Tearing into Terroir

Posted by Tom Wark on Dec 30, 2004

I’ve wanted for some time to address the issue of “terroir” in this blog. But I’ve not found a real good way to approach what is an interesting, though controversial and misunderstood notion.

“Terroir” is most important because it is the notion that a wine represents a particular place at a particular moment in time that makes it a romantic, mysterious drink. Yet notice, this statement of terroir really says nothing about what a wine tastes like or what its value is.

There are those, and I could be one of them under the right circumstances and after having drunk enough wine, who would argue that the very best wine in the world are those that accurately represent the terroir the grapes were grown in. When in this condition, I’ll conveniently forget that the winemaker has far more influence over the character of the wine than the climate, soils and exposure of the grapes to the sun.

So, rather than go on, I thought it important to introduce readers of “Fermentations” to the best article I’ve come across that discusses the nature of “terroir”: Jaime Goode’s “Terroir Revisited: Towards a Working Definition of Terroir”.