Understanding Terroir

More than just the land

I have studied a number of languages in my life, which might be impressive if I had kept up with any of them enough to remain conversational. I enjoy learning languages generally, but I intentionally avoided French for many years, with the exception of a brief “French for Theological Reading” course to prepare me for the PhD I never ended up pursuing. I’ve learned four different alphabets, but the difference between how French looks and how it sounds always made my brain feel like scrambled œufs.

After a lifetime of escaping French, I started studying wine, and the more nerdy you get about wine, the more it behooves you to learn at least basic and wine-related French. But if you’re not ready to break out the Pimsleur, you can still get a good understanding of perhaps the most important French wine term: terroir.

Non-French-speakers may have difficulty with the pronunciation, but the meaning of terroir can be even more mysterious. Its origins are in the Latin word terre, which simply means “earth,” and I’ve heard many people refer to terroir as the soil and geographic location in which the grapes were grown. The true concept of terroir, however, encompasses the entire environment from which a wine originated.

Terroir is all the specific influences that go into making a wine what it is.

Yes, the soil itself is part of this, and composition, structure, mineral content, and drainage are all important to how grapes express themselves in a wine. The geography - latitude and longitude, weather patterns, and location within a region - also plays a role. Other factors that might come together to comprise the whole of a wine’s terroir include:

• Topography: the slope of the vineyard, its aspect (which direction it faces) with regards to the sun, altitude, the variation of temperature between seasons and day and night, and its proximity to bodies of water that might reflect sunshine or moderate temperature.

• Climate: precipitation, humidity, wind, sun exposure, and number of days in the growing temperature range.

• Pests: bugs, birds, and other damaging wildlife, disease pressure, conditions that encourage mildew or mold.

• Grape variety: clone selection (choosing the strains of a grape variety that will perform best in the vineyard and produce the desired style of wine), massal selection (replanting using cuttings from exceptional old vines), environmental conditions that affect how the variety expresses itself, choice of root stock.

• Terroir history: past and continuing influences of fire, erosion, climate change, and human activity.

• Human factors: farming practices, vineyard management, winemaking choices, and cultural influences like winemaking philosophy and the expected style attached to a particular area or grape variety.

Long story short, the soil and geographic location do matter, but they’re not the only things that matter. Terroir is way more than land; it is everything that makes a wine specific to the place and people that created it.

Want to experience terroir for yourself? The best way to wrap your mind around terroir is through the wine. Try a classic Chablis around the $30-40 range. The Kimmeridgian soil of these region of France - a mix of limestone, clay, and marl, with a high calcium content from the presence of fossilized marine creatures - gives these wines a distinct flinty or steely character, often with some salinity. But remember, it’s not just the soil! The winemaking choices in Chablis support this style as well, picking early to maintain low sugar and high acidity, and using very little new oak influence to maximize the aromas and flavors of the fruit itself and allow that signature flint and steel to be the star of the show. By way of comparison, a Chardonnay grown in California may have a similar winemaking style of bright acidity, minerality, and minimal oak, but come from different soil and lack the flintiness of a Chablis, featuring fruit-forward lemon and green apple instead. A Meursault from southern Burgundy is also Chardonnay but from different soils, warmer weather, and a different expected winemaking style, and will tend to be richer and fuller-bodied, with more ripeness and more new oak.

Have questions about terroir? Drop them in the comments or email me at stacey@justasmidge.me and I’ll do my best to address them here or privately. Cheers!