The mantra is that great wine is made in the vineyard, a priori, vineyard site is the determining factor.
A big part of “a great wine is made in the vineyard” is what is done in the vineyard, some of which is goes on to cite. The rest is the passive factor of terroir. Citing not great wines made that way due to not great choices in the vineyard and winery don’t defeat this concept.
So, he himself ranks wines with a strong correlation to terroir hierarchy. As pointed out above, the tasting showed the contrast of decisions with grapes of a given terroir. The best wines show (or approach) the potential of that terroir. So, it’s “Great wines made in the vineyard vs less-than-great wines made in the same vineyard (and possibly other suboptimal decisions).”
When it comes to burgundy, it seems the order to go by is: Producer, Vintage, then Vineyard.
Now that’s not to say there aren’t exception to this, but I do find the above to help narrow down the field when looking to buy or try new burgundies. I think we can agree that a producer can significantly alter what a wine from the same vineyard can taste.
Two great examples are: a horizontal flight of Clos St Jacque and a horizontal flight of Echezeaux. Both vineyards have many producers and you’ll find that they all taste vastly different.
I couldn’t agree more Scott. I’ll add, I hear more and more the desire of the winemaker to allow the wine to be more transparent to vineyard, allow the vineyard to speak for itself. I believe that there is too many variables in choices along the way to even let that be anything more than a nice sentiment in theory only.
If Neal’s point is true, does talent matter in athletics, or just the training protocol. That’s terroir vs. winemaking, in another context, and I think the answer is clearly - BOTH. Good training can get the most out of any athlete, so yes, buy Burgundy by producer, not terroir. But if you want the best, it’s the combination of producer and terroir.
So why do five wines from Clos St. Jacques taste different? Because terroir isn’t as simple or obvious as that. I have six siblings, all from the same terroir, and we all are wildly distinct people, in personality, in hair color, in a variety of ways. And we have terroir indicators that connect us as family. But could you pick us out of a group of people as brothers and sisters? Would you disprove our terroir if you failed to pick us out? Or is the truth something finer and less obvious but no less real or important?
I think Neal’s making this too simple, and of course that gives a simple answer, but I think it’s incorrect.
I get that but if, tasting across different producers from the same vineyard, one cannot identify to a commonality between the wines, surely one can make the next logical leap that the effect of terroir is overcome by wine making.
Then again, as Scott noted, it still tastes different than the next vineyard over, producer to producer…
I think the argument can get pretty circular pretty quickly
Exactly. The French concept of “terroir” isn’t just the soil. It’s also climate, exposure, slope, drainage, elevation, and other factors. Of course, the growing and winemaking methods can help showcase, or reduce, this imprint depending on a myriad of choices.
This is a good analogy. You could have spent millions training me to play basketball in my youth and I would never had been Michael Jordan. Nor even Kurt Rambis. You need to have the right raw materials along with the right winemaking to show terroir at its best.
And for those who don’t believe that terroir exists, visit a producer who makes all of their wines with the same methods and taste through their lineup. If the site is the only real difference you can see it.
Neal felt like making a particular point, possibly chose the wrong vehicle to attach it to, but broadly speaking most of us would agree with him in not going along with terroir being trumpeted too loudly, especially in relation to producer. It should never be either/or in any case.
Wine in general, perhaps Burgundy in particular, is about the interaction of all these variables of which producer/terroir/vintage are most often cited but are not the only ones.
When somebody cites their appreciation of a particular vineyard it does not have to mean that they place the importance of vineyard over that of producer. What can be absolutely fascinating when you open a particular bottle is to find out whether vineyard, vigneron, vintage or some other aspect happens to be in the fore at that moment when you are drinking the wine. Secondary of course to whether or not the wine is providing the expected enjoyment.
As someone who has asked the exact same question that Neal Martin discusses in the quoted paragraph—and asked it recently, on WB, at least couple of times—I don’t think he’s wrong to raise the issue at all.
To be clear, I’m not making any claim about the intentions of the folks who organize or run this tasting, its stated purpose, or anything along those lines. I’m simply saying it’s a perfectly valid question for a wine writer to pose, and that a tasting organized the way this one was could reasonably prompt such a question.
