Wine's naturalistic fallacy

[Otto_Forsberg]

Of the forest or the vineyard?

While visiting wineries in Germany, one winemaker said how crazy the thing is with barriques.

See “French oak barrique” doesn’t mean that is made from French oak. It is an oak barrique from France. Only if you buy a Tronçais/Alliers/Nevers/Limousin etc. barrique, the oak must be from that said forest. Otherwise the oak can come from any forest - even from ones that are not necessarily even in France.

So, many German producers buy oak barriques from France, but being the Germans they are, most never go for the most expensive (ie. Alliers/Nevers etc) casks, but instead buy whatever they have. Often winemakers buy a few different models first, make test runs with the most recent vintage and buy a larger amount based on how the test wines perform.

And do you know which barrels tend to perform the best? Those that are made with oak sourced from Germany! You see, the oak there is exactly the same species than in France (mainly Quercus robur, also some Quercus petraea) and these locations are cooler than those located in the heart of France, so the trees grow at a slower pace, making the wood tighter in grain and thus less aromatic. These barrels have a similar aromatic impact on the wine as those made from French oak, but less intense. The wood tannins are also less easy to extract from these barrels compared to more open-grained French oak barrels. To my understanding the same phenomenon is with the oak barrels made from the forests of Burgundy, Champagne and Vosges - the wood is more dense and tight-grained there and the barrel influence can be more understated compared to the more noticeable influence that the barrels from more southerly forests can impart. This is also the same reason why many old-school producers prefer Hungarian and Slavonian oak - the wood from these places is less overpowering compared to the French oak, which tends to come from the large forests located in the middle of France.

Anyways, this said winemaker laughed that many wine producers thus buy “French oak barrels” made entirely from German oak, so they are willing to pay precious prices on wood that is shipped across the border to France, made into a barrel and shipped back, just to have a famous name on the barrelhead. He said there are a handful of excellent coopers in Germany who make great barrels from same local wood at noticeably lower prices and prefers to use them, since he never saw any difference between the German barrels and French barrels.

So, yes, also oak barrels do have their own terroir. The degree of toasting and the size of the barrel are going to have a more noticeable impact on the wine than where the barrel’s wood is sourced from, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are noticeable differences.

[Karl_K]

Marcus are you going to start using amphorae?

[Peter_Chiu]

Of the forest or the vineyard?

While visiting wineries in Germany, one winemaker said how crazy the thing is with barriques.

See “French oak barrique” doesn’t mean that is made from French oak. It is an oak barrique from France. Only if you buy a Tronçais/Alliers/Nevers/Limousin etc. barrique, the oak must be from that said forest. Otherwise the oak can come from any forest - even from ones that are not necessarily even in France.

So, many German producers buy oak barriques from France, but being the Germans they are, most never go for the most expensive (ie. Alliers/Nevers etc) casks, but instead buy whatever they have. Often winemakers buy a few different models first, make test runs with the most recent vintage and buy a larger amount based on how the test wines perform.

And do you know which barrels tend to perform the best? Those that are made with oak sourced from Germany! You see, the oak there is exactly the same species than in France (mainly Quercus robur, also some Quercus petraea) and these locations are cooler than those located in the heart of France, so the trees grow at a slower pace, making the wood tighter in grain and thus less aromatic. These barrels have a similar aromatic impact on the wine as those made from French oak, but less intense. The wood tannins are also less easy to extract from these barrels compared to more open-grained French oak barrels. To my understanding the same phenomenon is with the oak barrels made from the forests of Burgundy, Champagne and Vosges - the wood is more dense and tight-grained there and the barrel influence can be more understated compared to the more noticeable influence that the barrels from more southerly forests can impart. This is also the same reason why many old-school producers prefer Hungarian and Slavonian oak - the wood from these places is less overpowering compared to the French oak, which tends to come from the large forests located in the middle of France.

Anyways, this said winemaker laughed that many wine producers thus buy “French oak barrels” made entirely from German oak, so they are willing to pay precious prices on wood that is shipped across the border to France, made into a barrel and shipped back, just to have a famous name on the barrelhead. He said there are a handful of excellent coopers in Germany who make great barrels from same local wood at noticeably lower prices and prefers to use them, since he never saw any difference between the German barrels and French barrels.

