This has not been a good year for the image of the sommelier. The article in the NY Times magazine is the main culprit. I assume McGee, the “food-scientist” and Patterson, the San Francisco chef, did not write the blurb listed above taken from the table of contents of the May 6th 2007 issue of the magazine and their article does not cast sommeliers in a negative light per se. But it illustrates, the lack of understanding of who we are and what we do.  Yes, by all means, interrupt the long winded sommeliers because there is no such thing as terroir. Is there earth in a bottle of wine? Not that you can see. There are no dirt clods in a  750 ml bottle. Every great wine is made by vintners that have great respect and understanding of the soils of the vineyard. Not every wine is a great wine, If you buy a bottle of grand cru Chablis from a wine shop or restaurant that wine should taste of the village and vineyard, if the bottle of wine at your table tonight was purchased at a supermarket, that wine will likely taste like a wine you bought in a grocery store near your house.

It is an assertion that they never prove. They can not do so. Instead the definition evolves to suit the purpose of the “debunking”. Terroir is introduced as “taste of the earth” and then it is turned by slight of hand to something less that as sense of place is reduce to “rocks” then rubble. 

When terroir was first associated with wine, in the 17th-century phrase goût de terroir (literally, “taste of the earth”), it was not intended as a compliment. Its meaning began to change in 1831, when Dr. Morelot, a wealthy landowner in Burgundy, observed in his “Statistique de la Vigne Dans le Département de la Côte-d’Or” that all of the wineries in Burgundy made wine essentially the same way, so the reason some tasted better than others must be due to the terroir — specifically, the substrata underneath the topsoil of a vineyard. Wine, he claimed, derived its flavor from the site’s geology: in essence, from rocks.

Do Harold and Dan have rocks in their heads? Yes. Terroir refers to a sense of place, so that wines from some vineyards are more profound and complex in comparison to other near-by vineyards due to soil composition, exposure to the sun, drainage, climate, elevation, fog and wind as well as the competence and desire of the local vignerons to appreciate and interpret the potential of the vineyard, In essence, a great deal more than rocks, But "rocks" can be used as a straw man argument, one that can be easily dismissed.

In recent years, the concept that one can taste rocks and soil in a wine has become popular with wine writers, importers and sommeliers. “Wines express their source with exquisite definition,” asserts Matt Kramer in his book “Making Sense of Wine.” “They allow us to eavesdrop on the murmurings of the earth.” . 

Note that McGee and Patterson use rocks and Kramer says source. No one is talking about the same thing or trying to. 

Just for the record, French terroir goes back well before Matt Kramer, indeed a thousand years before Dr. Morelot. With Charlemagne the great vineyards are designated for the monarchy and donations of vineyard land to the Church begins. Cistercian and Benedictine monks classified the finer parcels and set them aside for exclusive use for by the hierarchy of the church, often enclosing these sites, hence the names Clos Vougeot and Clos de la Roche, the the great vineyard were set aside to make the best wines for the Cardinals and Bishops.

The reason that terroir has become popular with wine writers, importers and sommeliers. recently, is that people have become more educated about wine. To visit wine country and meet the owners and winemakers, to look at the vineyard and taste wine from the vine before you, is to make a connection with a place. Not the sort of thing that happens when you read the back of a label. Not the sort of thing that happens when you visit Busch Gardens or Almaden. The sense of place is a story to tell when you have a small vineyard. The scale of the operation plays a significant role in the manner of farming.  Will harvesting be done by hand or by machine? How many tons to the acre is expected? Seven Or three or one?  Is the vineyard organic? A large volume wine house doesn’t ask questions that improve quality unless there is a equal improvement in profit. .

The place where grapes are grown clearly affects the wine that is made from them,..The answer lies in the complex relationship between tradition, culture and taste. Those wine professionals have all spent vast amounts of time and energy learning what traditional European wines taste like, region by region, winery by winery, vineyard by vineyard. The version of terroir that many of them hold is that those wines taste the way they do because of the enduring natural setting, i.e., the rocks and soil. All very well and good until this bit of nonsense as the conclusion--These wines taste the way they do because people have chosen to emphasize flavors that please them.