I take it as uncontroversial to say that all of us on this site make vintage generalizations: that is, when we talk about wines from some region—and it can be small (the Saar), it can be large (“Wester Europe”), it can be in between—we attribute certain of their characteristics to factors that vary from year to year (usually weather and temperature related). Again, all of us do this, and none of us think twice about it.
At risk of stating the banally obvious, there are two ways one can try to identify vintage-specific characteristics: by tasting within a vintage, and attempting to note commonalities, or tasting across vintages, and attempting to note differences. Presumably, we all do both.
It’s perfectly legitimate ask whether certain wine characteristics are common to a particular site, as well. To be sure, this kind of generalization isn’t as common in wine talk as vintage generalizations are. But at least imho, it’s not at all rare, at least when people are discussing high prestige wine producing regions such as Burgundy, the Mosel, Napa, Piedmont, etc. If you think I’m wrong about this, don’t hesitate to say so; but I feel like I encounter these kinds of statements fairly regularly.
Here again, one way to warrant this type of claim is by holding invariant both vintage and site, and then tasting across producers in order to detect commonalities. One could also juxtapose against other sites, in order to detect differences. Etc.
To be clear, I’m not saying that I agree with Neal Martin’s conclusion that producer trumps site, in Burgundy or anywhere else. All I’m trying to do is argue that it’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask within the context of a tasting like the one being discussed, and to point out that some (many?) of us talk in these terms fairly often.
Lastly, while the mantra about producer over site and vintage certainly holds to a large extent in Burgundy pricing, it’s equally true, as Wes Barton pointed out, that within producers (i.e. within the lineup of individual producers), pricing almost always follows the same terroir hierarchy. So the premise that cross-producer site-level characteristics play a significant role in wine quality is certainly well-rooted in the market.
There’s this running gag that whenever a hipster recommends a band, they’re all too quick to add that we’ve probably never heard of it. It’s usually a sign of elitism, a belief that they are superior to the average Top 40 mongrel. In my case there is absolutely no pretense of superiority: it’s just that I genuinely don’t think anyone on WB has ever heard of the wine I had that evening, except maybe Eric Ifune (and thank God for that - if they had, it would probably be a lot more expensive).
The conclusion I’m drawing from this thread is that I should look up the best Burgundy producers and get their Bourgogne and village wines. Luckily that was exactly the line of thinking I followed in my last order from a French retailer! I have little desire in blowing my savings on monster wine which won’t reach its prime for many years anyway (and really, the last 2017 Village white I had was still too young).
Wonderful analogy, Tomas - one I can particularly relate to! Greiner is one of the very best contemporary makers, and quite a few modern instruments have ‘outperformed’ Stradivari and Guarneri in test after test. Their value, however, is primarily in ‘art’/collector value, not sound.
Wow, glad you agree! I’m currently on the waiting list for an instrument by one of his former disciples/assistants, which will be ready in November. It’s around the same price as a DRC Grand Cru, but doesn’t wear out after one use.
There are two things I have found out drinking Burgundy for over 30 years. One is pick producer over everything else (an exception to this over the last 20 years or so is to avoid 2004 reds without tasting first - even some excellent producers made poor wines in this vintage). The producer does not have to be the most famous and expensive producer. There are always excellent quality producers who are a bit under the radar, sometimes because they are young and upcoming. But, a quality producer will often make better wines from lesser terroir than a poor producer will make from excellent terroir.
Second, when you are tasting a range of wines from a single excellent producer, the wines from better terroir tend to be better than the wines of lesser terroir. There can be exceptions because of things like vine age, portions of vineyards that are over or underrated, vintage, age of wine, etc., but I have never tasted a Bourgogne Rouge from a quality producer that is as good as his grand cru from the same vintage. The Bourgogne can sometimes be more enjoyable to drink because the grand cru is too young, but the grand cru is always the better wine in my experience.
Please don’t ever, ever think that the second paragraph overrules the first paragraph.