So, yes, also oak barrels do have their own terroir. The degree of toasting and the size of the barrel are going to have a more noticeable impact on the wine than where the barrel’s wood is sourced from, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are noticeable differences.

Merci…Otto. I was not aware until now

Very interesting…

[EvanLodes]

Hi William,

Thank you for the thought-provoking essay. A few thoughts/comments:

• First, isn’t much of the tendency to describe wines in this way more about what they aren’t than what they are? By this I mean winemakers that speak in this way are using this language as a way to say that they are not the homogenized style that was pushed by, let’s say, certain wine critics in the past. The people who have been tarred with - and subsequently embraced - the “AFWE” label can also use this positive-sounding language as a way to discuss wines of a style that we like.
  
  
  
• Many producers are happy to embrace this construct/language, even though they don’t really practice it, to your point. Isn’t the most obvious example of this is the hush-hush nature of the discussion of chaptalization?
  
  
  
• “Patina” is a useful addition to the lexicon. To analogize, the statue of David was hidden in the block of marble before it was carved (and is in every uncarved block of marble), but we don’t celebrate the marble, we celebrate that Michelangelo carved it.
  
  
  
• While much of this discussion is appropriately Burgundy-centric, the one areas where I would disagree with your premise is Champagne: the relative decline of the primacy of brands and their homogenous products that don’t allow for site- or vintage-specific variation versus the grower movement that embrace these “naturalistic” tendencies is something that has been extremely positive for us, the consumers, and should be celebrated. And while yes, the Champenois also make a number of decisions in the winemaking process (and even have more choices to make given the complexity of the process), the fact that there is a generation of vigneron that seeks to highlight terroir is great news.

[Mike_Grammer]

William is no doubt correct that “the expression of somewhereness” is a recent definition of terroir. But I think conceptually it’s still a great definition for pushing back against the logical problems with depicting wine as a “natural” product that springs spontaneously from the soil. “Somewhereness” does and should include the craft traditions and human culture of a place. The “somewhereness” of Tuscany isn’t just about the weather and the soil, it’s about the people.

I wonder if I dare stick another smoking oar into the water–to wit, the water that is used by the grapevines.

Oops–looks like I did it

I asked a couple winemakers about this once and they said that for them it did make a difference—e.g. well water from their own sources.

[Bruce_G1]

Wow…I love your comments. So terroir means somewhereness is a good translation.

Well, in my experience “terroir” means “somewhere”.
The “-ness” bit comes in when someone–producer, distributor, consumer, wine writer–considers his/her relationship to that terroir.

[Bruce_G1]

The connection between brand and terroir is that there is no better or more powerful marketing technique than claiming your brand isn’t just a label dreamed up by someone trying to advertise and sell a product, but a mystical, semi-divine connection to a particular patch of land that you just so happen to own and no one else has access to. Branding is 100% about product differentiation and claiming a mystical uniqueness to one of your production inputs that no one else anywhere can possibly replicate is one of the most brilliant and powerful mechanisms of differentiation and market power ever devised. Like Coca-Cola’s secret formula but for SOIL, unlike Coca-Cola or Colonel Sanders top-secret recipe it’s not even made by man!

This is also why, for his own good, William needs to back off from making any connection between something as pedestrian as “branding” and the magical power of “terroir”. He is tampering with the economic heart of fine wine. If he is successful, Burgundy winemakers may have to sell their Mercedes and we collectors will have to take a writedown on our cellars.

Yes, there is a good bit of that.
It’s easy to understand why some look at the notion of terroir very cynically.

[Guillermo_M]

The argument by which the essay stands or falls is this one: “To acknowledge that terroir is a text to be interpreted and not a law that demands adherence is also to accept that any winemaking style that seems to be more “transparent,” offering a less obviously mediated expression of grape and place, is in fact only a subtler and more deceptive form of artifice.”

I’m sorry I’m late to this thread but I hope you read this William.

I do not know your background but you had an alternative career as a legal theoretician. See, while some responses have focused on your use of the words “transparent” or “artifice,” the key word in your argument for the lawyer in me is “law.”

