to admit that the people are part of the ecosystem, and if the culture is to pick early vs late, or use oak vs stainless steel, etc. that can certainly affect the end result.
If I could re-write the dictionary, I’d put the things Howard lists (soil, elevation, exposure, climate) under terroir and move the cultural influences to the definition of typicity.
Terroir: that undefinable something that my vineyards have…and yours do not.
Mainly agree, but the challenge is trying not to obliterate “it” or mask “it.”
Beyond the concept that sites, due to their dirt, rocks, microclimates, expositions, etc etc. add an element that distinguishes them from other such “sites”, “terroir” is impossible to specify or describe.
I chuckle every time i see a wine described as having “transparency of terroir”, as if the terroir can be seen or even divined. There are too many other variables in a wine to conclude much more than that two different locations are different. Comparing wines from the same sites shows the futility of trying to guess what the “terroir”'s chararacter really is vs. the grape, viticulteur, winemaking, etc. and which most reflects the “terroir”. A nebulous concept like “obscenity” , IMO.
Among winegeeks–in France too, I think–it mostly means what you would like it to mean. And, as I said, I think John’s position, on balance with regard to wine, is better than the one he opposes, given the use of the term in English. But really, that use impoverishes the term. We could just refer to the characteristics offered by particular vineyards if that is what we wanted to say. The word terroir has such romance for us–and causes extended threads like this one with some regularity here–because it isn’t such a simple, analytical concept. If that’s what you want to refer to, instead of saying the potential of the terroir, why not just say, the potential of the vineyard or the potential of the soil?
Best responses so far: Bueker and Battaglia.
If wind, exposure, heat and climate etc are part of terroir, then how could one ever dissociate or discern that from the parameters of harvesting, which are the different every year. Trying to figure out where terroir ends and elevage begins is near impossible because winemakers are first and foremost farmers. Read Merrill and Casey’s weather threads and this is quite clear.
Does terroir dictate varietal selection or clonal selection or are the grapes themselves part of the terroir? And then consider soil, canopy and pest management, pruning, vine orientation and spacing, pace and selection of replantings, etc. If those conscious decisions are meant to maximize the expression of terroir then terroir is confined to the soil…I’m skeptical of that.
When people wax philosophic about terroir, they start invoking things like the souls of grapes and bits of whitewashed and romanticized history. It’s more marketing than reality. Terroir, elevage - inextricably linked, they’re all part of winemaking, and winemaking starts in the fields.
Of course, “terroir, elevage” are intextricably linked. But they are seperate elements.
Separating them in any meaningful way is impossible. That’s why talking about “terroir” as more than a synomyn for vineyard differences…as a concept rather than any specifics…is an exercise in futility. But, the OP here is the “definition” of terroir. Not how to describe/find/divine it. If the latter were the case, I’d have nothing meaningful to say…and…anyone else would be challenged to do so even if they didn’t agree it was futile.
More “marketing”…and nebulous beyond the definition, for sure.
An element of every wine, whether findable or not.
I am impressed with so many people’s ability to guess blind wines here. I am not so blessed.
But I believe terroir is real, even if I often lack the ability to identify it.
Some varieties express it better than others, and some winemakers can effectively mask it. But without believing in terroir, how could one justify the prices involved in our hobby?
But, believing in it and being able to identify that of a particular “terroir” are separate, I think. This is more true, of course, when, like in Burgundy and Alsace, there are often multiple owners making multiple examples of wines from a given vineyard site. Too many other variable loaded onto the “teroir” to articulate it or to see its “transparency” through the other, added variables. But, “terroir” is certainly one of those variables in comparing wines, albeit a metaphysical one.
I never got the concept until I spent much of a week tasting intensely in Burgundy with Claude Kolm back in 1998. Tasting dozens of wines in each cellar, cellar after cellar, from different communes and vineyards, the differences in terroir really became apparent, nothwithstanding differences in wine-making. (Most producers have vineyards in several communes.) For the first time I “got” the essence of Gevrey, Chambolle, Nuits, etc.
Terroir is like an image refracted through a lens and filter; it’s altered by the optics (read: winemaker) but there’s a core that comes through. I think you have to taste a lot of wine to see the commonalities in wines from the same source through the layers of elevage.
Right, it’s easier to use it as a concept of common “origin”, but impossible to describe it applied to a specific vineyard. No question there is a commonality among wines with a common origin.
I just have never been able to portray “terroir” by words or any other means. And, I’ve never heard any satisfying attempt regarding any specific “terroir”.
I am probably saying the same thing over and over in different ways. So, I will stop.
I am impressed with so many people’s ability to guess blind wines here. I am not so blessed.
You are. It’s just like recognizing an acquaintance, piece of music, or location when you’re looking for something. First time there’s no recognition. After 20 times, there is. Taste is exactly the same. You have it enough, you pay attention, and you can recognize certain parameters.
Whether or not those have anything to do with the terroir is a different question.
Oh dear, here we go agin!!! Love it Beserkers. Where is Jamie Goode?
http://www.wineanorak.com/wineblog/uncategorized/do-we-overstate-the-importance-of-terroir