Wine and Place: A Terroir Reader - Couverture rigide

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0520277007 ISBN 13 : 9780520277007

Editeur : University of California Press, 2018

Synopsis

The concept of terroir is one of the most celebrated and controversial subjects in wine today. Most will agree that well-made wine has the capacity to express “somewhereness,” a set of consistent aromatics, flavors, or textures that amount to a signature expression of place. But for every advocate there is a skeptic, and for every writer singing praises related to terroir there is a study or a detractor seeking to debunk terroir as myth. Wine and Place examines terroir using a multitude of voices and points of view—from winemakers to wine critics, from science to literature—seeking not to prove its veracity but to explore its pros, cons, and other aspects. This comprehensive anthology lets readers come to their own conclusions about terroir.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Tim Patterson was an award-winning home winemaker and author of several books including Home Winemaking for Dummies and Concannon: The First One Hundred and Twenty-five Years. He was also a columnist for Wines & Vines and a contributor to numerous books, magazines, and websites.
 
John Buechsenstein is a winemaker and wine educator. He is past president of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture and coauthor of the Standardized System of Wine Aroma Terminology, among other titles. 

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

"For me, the construct of terroir has always been the big pumping heartbeat of wine. Unhinged from it, wine would be dead—a hollow shell emotionally and intellectually. And yet do any of us spend enough time thinking about terroir, the very lifeblood of what we love? With Wine and Place, Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein have given us a great gift—a fantastic book that explains why wine moves us and reminds us why wine has meaning. I could not put this book down."—Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible and editor of WineSpeed

"Wine’s magic appears to be closely tied to its place of birth. In this tasty volume, the subject inspires passionate writing from some of the best of our wine writers."—Kermit Lynch, author of Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France

"Patterson and Buechsenstein's book presents a detailed compilation of some of the finest writing on terroir, the concept that's at the heart of fine wine. As such, it's a vital distillation of thinking on this important topic, thoughtfully arranged and interestingly presented. It's an important contribution to the wine literature."—Jamie Goode, author of I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine

"What a bonus to find a book about the taste of place compiled by two actual winemakers—Buechsenstein, an accomplished professional, and Patterson, a passionate amateur—who made wines from scores of different terroirs in their careers. This scholarly and often witty compilation of viewpoints is the best there is."—Jim Gordon, editor of Wines & Vines

"Where something comes from is always intriguing. With wine, all the more so. Finding words to describe all that goes into that elusive bugaboo, terroir, is tough. Patterson and Buechenstein have worked every angle to help us understand—and hey, any book that includes magma is worth one's time. Site matters."—Virginie Boone, contributing editor for Wine Enthusiast

"I am so sad that I did not have hours and days and years to spend with Tim Patterson, talking about the subject dearest to us both, the mysterious, vexatious question of terroir. Thankfully, he—along with coauthor John Buechsenstein—has left us Wine and Place. This is a must-have volume for both terroirists and counter-terroirists alike, curious to understand how a wine might most profoundly express itself."—Randall Grahm, author of Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

"In their chosen roles as compilers and contrarians, the experts behind Wine and Place have initiated a crucial dialogue about terroir. They have assembled, with erudition and wit, the perspectives of scholars, journalists, and winemakers, and they have created fruitful and engaging juxtapositions as to the definition, the construction, the meaning, the analysis, and the power of terroir. Everyone will learn something new, from wine aficionados to scientists to students of wine history and culture."—Amy Trubek, author of The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir

À propos de la deuxième de couverture

"For me, the construct of terroir has always been the big pumping heartbeat of wine. Unhinged from it, wine would be dead—a hollow shell emotionally and intellectually. And yet do any of us spend enough time thinking about terroir, the very lifeblood of what we love? With Wine and Place, Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein have given us a great gift—a fantastic book that explains why wine moves us and reminds us why wine has meaning. I could not put this book down."—Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible and editor of WineSpeed

"Wine’s magic appears to be closely tied to its place of birth. In this tasty volume, the subject inspires passionate writing from some of the best of our wine writers."—Kermit Lynch, author of Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France

"Patterson and Buechsenstein's book presents a detailed compilation of some of the finest writing on terroir, the concept that's at the heart of fine wine. As such, it's a vital distillation of thinking on this important topic, thoughtfully arranged and interestingly presented. It's an important contribution to the wine literature."—Jamie Goode, author of I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine

