When Craig came cycling with me to my parents mountain house, he brought a wine called something like Mad Dog. I kid you not.
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Alan, youâre not an enigma. We understand you all too well. You claim to hate everything, but actually love everything. Easy.
âTerroirâ is what keeps us talking and paying premium prices 
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Cave Dog 
And Bourriquot. And Figeac. All CF heavy blends, which as we know are Alfert favorites. LawyersâŚ
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Terroir is such a made-up concept. Very few people, if any, can reliably blind taste Burgs and pin point that said âterroirâ. Iâm always happy to be proven wrong, but I have been part of some blind tastings, one a week ago, where a âBurg guruâ very confidently placed an Oregon Pinot to a very specific âterroirâ. Yet these people are the ones who are happy to explain how wine X shows âterroirâ.
Frauds, say I.
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Idk Iâve done a lot of tastings where burgundy has been compared to non-burgundy Pinot and itâs not very difficult to tell which is which.
Completely blind? Or as a themed tasting where you are supposed to tell what is what?
I mean a tasting where someone gives you a glass of wine and says âwhat do you thinkâ without any details about it.
Also, I am talking about identifying âterroirâ. That is somewhat impossible to do blind.
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Blind, but people knew the wines were from Oregon or Burgundy, but not producer, vintage, or region/vineyard.
Iâve had people call vintage, vineyard and producer on Burgundy completely blind before.
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Terroir is what gives wines their character and style. Itâs why for example Pichon Lalande, Pichon Baron and Latour are all different even though they are neighboring vineyards.
A tasters inability to find a wines place of origin is about the taster, not the wine.
Different winemakers have no effect on that? By definition, those are all the same âterroirâ.
Not as much as the terroir. The terroir dictates most of the choices to be made. Thatâs why for example Pichon Lalande has always remained elegant and Pichon Baron more masculine. And I donât mean just recent vintages, this is for more than 100 years.
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So within 50 meters, the âterroirâ makes such a huge change that winemaking, blends, rootstock and such has no effect on it.
Pardon me for disagreeing. There are some geologists in the world who would laugh at this.
The terroir dictates the grapes. Keeping with the Pichons, Cabernet loves dry, well drained gravel and Merlot prefers clay with more moisture retention.
If you look at soil maps, soils can change with a few meters.
Itâs the terroir that informs the producer what will be best in the vineyard.
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These âterroirsâ have exact same soil. Not sure where you are going with this?
No they donât. The soils can change dramatically from parcel to parcel and even from row to row.
But if you donât think that is what matters, if you havenât, you should spend some time in vineyards, and talk to growers, vineyard managers or winemakers.
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And you claim you can identify those parcels blind?
Pardon me for not believing it.
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Whatâs the point of this crusade? I picked grapes in the Mosel and could taste differences between different parcels right next to each other based on the red slate vs blue slate, etc. Of course the specific soil and the air and whatâs near the vineyard change how the grapes and hence the wine taste.
Of course you could.
Youâre not addressing the point though.
There is no-one who can identify âterroirâ, let alone define it. It is all mixed up in winemaking. Prove me wrong.
Thatâs easy; Rousseau makes CSJ, Beze and Chambertin the same; same elevage, same oak, same barrels, same winemaking. Itâs pretty easy to tell the difference between the three wines. DRC is another similar example.
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Yes, you just perfectly explained my point. You can identify the winemaker, the terroir is irrelevant. You can find winemakers who make wine from these same climats, yet produce different results.
Who shows âterroirâ the best? Who is the correct âterroirâ showing winemaker?