Over in the Brewer-Clifton thread (which has quickly become a thread on irrigation) Brian Loring ask a question about how the French ban on vineyard irrigation originated, etc. It is a good question, perhaps with some practical benefits…but it led to me wonder what led to the emphasis on terroir? Many people have said that the prime duty of a wine is to reflect the unique place of its oriigins…and I’ve said much the same thing…with disagreements only about how to best achieve that. But where did the concept and emphasis on the importance of place start?
I must say, I am thinking about this more in the terms of a philosophy than any real practical aspects of application. When did we start saying that the input of place is more important than the input of person? Why would we say such a thing? Is there, behind this, an underlying belieft that nature is good and humanity bad? Rousseau used to believe that man is his natural state was good…but society was what led to humanity’s downfall. The ancient texts has God creating “nature” and proclaiming it “good” but creating humanity and proclaiming us “very good.”
So why now is human involvement in wine considered a bad thing by so many? Could it somehow go back to the rather puratanical belief in “original sin” and that dipping the toe of humanity into a natural process poisons that process?
Sorry if this is a big diversion…but it puzzles me…and as there seems to be an increased emphasis on “natural wine” I think it might be important to see what well this springs from.
Now you are talking Adam! This should keep us busy right through harvest.
I think the suspicion about the “hand of man” is largely a 20th century development. I don’t think there was much technology that was changing the face of farming before the 19th century and only in the last 100 years was there a backlash.
The evolution of the French concept of terroir began as a search for quality. Given their ancient low cost approach (vines were hardly tended), there was tremendous pressure on the qualitatative attributes of site. Over thousands of years, people figured out the right varieties for a given area and the grapes migrated slowly (through the hand of man) to the slopes and other places that made the best wine. It is only in the last 200 years that people formally ranked the quality of these vineyards (though they were informally ranked, or market ranked for centuries).
If you owned a piece of Musigny, you would want the wine to reflect the place. If you could make a wine as good as Musigny in any place you chose, neither you nor anyone else would care about place.
I think the concept of terroir generally is regarded as coming from the monks in Burgundy in the middle ages, specifically the Cistercians and Clos-Vougeot. But I don’t think that they were necessarily giving it the same philosophical gloss as provided above.
A stimulating topic, thanks. But I would say that the input of place is itself an input of person(s). And quite a wonderous achievement if/when it happens. Let’s not forget that the intent of the vine is to attract a bird or racoon to its fruit. ALL else was/is formulated, or, at the very least, guided by man.
I think the “human intervention” backlash is driven by concerns about western industrial agriculture. The drive to create cheaper and cheaper food has lead to agriculture reduce genetic diversity, utilize a scorched earth attitude toward the environment, and use every political means to advance their profitability at the expense of the general public. Michael Pollan does a good job of discussing this in his book “In Defense of Food”.
I think that part of what artisan winemakers are selling is a rejection of western industrial agriculture, and the concept of terroir ends up being part of that.
It’s about REAL ESTATE: if the inherent quality of wine is a result of WHERE you grow it as opposed to HOW you grow it then you can charge more for the land. See Barbaresco / Burgundy / GC Champagne village prices vs Jumilla / Mendocino / Luberon
I thought this video posted on Chow with Sean Thackrey’s view of the role of the winemaker and terroir (among other things) was interesting and certainly should spur discussion.
I wasn’t going to post, Adam, until Emilio had…but just couldn’t resist!!!
If you recall (probably you don’t). “gout de terroir” was originally a British wine writer’s expression for the
taste of the Earth in a wine…like you get in Loire Reds or Lodi reds. That was pretty much the only use
of terroir that I can recall when I first started reading the classic wine books back in the late '60’s (by crackey).
Somehow, over the yrs, it has kinda morphed into it its current (rather nebbulous) meaning. I think it was
probably comandered by the French so they could make their great wines unique in the world. “How can it be
a great expression of PinotNoir if it doesn’t come from LeMusigny??” They, of course, have the corner of the market
on that real estate.
You make a good point, Adam. There are some who worship at the alter of terroir (like some worship at the altar
of typicity); if the wine doesn’t speak of the vnyd origins, than it ain’t worth crap. There are some wines that
speak mostly of the winemaker (like SeanThackery’s eucalyptus terroir). Yet some of them are equally valued.
I’ve never heard or read of any French person expressing any thought even remotely resembling that. To the contrary, every French winery person I’ve ever met has been intensely curious to taste pinot noirs from everywhere else in the world. Moreover, the esteem of Musigny and other grand crus owes far more to British and American writers (and dollars and pounds) championing their greatness than to any self-promotion by the French.
Actually, Tom, there is much more history to it than that – I’ve done some research into the use of the term. The writer you refer to made an incorrect translation from what he heard from a French person, a mistake that anglophones commonly make.
But it is true than by the 1960s, the term had largely dropped out of discourse, to be revived beginning in the late 1970s, and not coincidentally about the time that people in Burgundy woke up to the fact that their wines had become largely degraded and they had some work to do to recover the qualities that had made their reputation.