"What a bonus to find a book about the taste of place compiled by two actual winemakers—Buechsenstein, an accomplished professional, and Patterson, a passionate amateur—who made wines from scores of different terroirs in their careers. This scholarly and often witty compilation of viewpoints is the best there is."—Jim Gordon, editor of Wines & Vines

"Where something comes from is always intriguing. With wine, all the more so. Finding words to describe all that goes into that elusive bugaboo, terroir, is tough. Patterson and Buechenstein have worked every angle to help us understand—and hey, any book that includes magma is worth one's time. Site matters."—Virginie Boone, contributing editor for Wine Enthusiast

"I am so sad that I did not have hours and days and years to spend with Tim Patterson, talking about the subject dearest to us both, the mysterious, vexatious question of terroir. Thankfully, he—along with coauthor John Buechsenstein—has left us Wine and Place. This is a must-have volume for both terroirists and counter-terroirists alike, curious to understand how a wine might most profoundly express itself."—Randall Grahm, author of Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

"In their chosen roles as compilers and contrarians, the experts behind Wine and Place have initiated a crucial dialogue about terroir. They have assembled, with erudition and wit, the perspectives of scholars, journalists, and winemakers, and they have created fruitful and engaging juxtapositions as to the definition, the construction, the meaning, the analysis, and the power of terroir. Everyone will learn something new, from wine aficionados to scientists to students of wine history and culture."—Amy Trubek, author of The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Wine and Place

A Terroir Reader

By Tim Patterson, John Buechsenstein

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2018 Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-27700-7

Contents

Foreword by Patrick J. Comiskey, ix, 
Introduction: Why Terroir Matters, 1, 
1 The Lure and Promise of Terroir, 7, 
2 History and Definitions, 32, 
3 Soil: The Terre in Terroir, 59, 
4 Climate: Limits and Variations, 92, 
5 Grapevines: Bringing Terroir to Life, 122, 
6 Winemaking: The Human Element in Terroir, 151, 
7 Sensory: Validating Terroir, 187, 
8 Marketing: Terroir for Sale, 223, 
9 The Future of Terroir, 260, 
10 Postscriptum, 291, 
Acknowledgments: Nancy G. Freeman, 294, 
Acknowledgments: John Buechsenstein, 295, 
Bibliography, 297, 
Credits for Reprinted Materials, 305, 
Index, 313, 

CHAPTER 1

THE LURE AND PROMISE OF TERROIR

Wine terroir — the idea that certain wines uniquely express the special character of the places they come from — is no ordinary concept. Many important notions about wine — what makes a wine "balanced," for example, or when an age-worthy wine is at its peak — are thoroughly subjective, and thus the focus of endless, heated, highly enjoyable debates. But terroir encompasses a full-fledged belief system, perhaps several overlapping at once; it grips the vinous imagination like nothing else. Terroir is more than a mere attribute of wine: for its committed adherents, from winegrowers to writers to impassioned wine lovers, it is the conceptual gateway to wine's meaning.

Every well-made glass of wine worth putting in your mouth has flavor (or at least it should). It should have fruit, body, alcohol, tannins, and acidity for structure and texture; it ought to possess some facility with food. But a few wines, exceptional wines, have something extra: they have meaning. Part of what makes a wine exceptional is its connection to the earth, to the physical properties of a particular place, to the traditions of that place, to the generations of winegrowers who have nurtured the soil and the vines in that place. As industrial-technical wines overtake the global marketplace, with homogenized flavors and styles that blur the lines between Old World and New World, wines of place might seem headed for an endangered species list, but they are worth fighting to preserve.

The lure and promise of terroir has inspired a considerable body of great wine writing, and that is where our exploration starts. Before mining the more prosaic aspects of the concept — temperature gradients, soil drainage properties, nutrient uptake, commercial versus "natural" yeasts, the influence of marketing hype — we start by celebrating the very notion of terroir: the beauty it represents, the satisfaction it offers to those who approach wine in its thrall, the promise it holds out for experiencing something more than meets the glass.

And so we begin with Matt Kramer's classic essay on Burgundy and terroir, followed by pieces from prose masters Rod Smith and Gerald Asher, personal testimonies from eloquent Old World winegrowers, ruminations by winemaker/philosopher/provocateur Randall Grahm, and an ode to emotional connectedness by importer-evangelist Terry Theise. Bringing up the rear, we'll allow two skeptics the chance to have their say.

