Terroir, postgraduate: that’s a word you’ll have to learn. A wine expresses the unique place where it was created. All true wine has a terroir – a soul, because that’s what it’s all about postgraduates: wine is ensouled.
This isn’t about all that mass-produced, eager-to-please dreck that you find in the supermarket. Terroir is about the soil. The earth! The land!
Grapes are not carrots, postgraduates. They’re sensitive to where they are grown. To the particular character of the soil. To the microclimate. To the specifics of precipitation. Air. Water drainage. Elevation. Sunlight. Temperature! To all the circumstances of their cultivation.
Terroir is immutable, postgraduates. The terroir is what grants the uniqueness of the wine. What can’t be replicated. That can’t be anatomised. Analysed. That can’t be measured, only savoured. As an indivisible whole.
The goût de terroir, postgraduates. The taste of the soil! Winemaking is only about revealing the terroir, postgraduates. The skill of the winemaker is one of self-effacement – of knowing how to amplify the terroir by allowing the right kind of barrelling and fermenting. Without the winemaker’s own embellishment! Without stylistic flourish! There is no place for the winemaker’s signature. The terroir must bloom in and as the wine, that’s all. That’s the winemaker’s humble task.
Cicero used to recommend that we meditate on the terroir. Which is why we must drink this so carefully.
Work in Progress 