I believe even the most ardent supporter of terroir will admit that its contribution is at the margin, a relatively subtle contributor compared to varietal, vintage, and the winemaker’s style. However, the concept of terroir gains currency and importance as it becomes more and more of a differentiator in a marketplace where many other differences have been minimized. Technology, distribution, a global economy, and the dominance of a certain critic’s palate have all contributed to the “international” style of winemaking – a style that emphasizes consistency over vintage variation, and intensity over nuance.
Seems to me that that until recently we mostly relied upon intervention to compensate for (or in some cases to minimize) differences in terroir. It’s only relatively recently, now that technology and science have to a large degree leveled the playing field, that those nuances of place have once again become important.
I have a slightly different view: I think we ascribe far too much conscious effort and choice to winegrowers of the past. Aren’t vineyards where they are today primarily because nothing of greater value (i.e. food crops) could be grown in those places? Until quite recently, wine was made as a mind altering beverage, not for the quality we now judge it by. Personally, I think it’s just blind luck that Pinot is the dominant variety in Burgundy, and Syrah dominant on Hermitage Hill, it could just as well be reversed, and I’ll bet great wines would still come from both places
Alan,
People are smarter than that! The Cistercians mapped Burgundy down to the square foot and created the majority of the vineyard boundaries that are still in use today. It wasn’t just happenstance, they were using soil types, grapegrowing characteristics and wine quality to make those distinctions.
Over the millenia, there were many developments that were geared around “just getting a crop” and not necessarily quality but these learnings guided grape variety choices and site selection. For example, slopes are much less prone to frost in addition to making better tasting wine. On Varieties, I think Cote D’Or Syrah would taste great in 4 or 5 vintages out of a current decade but it wouldn’t have ripened much at all in the cool weather of the 1300s. Trial and error, when applied thousands of times, can lead to powerful insight.
According to Allen Meadows (in an interview that you can find at scottpaul.com ), the Cistertian monks noticed the differences in how wines tasted from different plots (in Burgundy and in Germany) and took these to be messages from G-D. They did not want to lose these messages so they bottled the wines separately. Makes a great story – much more romantic and less cynical than any of the above.
Good points both, I was being just a little flippant, of course. But I do think there was much more serendipity than we seem to want to admit. Do you believe that back then people chose to plant vines on the steep hills of Hermitage or Cote Rotie because it made better wine? I kind of think they did it, at least at first, because that was the available cheap land not being used for more important crops on valley floor - way too much work otherwise, I would think. Burgundy is a bit of a different story, as there is widespread land not much different from the vineyard areas all around it. The reason I think this is that wines didn’t last very long back then, they were made for short term consumption. By good fortune, we now know (or at least believe) that this sub-optimal ground is a key factor in the production of great, ageworthy wines, but isn’t that a relatively recent conclusion, say the past 100 years or so?
I think the truth is somewhere in between what you two are saying and more complex than is usually portrayed. Don’t forget, Kevin, that during the Middle Ages, the climate was warm enough that England was producing wine and vines were flourishing in Northern France. People harvested at much lower degrees than today, too. On the other hand, it has long been said that the best wines came from the climatic limits for where those grapes could be grown, so Syrah and Grenache weren’t options back then; other grapes were, though, and that is why Gamay was outlawed in Burgundy back in those times. If one goes back far enough, Burgundy certainly wasn’t just Pinot and Chardonnay, with a little bit of Aligoté thrown in. After all, we know that Melon came to the Muscadet area from Burgundy, so it was at one time planted there, too. Phylloxera gave the chance to replant in just selected types, so there probably was greater diversity prior to that time than after. The pre-phylloxera method of propogation of the vines, where all the vines essentially came from a single one, on the other hand, worked against diversity.
In the Rheingau, we know that Schloss Johannisberg in the 18th century began the practice of planting just Riesling in a given vineyard. Presumably, before that there were field blends. And field blends still continue in some Alsatian vineyards.
Wasn’t there much more land planted in Burgundy prior to phyloxera? Something like 2-3x as much. Seems like that, and the economic climate of the time, probably had much to do with what parts of Burgundy remained planted. – I don’t know if that makes people smarter or less smart…but it does seem to boundaries that were changeable rather than set in stone for lengthy periods of time.
Adam,
There might have been some more acreage, but it’s amazing to see how similar the vineyards were viewed back then. I have a book called “Histoire et statistique de la vigne et des grands vins de la Côte d’Or” written by a French doctor (Lavalle) back in 1855 (pre-phylloxera). It’s amazing how his maps, descriptions and observations on Burgundian vineyards are so similar to modern views.
If Burgundy had more acreage in vine in pre-phylloxera times, it would have been in lesser areas such as the flats (below the slope) that make “Bourgogne” or possibly in areas such as the Cote Chalonnaise. Lavalle doesn’t spend much time on those and focuses on the same vineyards that are famous today (which have fairly consistent boundaries) with a few notable exceptions.
Adam and Kevin, you two are talking apples and oranges. Burgundy is more than just Côte d’Or. As Adam correctly pointed out, there was a lot more land planted in Burgundy prior to phylloxera, but it wasn’t in the high rent districts that we talk about today. And not just Burgundy, but all of Northern France. The railroads that could deliver to Paris inexpensive wine from the south basically put those marginal areas in Burgundy and further north out of business and made the replanting of those vineyards after phylloxera non-starters.