SOMEWHERENESS

Among American wine writers, Matt Kramer is perhaps the most consistent and selfconscious proponent of the importance of terroir. In a lucid series of books and in the pages of Wine Spectator, he has for decades championed the great wines of Burgundy and the tiny places they're sourced from. He has been tireless in advocating practices — low yields, gentle winemaking, restrained use of oak — that let the underlying terroir speak, and is critical of shortcuts — over-cropping, cellar manipulation, the injudicious use of oak — that take the soul out of wine.

Kramer coined the term "somewhereness" to describe the quality that great wines have to possess. His best-known treatment of the subject, "The Notion of Terroir," originally appeared in 1990 as a chapter in Making Sense of Burgundy, the second of several books he has written devoted to demystifying wine and the places it comes from. Even then, the concept of terroir was largely unexplored among American consumers, and underappreciated by those familiar with it. The following excerpts from that essay exemplify not only Kramer's passion for wine but also his intellectual rigor. He's not only willing to question current winemaking fads, but states unequivocally that understanding terroir requires a different mindset from the modern, linear, science-based worldview. And he also makes clear that an appreciation of terroir does not come easily, and is not for everyone.

FROM MATT KRAMER, "THE NOTION OF TERROIR"

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

— E. E. CUMMINGS, Collected Poems, 1922–1938

The "more beautiful question" of wine is terroir. To the English speaker, terroir is an alien word, diffi cult to pronounce ("tair-wahr"). More frustrating yet, it is a foreign idea. The usual capsule definition is "site" or "vineyard" plot. Closer to its truth, it holds — like William Blake's grain of sand that contains a world — an evolution of thought about wine and the Earth. One cannot make sense of Burgundy without investigating the notion of terroir.

Although derived from soil or land (terre), terroir is not just an investigation of soil and subsoil. It is everything that contributes to the distinction of a vineyard plot. As such, it also embraces "microclimate": precipitation, air and water drainage, elevation, sunlight, and temperature.

But terroir holds yet another dimension: It sanctions what cannot be measured, yet still located and savored. Terroir prospects for differences. In this, it is at odds with science, which demands proof by replication rather than in a shining uniqueness.

Understanding terroir requires a recalibration of the modern mind. The original impulse has long since disappeared, buried by commerce and the scorn of science. It calls for a susceptibility to the natural world to a degree almost unfathomable today, as the French historian Marc Bloch evokes in his landmark work, Feudal Society:

The men of the two feudal ages were close to nature — much closer than we are; and nature as they knew it was much less tamed and softened than as we see it today. ... People continued to pick wild fruit and to gather honey as in the first ages of mankind. In the construction of implements and tools, wood played a predominant part. The nights, owing to wretched lighting, were darker; the cold, even in the living quarters of the castles, was more intense. In short, behind all social life there was a background of the primitive, of submission to uncontrollable forces, of unrelieved physical contrasts.

This world extended beyond the feudal ages, as rural life in Europe changed little for centuries afterward. Only the barest vestiges remain today, with the raw, preternatural sensitivity wiped clean. The viticultural needlepoint of the Côte d'Or, its thousands of named vineyards, is as much a relic of a bygone civilization as Stonehenge. We can decipher why and how they did it, but the impulse, the fervor, is beyond us now.

The glory of Burgundy is its exquisite delineation of sites, its preoccupation with terroir. What does this site have to say? Is it different from its neighbor? It is the source of Burgundian greatness, the informing ingredient. This is easily demonstrated. You need only imagine an ancient Burgundy planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for the glory of producing — to use the modern jargon — a varietal wine. The thought is depressing, an anemic vision of wine hardly capable of inspiring the devotion of generations of wine lovers, let alone the discovery of such natural wonders as Montrachet or La Tâche. Terroir is as much a part of Burgundy wines as Pinot Noir or Chardonnay; the grape is as much vehicle as voice.

The mentality of terroir is not uniquely Burgundian, although it reaches its fullest expression there. It more rightly could be considered distinctively French, although not exclusively so. Other countries, notably Germany and Italy, can point to similar insights. But France, more than any other, viewed its landscape from the perspective of terroir. It charted its vineyard distinctions — often called cru or growth — with calligraphic care. Indeed, calligraphy and cru are sympathetic, both the result of emotional, yet disciplined, attentions to detail. Both flourished under monastic tutelage.

* * *

But in France there exists, to this day, a devotion to terroir that is not explained solely by this legacy of the Church. Instead, it is fueled by two forces in French life: a long-standing delight in differences and an acceptance of ambiguity.

