Terroir - Introduction

Treading Trodden Trails

Each year the Spring Mountain District hosts a four day “boot camp” for important members of the wine trade who come to the mountain and participate in the harvest. We call it Touch the Terroir because it is a rare opportunity for a few individuals to see what makes Spring Mountain unique from a vantage point that is “up-close and personal.” Soon we will again be talking about terroir and Spring Mountain, so I though it would be worthwhile to go over some old ground and to invite comment. Much has been written about terroir and I am not sure what I can add to it other than my personal experience with it.
I first heard the word terror over forty years ago as a student at UC Davis in a class taught by Dr. Maynard Amerine. The class was Viticulture & Enology 125; the subject was Sensory Analysis of Wine. Among the world’s leading authorities on wine, Dr. Amerine was in a class by himself. With a deep knowledge of chemistry, bio-chem, vine physiology, sensory analysis, and wine making; Amerine published 16 books, more than 400 scientific papers and dozens of articles in popular magazines. His work on the role of climate in grape growing, enology, plant biology and sensory perception was,and is, a classic among vintners throughout the world.
In the worn enology laboratory we were working our way around Europe, tasting examples of wine selected by our professor. The object of the class was not only to teach us how to taste wine, but to illustrate what made the wine taste the way it did. Our discussions focused on climate, soil, exposure, viticulture and winemaking in each of the important wine regions of the world. The word terroir came up when we were talking about Burgundy. No one could address it with more authority than Dr. Amerine.
Our professor told us that terroir was a traditional European concept; a notion that certain wines had flavors that came directly from the soil where they were grown. While he did not discount its existance, he pointed to a body of research that showed that it was unlikely there was any direct transfer of flavor components moving directly from the soil through the vine and into the grape. Rather there was a great deal of evidence that a particular vineyard’s location, its soil, climate, elevation, and exposure, influenced the physiology of the vine such that it produced flavor compounds that marked the flavor of wines. Burgundy was a particularly good illustration of terroir, he pointed out; since there were similarities between vineyards in climate, elevation, grape variety, viticultural and winemaking practices such that the effects of site and soil on the vine were more evident. That didn’t seem so important to me at the time. What was important to me, was that I got my first taste of a fine Burgundy.
A few years later I found myself in the Napa Valley making wine at Inglenook from a couple dozen different vineyards of Cabernet Sauvignon. Despite rather uniform winemaking practices each wine turned out differently. I had plenty to do making two dozen wine types from dozens of growers while learning winemaking on the job. I didn’t have time to be concerned about terroir, but it showed up anyway.
A vineyard we owned and farmed in front of the winery at Rutherford was planted on a deep, gravely alluvial fan.It consistently produced deeply tinted, rich, velvety Cabernet; historically one of the great Cabernets in the Napa Valley. Next door was the vineyard owned by the late Joe Cohn (now bottled as Scarecrow). It produced wines deep in color, flavor, but not quite so soft. A vineyard we farmed identically to the one in Rutherford, but South of Oakville, on rolling terrain and shallow soils consistently produced a harder and tighter style of wine. A vineyard in deep fertile soils less than a mile away near the Napa river, expertly farmed, produced an orange-ruby and veggie Cabernet that was not useable. And from up on Spring Mountain, a grower named Draper delivered intensely flavored, deeply colored grapes that consistently produced distinct wines with soft tannins. It quickly became apparent to me that the vineyard itself was the limiting factor on the quality of wine. Its soil, microclimate, elevation, and exposure ultimately determined the potential of wine irrespective of what I did in the vineyard or the winery.
For nearly four decades since, from job to job, I have followed terroir. Though I rarely used the word (because it sounded affected), terroir attracted me to vineyards like Three Palms, Winery Lake, and Diamond Mountain Ranch. Wines made from the deep coarse alluvial gravel and warm climate of Three Palms contrasted sharply in the wines from the shallow sedimentary soils and cool climate at Winery Lake. The chalky volcanic soils and moderate climate on Diamond Mountain produced wines that had no resemblance to the other two. Eventually in 1992, terroir led me back to where I began, re-exploring the varied soils and cool wet climate of Spring Mountain on the Draper Vineyard.
I am not alone. This exploration is shared by every winemaker I know. In fact, everyone uses the word terroir today without hesitation. Sometimes it’s as if every winery’s marketing material makes a reference to a unique terroir that exists only for their wine. Often this includes wineries that mix grapes from many vineyard sites. Even Gallo has a wine, a “Sierra Valley” Merlot, which not only suggests a fictional valley, but according to their marketing people displays “California terroir.”

So what is this thing, terroir? What is so great about it and why all the fuss? Why should it be of any interest to the wine drinker? I’ll share my thoughts on those questions in the future, but I’d be interested to hear how others came to know this word.