Finally a sense of regard for a sense of place then in the final sentence McGee and Patterson drop the turd in the punchbowl.

Once a month I will hear of a local tasting room guides comments being interrupted by the question, “When do they add the cherries?” Is that the type of flavors McGee and Patterson are speaking of? There are swings in the pendulum when it comes to the amount of new oak influence in a bottle of chardonnay produced in California. It is important to consider that the need to please the public is greater with bigger company. A small winery that has embraced the concept of terrior doesn’t not emphasize flavors in wine in the same way a chef creates a sauce. The point that is missed by Patterson and McGee is that focus to please is greater is with larger wineries, Large wineries that make 25 million cases of wine have no terroir to showcase. Gallo has more chemists on salary than winemakers. The purpose of bulk wine is make a commercial, consistent product. The jug-wine drinking public doesn’t have to think about Matt Kramer any more than they want to think about Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes. The beauty of great wine is that we think about it. 

If you ask a hundred people about the meaning of terroir, they’ll give you a hundred definitions,

as important as it is to promote making wine better, the exciting part of this talk is about bringing out the inherent qualities of a wine and the place it is grown. If you believe, as I do, that the essence of winemaking, the Holy Grail as it were, is to make wines that deeply reflect the soil and climate from which they emanate, it seems self-evident that you would want every molecule, every enzyme, every ester, every flavonoid, every protein, every essence, to be derived from the soil in which the grapevine is grown. And if you achieve that, the product of that vine will imbue the essential character of its place. Real quality wine.

Without soil-based flavors, we, as winemakers, are stuck with trying to manufacture those flavors on our own, Thus, ridiculously excessive overripe grapes, spinning cones, esterifying yeasts, reverse osmosis, super malo-lactic cultures, micro-oxygenization, mega-purple, flying winemakers and 200% new oak* 

Back to our NY Times Magazine blurb that credits Patterson and McGee with debunking the idea that there is no such thing as “earth in the bottle.” it is easy to see that John Williams has a very different view of what it means to have the influences of soil in the bottle and equally important what it means to not have the influence of the the healthy soils in wine. The winemaker whose job it is to make great wine from a great vineyard has a very different job from that of winemaker whose job it is to make impressive tasting wine from soils lacking is distinction. Even though it may be that we are talking about the same winemaker working for the same vineyard. That some parts of the same estate might have soils that are too fertile, or have too much clay that retains water, or  excessive boron or magnesium content. Chateau Montelena produces world class Cabernet Sauvignon from their vineyards composed of volcanic soils but not that far away are the thermal geysers that brings hot water to the surface that is very corrosive and contains boron and hydrogen sulfide. It is a simple fact that a corks-throw distance may be enough for a very different set of soil factors for very different wines to be made. At Stags Leap Wine Cellars, there are two significant and famous parcels,  Fay Vineyard and the SLV Vineyard. The Fay vineyard produces softer and more elegant Cabernet Sauvignon wine that neighboring SLV site.

Ok, Mr. Smartypants sommelier, so the article is mostly a posturing bit of provocation, what difference does it make really?  First and foremost, it matters that we  live in a headline culture, many people are going to read any more than they have to about certain issues, and  the idea that terroir is bull, is attractive to many people because they don’t have to read any more about it. Problem solved. Why spend money on Grgich Hills or Stony Hill Chardonnay  when Two Buck Chuck is just as good. I read it in the Times. Foie gras is cruel, Politicians are bad so there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Secondly it is important to realize the issue has economic and political ramifications. If there is nothing special about a place...then why treat it in a special way. What will happen in fifty years? Will Russian River be home to wineries or suburbs and Indian casinos?

Food (and wine) for thought!

 

(I just noticed the spelling error in the Times Magazine table of contents blurb when I started to write about the article for the blog. Apparently, the Harold and Daniel have been suffered too much prattling  in Greek and Italian restaurants where they are served by ‘sommelieurs”. Everyone know French Sommeliers do not prattle.)