Cooking
I found this post by Jaime Goode via this post on Tom Wark's site. Goode tries to nail down a definition of terroir, the concept that wine or food uniquely reflects its place of birth (this term is most often used in wine, but others apply it to cheese, bread, teas, coffee and chocolate, among others). Everyone discusses the physical environment of the vines. Soils, sunshine, rainfall, and so forth. But I think people do a disservice to the concept of terroir by focusing solely on items that can be analyzed scientifically. Goode alludes to other factors as a minor element. I would argue that they're more significant. Isn't history a part of terroir? Classic Bordeaux wines reflect the several hundred years when the English controlled the territory. The wines were made to the tastes of that country, and that dictated the winemaking philosophy you still find today. What would you think of a Bordeaux wine made from the pinot noir grape? Could it reflect its terroir well even though it's an alien in that region? And what about food? In the Old World at least, wines evolved alongside the region's cuisine, because you drank the wine with your meal. The best wine writing brings food into the mix, though the big pubs don't focus on this as much. When we drink wine in our normal life, we don't drink it in isolation, we drink it with a meal. Mightn't a crisp Txacolina reflect its terroir well by perfectly complementing food from the Basque country of Northern Spain? I think so. I could imagine a scenario where a particular grape might reflect the physical terroir of a certain region, but not go well with the food. I would argue in that case that the wine isn't truly expressing its terroir. I'm a romantic, and so my view of terroir is probably not surprising. But I think these are important elements that can't be ignored when discussing a wine's sense of place, and I find it typically modern that we need to dissect and analyze this term. Can't we just accept that there is no standard definition? James Wilson does a good job of combining these factors in Terroir. Wilson is a geologist, but he's not unaware of the role that history plays in shaping a region's wines. The problem with my factors is that they're constantly changing. Foods change as new ingredients become available—fusion cuisine is as old as travel. History marches ever onward. True, and I think this is what makes terroir so fascinating. My factors also don't allow New World regions much slack. History is fine when you're talking about a winemaking tradition that predates the Christian Era, but here in California we can claim at most a couple of centuries. In that case I suppose we have to stick with the purely physical (which is what I did with the Paso Robles terroir piece).
- The Mechanics Of Terroir, Aoe 82
I have a piece in the upcoming Art of Eating about the science behind terroir. I skipped past the vague hand-waviness of winemakers and marketing and went straight to the scientific papers that have been written on the subject to try and answer the question:...
- What Every Boy And Girl Wants
Looking for the perfect Valentine's Day gift? How about a cool six-week-long UC Berkeley Extension wine course in San Francisco, starting in early April? You might think this is a hard gift to find, but you'd be wrong. Click the link, pull out...
- Guest Contributor Derrick Schneider...
The current issue of The Wine News features an article by me about old vine wine (primarily Zinfandel). Longtime readers will note the irony of me writing about California wines. I tend to agree with the sentiment that California wine is more about...
- Amador/el Dorado Wines
When we left Tahoe, we decided to swing through Amador and El Dorado counties to try some of the wines of the Sierra foothills. This is a wine region that is off the beaten path, to say the least. Route 16, a winding back-country road, seems to be the...
- The Dirt On Dirt
Terroir. It is a word bandied about by wine snoots everywhere. It has no easy conceptual translation in English ("land" is the direct translation my Oxford French-English dictionary lists), and means different things to different people. Perhaps that...
Cooking
Thoughts on Terroir
I found this post by Jaime Goode via this post on Tom Wark's site. Goode tries to nail down a definition of terroir, the concept that wine or food uniquely reflects its place of birth (this term is most often used in wine, but others apply it to cheese, bread, teas, coffee and chocolate, among others). Everyone discusses the physical environment of the vines. Soils, sunshine, rainfall, and so forth. But I think people do a disservice to the concept of terroir by focusing solely on items that can be analyzed scientifically. Goode alludes to other factors as a minor element. I would argue that they're more significant. Isn't history a part of terroir? Classic Bordeaux wines reflect the several hundred years when the English controlled the territory. The wines were made to the tastes of that country, and that dictated the winemaking philosophy you still find today. What would you think of a Bordeaux wine made from the pinot noir grape? Could it reflect its terroir well even though it's an alien in that region? And what about food? In the Old World at least, wines evolved alongside the region's cuisine, because you drank the wine with your meal. The best wine writing brings food into the mix, though the big pubs don't focus on this as much. When we drink wine in our normal life, we don't drink it in isolation, we drink it with a meal. Mightn't a crisp Txacolina reflect its terroir well by perfectly complementing food from the Basque country of Northern Spain? I think so. I could imagine a scenario where a particular grape might reflect the physical terroir of a certain region, but not go well with the food. I would argue in that case that the wine isn't truly expressing its terroir. I'm a romantic, and so my view of terroir is probably not surprising. But I think these are important elements that can't be ignored when discussing a wine's sense of place, and I find it typically modern that we need to dissect and analyze this term. Can't we just accept that there is no standard definition? James Wilson does a good job of combining these factors in Terroir. Wilson is a geologist, but he's not unaware of the role that history plays in shaping a region's wines. The problem with my factors is that they're constantly changing. Foods change as new ingredients become available—fusion cuisine is as old as travel. History marches ever onward. True, and I think this is what makes terroir so fascinating. My factors also don't allow New World regions much slack. History is fine when you're talking about a winemaking tradition that predates the Christian Era, but here in California we can claim at most a couple of centuries. In that case I suppose we have to stick with the purely physical (which is what I did with the Paso Robles terroir piece).
- The Mechanics Of Terroir, Aoe 82
I have a piece in the upcoming Art of Eating about the science behind terroir. I skipped past the vague hand-waviness of winemakers and marketing and went straight to the scientific papers that have been written on the subject to try and answer the question:...
- What Every Boy And Girl Wants
Looking for the perfect Valentine's Day gift? How about a cool six-week-long UC Berkeley Extension wine course in San Francisco, starting in early April? You might think this is a hard gift to find, but you'd be wrong. Click the link, pull out...
- Guest Contributor Derrick Schneider...
The current issue of The Wine News features an article by me about old vine wine (primarily Zinfandel). Longtime readers will note the irony of me writing about California wines. I tend to agree with the sentiment that California wine is more about...
- Amador/el Dorado Wines
When we left Tahoe, we decided to swing through Amador and El Dorado counties to try some of the wines of the Sierra foothills. This is a wine region that is off the beaten path, to say the least. Route 16, a winding back-country road, seems to be the...
- The Dirt On Dirt
Terroir. It is a word bandied about by wine snoots everywhere. It has no easy conceptual translation in English ("land" is the direct translation my Oxford French-English dictionary lists), and means different things to different people. Perhaps that...