Are People Part of Wine's Terroir?
International seminar focuses on nature vs. nurture

By Jim Gordon

Sun, slope and fog are part of a vineyard's terroir, but what about the owner?

Davis, California -- An old saying goes that the best sign of quality for a farm product, including wine, is the farmer’s footprint in the field. If the farmer pays close attention to his crop, then it’s bound to be better.

That notion came up against the ancient concept of terroir (tehr-WAHR) that seems to scream “location, location, location” as the key element of wine quality during an intensive academic conference at the University of California, Davis. The topics presented by geologists, geographers, biologists and enologists from four continents ranged from detailed dissections of the soil types of Paso Robles to how wineries can better capitalize on terroir in their marketing. But the presence (or absence) of that farmer in the field haunted much of the debate.

Wine drinkers learn that terroir is the expression of the land in a wine. Evidence abounds that wines vary from place to place. In Burgundy, for example, vines of the same grape varieties and clones grown the same way in adjacent vineyards, fermented and aged the same way, taste noticeably different. Diamond Creek Vineyards in Napa Valley has proven the concept for more than 30 years with three (and occasionally four) distinct vineyard-designated Cabernet Sauvignons from the same property.

Not too many years ago people in the wine business maintained you could literally taste the soil in a wine, but none of the scientists in the conference espoused this view today. Most defined terroir more broadly as the unique character given to a wine by the local climate, exposure of the property to the sun and wind, and soil conditions. Some of them – but interestingly, not all -- added people to the equation.

“Terroir is much broader than the wine industry defines it,” declared keynote speaker Warren Moran, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who also teaches in Burgundy and Bordeaux. “The whole idea of terroir is a social construction,” he said, noting that centuries ago wine-growers in Europe formed self-protection societies encompassing the vineyards of their village, so that if one grower was disabled or died the others would pitch in and complete the harvest for that grower’s family. “Really it’s the people who have learned to understand and make the most of their environment.”

While several speakers downplayed the importance of terroir in California and other parts of the so-called New World, where they claim the taste of oak and irrigation dictated by winemakers overpowers the taste of place, German professor Hans Schultz of the Research Institute at Geisenheim pointed out that many of Germany’s fabled terroirs on the banks of the Rhine and the Mosel rivers are virtually manmade. Their owners have radically manipulated revered vineyards over the centuries since the ancient Romans first brought in grapevines. He showed photos of the same steep Rheingau vineyard in 1909 and again in 2005. In the old photo the vineyard was terraced, while today the severe slope runs straight down to the river.

The terraces changed the airflow and the ground temperature, decreased the slopes to help prevent erosion and encourage water absorption during rains. This is a real terroir that makes great, long-lived Riesling wines, yet humans have clearly and radically manipulated it, he explained.

Emphatic counterpoint came from the perspective of a California journalist, a poetic California winemaker and a serious Australian agronomist. All three defended the idea that terroir was primarily about place. Karen MacNeil, a wine author and currently head of the Culinary Institute of America’s wine studies program in Napa Valley, passionately defended the mystery of terroir. As she led a tasting of five wines she had selected for their expression of terroir, she said that their unique flavors came from the land. “Terroir to me is to stand in a special place and feel that there is a magic in that place.”

Furthermore, the eloquent wine educator and author of the Wine Bible sipped a spicy, floral Riesling made by Ernst Loosen from the Urziger Wurzgarten vineyard on the banks of the Mosel and said, “What the Germans call transparency to site is critical to our understanding of terroir.” She maintained that terroir wines are not obvious and take careful tasting and long association to appreciate.

Later Randall Grahm, the iconoclastic proprietor of Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz, California, agreed that wines of terroir are subtle and “quiet.” Grahm said he liked author Matt Kramer’s coined term “somewhereness” as an English translation of terroir. He said it happens in a wine when “the plant and the soil have learned to speak each other’s language.” He said that an appreciation of terroir is like recognizing individual beauty with its inevitable flaws rather than ideal beauty. “Feeling terroir is feeling the place through the wine – it’s akin to sensing a homesickness, even if you’re homesick for a place you’ve never been.”

In terms of academic gravitas, gray-haired Aussie agronomist John Gladstones, formerly of the University of Western Australia, delivered the strongest blow against the importance of people in the concept of terroir. When you include human input in the concept of terroir, he said, “The whole subject becomes so broad that it’s no longer a useful way to approach the subject.” Restrict it to the natural environment and then terroir is instructive, he maintained. In a detailed explication of macro, meso and micro terroir Gladstones dealt with such esoteric considerations as “equability” of temperature (the converse of variability) as the key to wine quality and at least partially debunked the idea that the intense day-night temperature swings of which California wine marketers brag is an all-out blessing.

Many academic attendees had something intellectually at stake in this first of its kind conference hosted by the new Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at U.C. Davis. But the stakes were different for many industry attendees and sponsors. Financial supporters of the conference included both terroir-oriented wine companies like Beckstoffer Vineyards and Nickel & Nickel Single Vineyard Wines as well as divisions of multi-state and multi-national wine conglomerates like Beringer Vineyards and Robert Mondavi Winery that make much of their revenue by selling decidedly non-terroir wines – those bearing “California” appellations, for example, that are blended from many different vineyards and even from different counties.

On the people question, it was difficult to say whose side won. Vineyard owners and terroir-oriented wineries certainly liked hearing that their properties and the usually expensive products made from them had scientific validation for their claims of individuality. Great vineyards and the wines made from them do seem to have a life of their own.

On the other hand, Dirk Hampson, president of Nickel & Nickel, underscored how much influence people have on wines of terroir. Between his lines I heard the message that this influence is not always for the good. Hampson cited the small Chardonnay vineyard of Montrachet in Burgundy, where several of the world’s most expensive wines are grown. His point was that from this plot of land, divided among many owners who make only a few barrels each of $250-plus-per-bottle Montrachet each vintage, the wines can vary widely in style, based on the owner’s interpretation of the flavor personality of that terroir.

As lovers of Burgundy will testify, however, the vineyard owner often affects actual quality as well as style. All Burgundy fans have spent too much money on dicey, mediocre Burgundy wines – even Montrachet – in search of the real gems. Because the dark side of terroir is that once a vineyard or appellation is recognized as great, it tends to guarantee a high price for the wine based solely on the reputation of that land. And there will always be a lazy or cynical vintner ready to make more money on the name of the terroir alone. A vintner might prune the vines too lightly to raise the yields at the expense of flavor concentration and have more bottles to sell, or harvest too early to avoid the risk of fall rains and sacrifice fully ripe flavors. For a wine drinker to taste a great terroir, it requires a vintner who will invest enough time, money and intelligence to make wines worthy of that land.

Tasting Terroir

A few California wines that let the location shine through

March 23, 2006