On the one hand, you may have meant law in the scientific sense, but those are unbreakable, they do not merely “demand adherence.” The laws that do that are the laws of people, and what you have perhaps stumbled upon is the age-old debate between originalism/textualism and other forms of interpretation such as living constitution.

I equate this to constitutional law and not just mere statutory interpretation because winemakers and even regions cannot easily legislate for themselves a new terroir, even as they do legislate rules, sometimes very strict ones, to making wine in the one they have. But changes in climate, environmental impacts, the passage of time, glacially slow even by the standards of Old World rule setting, do change the plausible interpretations of the terroir in the wine, especially the respectable ones, even as other more individual aspects you point out like bottling-line availability and money do.

I hesitate to even point out this similarity with the law because this sort of philosophical argument has political overtones these days. But I think the key to the truth in your argument is that even doing nothing has potentially vast consequences. So, just like judges who can choose between the path of judicial restraint and the path of breaking ground on justice, with either choice having great effect over the parties and the reputation of the court, the winemaker can have profound and purposeful effect on the wine and the reputation of the house, in making both active and passive choices.

As Goodfellow points out, there is certainly a point at which active choices will completely divorce the resulting wine from the terroir and leave only marketing and the house style. The same happens in constitutional interpretation when judges stick to precedent or to their sense of justice or both while losing sight of the actual text of the constitution, to which there should always be at least some anchoring.

But as you well point out, wine isn’t just there, waiting passively to be found. Just as the facts of a case impact constitutional interpretation, especially as the nuances can be said to be more unforeseeable to the drafters (more independent of the terroir), in each vintage, there is also nuance that comes, not from natural fluctuations or even grand environmental arcs, but from the changing demands of the market, which a winemaker cannot wholly, successfully ignore, even if they swear otherwise. A wine without a market is a wine that is not long for this Earth, just like a court that completely ignores the mood of the country or fails to give positive consideration to the changing factual landscape, may find itself out of a job, or worse, in both cases, regardless of how “objectively” faithful the interpretation (of the text or the terroir) is. There is no Platonic ideal of law to be discovered, just as there is no Platonic ideal of perfect wine to be made with a particular terroir, let alone an appellation or region.

And so, I just want to say, that this hornet’s nest you have stirred up isn’t just of your making. It is an insight into an age-old debate that goes way beyond wine. But, I need to ask a question that follows, I think, logically from this discussion. How do you rate a wine if you acknowledge that there is no definable perfect wine to begin with?

[Peter_Chiu]

Laws, lawyer and interpretation…interesting.

Do not forget that there are 9 judges in the Supreme court.

[Guillermo_M]

Laws, lawyer and interpretation…interesting.

Do not forget that there are 9 judges in the Supreme court.

Yes, yes, of course. And, just like winemakers and winery marketers, they each adhere to one side or another of this, or even go for hybrids. Having said that, this is legal theory/philosophy so it goes beyond the US as well.

[Peter_Chiu]

Guillermo…merci.

I am glad that you did not take my comment in a negative way - let us drink to that

[David_Patte]

I love your piece, William. As a relatively new wine maker that is not blessed (or cursed) with following a historic program at a family winery, I’ve had dozens to decisions to make. To illustrate your point: I had gathered experience from six winemaking experiences during my apprenticeship phase and each one was different. I charted my own course choosing some “traditional” Oregon Pinot Noir practices (fermentation in small 1 to 1.5 ton open fermentation vessels, for example), and some nonconventional approaches (no sulfites added, but control of spoilage organisms with chitosan and cross flow filtration, just to name two).

I couldn’t quite decide whether I wanted destemmed or whole cluster for the vineyard… so I have done three styles: 100% destemmed, 100% whole cluster, and a blend of the two. Everyone has a different favorite and I like them all for various reasons. It sure makes for an interesting discussion with clients and others on which best expresses terroir! Long-term, short-term complexity? More structure, less structure? More fruit, less fruit? … the key thing is that it’s a fun and (hopefully) thought-provoking exploration if all three wines are great in their own way!

Thanks again.