I’d plus one this post, but Jasper Morris seems to have dropped the mic…
I don’t think that it needs to be shown off in a blind tasting format, or even shown off at all.
Winemaking can sit on top of vineyard, so can vintage, and so can ladybugs for that matter.
My practice in terroir, sense of place, is simply drinking wines from the same region(s) repeatedly and over time developing a feeling that there are aspects of the wines of particular vineyards that have a familial similarity. Sometimes more, sometimes less, and sometimes maybe not. But over time and tasting it becomes familiar.
I do think it’s harder to suss out in many wines these days because there are so many options for farming and cellar work that were unavailable to vignerons 30-40 years ago(much less vignerons 100 years ago). But that doesnt mean that it doesn’t exist.
I honestly believe that there is a “less is more” approach to farming and production(I do not mean natural) slowly becoming more popular and producing wines with lower alcohols, less intrusive oak, along with less focus on richness and opulence. Hopefully these types of wines will give us some opportunity to develop a better relationship with terroir than we have had.
Nope. I agree that different sites have different profiles. I get caught up in the term “sense” - to me, it’s marketing. Just like so much of how wine is sold and marketed. Call it what it is - one vineyard’s Pinot grapes from the same clone produce a different wine from another. But let’s be honest that couching that in the ineffable concept of “terroir” - that a vineyard can give a drinker a sense of place - is marketing.
And don’t get me wrong - I really love how wine is marketed. It makes total sense to me. I’m all for it. That doesn’t obviate the fact that wine lovers and marketers take a basic concept and give it a subjective, spiritual-like feel.
What’s funny to me is that people detest the quasi-New Agey aspects of biodynamics, but eats up this concept of terroir. Yeah, they’re not equivalent, but there’s some similarity.
What if it’s a characteristic that comes from a localized native shrub (with perhaps other localized contributing factors)? So there’s a commonality to (non-fied up) wines from that sub-region, unique to that sub-region, regardless of grape variety, producer, vineyard. So, a Chardonnay from one site has it, and Pinots Noir from a few other sites and producers also have it. Statement of place?
Larry, By on it,I mean that the good ones get on it when there is a problem to be addressed, be it in the vineyard or in the cellar.
They are the ones out in the vineyard when work needs to be done.
Not to hijack the thread, but I have always wondered why a producer as great as Rousseau, who makes some of the (and in some cases “the”) greatest Chambertin, Beze, and CSJ, has traditionally underperformed at a number of their other wines compared to other producers. As pointed out, and although some have reportedly been improving lately, their Charmes-Chambertin is not one of the best of those, nor their Clos de la Roche, nor perhaps their Mazis. (The Ruchottes may be an exception.) And among their premier crus, I believe that neither their LSJ nor the Cazetiers would be considered the equal of the best examples.
I am wondering whether this is due to the location of their vines, the domaine’s concentration of their attention on their top cuvees, or some other factors.
How do you think different wood treatments do affect the wines at age 3? Rousseau comes to mind with regard to his big 3s and the other wines.
What is your experience regarding the 5 Gevrey CSJ once they age? Do they converge or do the different styles continue to be as marked as at age 3?
Neil captures it best. “Bordeaux is a dog, Burgundy is a cat.”
“sense of pet”? 
There are plenty of great producers who don’t farm their own grapes. PYCM buys a lot of his grapes. Obviously they are not going to accept crap quality but they don’t seem to consider it crucial that they actually be the farmer.
“The secret of Robuchon’s cooking is not the subsoil of the plot his carrots come from”, LOL
Are you finding that the modern style of winemaking (or changes in climate) is having a more pronounced effect on the ‘terroir vs winemaking’ conundrum? My wife and I immersed ourselves in Burgundy in the late 1990s and have wondered if our perceptions of change have been real or imagined.
So you are saying that the most important thing is that you are buying Burgundy? And then it’s producer…
PYCM now owns 85% of his wine production and farms quite a bit of what he does not own (unsure whether he bought it, but Chassagne les Baudines for instance is a plot he has farmed for years…without owning it, another example is Pernand Vergelesses les Belles filles he used to farm and he has lost the use last vintage was 2018).
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I can sense its Oregonness.
The best examples of viticulture/winemaking being the primary discriminator in all of burgundy are probably:
- La Grande Rue
- Louis Latour
blind tasting comparisons have well known limitations.
Also pretty good examples of arguments in favor of the concept of terroir.
Terroir and Biodynamics are not equivalent at all.
