Some interaction with Andrew Rich (of the Central Bottle staff) has stirred my never-far-from-the-surface doubts about the way we use the word terroir today. On a recent Saturday Andrew opened a bottle for me to taste giving no indication of its constituent varietals or provenance. After nipping at it over a couple of hours between turns at the tasting table, I had only the following to say about it: it was white, old-world, non-aromatic, and possibly a bit of bottle age. The closest comparison I could make was with some Jean Rijkaert wines from the Hautes Cotes de Beaune I drank in the nineties. To me the wine had a similar airy quality, thrilling acidity, and austere dryness.
In a way I was way off the beam, in another surprising close to the mark. Way off because the wine was indeed made from an aromatic varietal it would never have occurred to me to name (riesling); close because chardonnay from Haute Cote vineyards can share something of the starched collar stand-offishness of high-latitude German (in this case Mosel) wine.
Once I had the ID, I tasted it again with the idea that somehow it would now reveal its identity more readily – but repeated tasting didn’t reveal anything more. It simply had none of the aromatics or flavors I associate with German riesling. Andrew explained that this Mosel riesling was made with no added sulfur whatever.
The implications of this are significant. If Mosel riesling made without sulfur appears to bear none of the marks we have long associated with the wine from this region, and if the only difference between this wine and those that display what we have come to recognize as Mosel features is that this one was made without sulfur then it seems reasonable to conclude that defining aspects of German riesling that we have for generations associated with terroir actually owe their existence to additions of sulfur dioxide – or, more precisely, potassium metabisulfite.
This does not mean (and I am not implying) that a death blow has been struck at the notion of terroir, but it does strongly suggest that wine is not simply liquid geography, as is often wrongly assumed. On the contrary, it infers that there are many (or at least an unknown number) ways for terrain (considered as “all the facts of a place”) to express themselves in a wine and not just one. And if this is true, then we have to be ready to admit that while local conditions have a role to play in establishing the limits of what is possible in wine grown there, we have no way of fully knowing what those possibilities are.
In other words, all we can really say about the relation between the way a wine presents itself and the terrain from which it springs is something like “this is the way the terrain expresses itself when its output is subjected to this particular set of viticultural and winemaking techniques” – and no more.
I’m not the first person to suggest that winemaking technique has something to do with the notion of terroir. Contemplating a similar set of facts has prompted some to suggest that the concept of terroir be expanded to include the traditional winemaking methods in place in a given region. But this, I think really stretches terroir to the breaking point. Better, really, to give up the word altogether, i think, and revert to the English word the definition meaning of which is closest to the original meaning of its French cognate. This word is terrain.
I suggest this because careless usage has by now rendered terroir virtually useless. It’s been abused to the point where we simply no longer what it means.
In its place, I suggest we use terrain to refer to what I have called here “the facts of the place,” and typicity to refer to how wine behaves when it is handled in such-and-such a way. Thus, Mosel riesling subjected to the additions of sulfur has one typicity and an unsulfured example has another – though all share, substantially, a single terrain.
There’s quite a lot to think about here. Would love to hear your ideas.
-Stephen
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