The soils of the Durant vineyard Pinot Noir I work with in the Dundee Hills are volcanic. They’re clay and hold moisture very well. The Block is east facing and mid-slope. As compared to Whistling Ridge, the plants there do not struggle for water in our dry summers, the fruit also tends to be sheltered from breezes by the hill, and the fruit tends to hold it’s acidity due to receiving gentler morning heat(as opposed to West facing sites) As a result the Durant vine: tends to have larger leaves which accumulate sugar a bit quicker, the fruit tends to have thinner skins(less tannins and anthocyanins), tends to have a bit more juice(gallons/ton). It leads to a site where I focus on restricting canopy, being cery quick on picking decisions(as Brix can elevate very quickly at Durant), and use high whole cluster(100%) through the majority of ferments to gain structure. Elevage is almost never in new wood and almost exclusively in 500L puncheons as opposed to barrique.
At Whistling Ridge-soils are sedimentary, which in Oregon are very poor for retaining moisture. They tend to be shallower than the volcanic soils, so during our dry summers, these plants go without access to top soil moisture for a significant time every summer. We double down on that by not tilling the vineyard, encouraging a cover crop that competes with the vines in absorbing moisture and nitrogen. Because the vineyard is ridge top, it sees daily breezes, cooling and drying the plants. And it has aspects ranging from South to Northwest, in a single block I have a significant percentage of plants with a gentle SE exposure and a significant number of vines rolling to the NW. Walking the rows as harvest approaches, it is obvious to anyone where the change is. The unique combination of those two exposures combined produces one of our most unique expressions of fruit. And as a whole, Whistling Ridge routinely produces fruit with lower alcohol, more red tones(ridge top means leas direst sun exposure as well), distinctly more tannins, and acidity. We utilize significantly more varied amounts of whole cluster, and also significantly more new wood(still largely 500L puncheon) and know that the high whole cluster wines will take a decade to unwind completely.
The terroir of the site is a result of very obvious factors. Most farming and cellaring is to sand off tue rough edges of that terroir, and unfortunately in modern times, much of those differences is negated in burying the wine in ripeness.
But it should also be noted that color, is affected by temperature of ferment. Richness by Brix(which is affected by canopy management choices), yeast has a huge impact, etc. There is also the simple fact that vineyards are by no means uniform. I bottle 6 wines from the 12 acres under vine at Whistling Ridge, they are all different and all familial(and all have the same producer). Right across one fence is Patricia Green Cellars Estate vineyard and Jim’s farming is different, his winemaking is different(even though we have remarkably similar beliefs about terroir.) Across another fence is Beaux Freres, and again the wines are very different-not least because Beaux Freres has no vines on the top of the ridge. The entire vineyard is slope and sees significantly more direct sun than Whistling Ridge.
I won’t speak for Biodynamics. I appreciate the use of silica rich plants for compost teas and see the benefits of many choices in BD. I don’t know about or believe in the root day/fruit day blah-de-blah.
Last-a short story from a harvest many years ago that Todd Hamina can attest to. My vineyard manager at Bishop Creek walks up to me with a glass of white wine. He asks me what I think it is. I grimaced at him but took the glass. Swirled and smelled, then tasted. I looked at him and said, “well that’s white Burgundy. He said, “what else?”. “It has the minerality of Puligny and Chassagne, but it feels just a little bit fatter than I think of Puligny, so I will say Chassagne”. He said, “What producer?” And I said I had no idea. It was Niellon Chassagne 1er Cru.
I am not an amazing blind taster. But I did work at a restaurant that specialized in French and West Coast wines. I didn’t “know” the producer at all, or the wine. I also didn’t “guess” the location where the grapes were grown. Which is why “sense” seems like a reasonable choice. It implies a higher than random ability to determine something, but without any pretense to certainty.
And most assuredly, if you want to see it you should taste through producers offerings rather than across vineyards.
As Charlie noted, when looking for terroir, we always say producer, producer, producer.
I would think that Neal was looking for a “hook” for his article, when in fact comparing several different CSJ’s, or Chambertin’s, or Clos de la Roche’s made by different producers would in fact be all about the differences between them due to the winemaking…which examples suffer by comparison, which stand out, etc. (I would imagine the terroir enters in if a producer’s vines are in a lesser portion of the vineyard, perhaps.)
But I would also imagine that the typicity of the wine, the expression of its terroir, is one of the aspects that the participants cnsder in rating the wines. If the CSJ does not taste like a CSJ, if the winemaking signature is such that the wine tastes like a Volnay Clos des Chenes or like it could be from anywhere in Burgundy, then the participant, knowing that they are tasting CSJ’s, would downgrade the wine.