The greatness of French wines in general — and Burgundy in particular — can be traced to the fact that the French do not ask of one site that it replicate the qualities of another site. They prize distinction. This leads not to discord — as it might in a country gripped by a marketing mentality — but consonance with what the French call la France profonde, elemental France.

This is the glory of France. It is not that France is the only spot on the planet with remarkable soils or that its climate is superior to all others for winegrowing. It is a matter of the values that are applied to the land. In this, terroir and its discoveries remind one of Chinese acupuncture. Centuries ago, Chinese practitioners chose to view the body from a perspective utterly different than that of the dissective, anatomical approach of Western medicine. Because of this different perspective, they discovered something about the body that Western practitioners, to this day, are unable to see independently for themselves: what the Chinese call "channels" or "collaterals," or more recently, "meridians." The terminology is unimportant. What is important is that these "meridians" cannot be found by dissection. Yet they exist; acupuncture works. Its effects, if not its causes, are demonstrable.

In the same way, seeking to divine the greatness of Burgundy only by dissecting its intricacies of climate, grape, soil, and winemaking is no more enlightening than learning how to knit by unraveling a sweater. Those who believe that great wines are made, rather than found, will deliver such wines only by the flimsiest chance, much in the same way that an alchemist, after exacting effort, produces gold simply by virtue of having worked with gold-bearing material all along.

Today, a surprising number of winegrowers and wine drinkers — at least in the United States — flatly deny the existence of terroir, like weekend sailors who reject as preposterous that Polynesians could have crossed the Pacific navigating only by sun, stars, wind, smell, and taste. Terroir is held to be little more than viticultural voodoo.

The inadmissibility of terroir to the high court of reason is due to ambiguity. Terroir can be presented, but it cannot be proven — except by the senses. Like Polynesian seafaring, it is too subjective to be reproducible and therefore credible. Yet any reasonably experienced wine drinker knows upon tasting a mature Corton-Charlemagne or Chablis "Vaudésir" or Volnay "Caillerets," that something is present that cannot be accounted for by winemaking technique. Infused in the wine is a goût de terroir, the savor of the site. It cannot be traced to the grape, if only because other wines made the same way from the same grape lack this certain something. If only by process of elimination, the source must be ascribed to terroir. But to acknowledge this requires a belief that the ambiguous — the unprovable and unmeasurable — can be real. Doubters are blocked by their own credulity in science and its confining definition of reality.

The supreme concern of Burgundy is — or should be — making terroir manifest. In outline, this is easily accomplished: small-berried clones; low yields; selective sorting of the grapes; and, trickiest of all, fermenting and cellaring the wine in such a way as to allow the terroir to come through with no distracting stylistic flourishes. This is where terroir comes smack up against ego, the modern demand for self-expression at any cost, which, too often, has come at the expense of terroir.

It is easier to see the old Burgundian enemies of greed and inept winemaking. The problem of greed, expressed in overcropped grapevines resulting in thin, diluted wines, has been chronic in Burgundy, as are complaints about it. It is no less so today, but the resolution is easily at hand: Lower the yields.

But the matter of ego and terroir is new and peculiar to our time. It stems from two sources: the technology of modern winemaking and the psychology of its use. Technical control in winemaking is recent, dating only to the late 1960s. Never before have winemakers been able to control wine to such an extent as they can today. Through the use of temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks, computer-controlled winepresses, heat exchangers, inert gases, centrifuges, all manner of filters, oak barrels from woods of different forests, and so forth, the modern winemaker can insert himself between the terroir and its wine to a degree never before achieved.

The psychology of its use is the more important feature. Self-expression is now considered the inalienable right of our time. It thus is no surprise that the desire for self-expression should make itself felt in winemaking. That winemakers have always sought to express themselves in their wines is indisputable. The difference is that today technology actually allows them to do so, to an extent unimagined by their grandparents.

Submerged in this is a force that, however abstract, has changed much of twentieth-century thinking: the transition from the literal to the subjective in how we perceive what is "real." Until recently, whatever was considered "real" was expressed in straightforward mechanical or linear linkages, such as a groove in a phonograph record or a lifelike painting of a vase of flowers. Accuracy was defined by exacting, literal representation.

But we have come to believe that the subjective can be more "real" than the representational. One of the earliest, and most famous, examples of this was Expressionism in art. Where prior to the advent of Expressionism in the early twentieth-century, the depiction of reality on a canvas was achieved through the creation of the most lifelike forms, Expressionists said otherwise. They maintained that the reality of a vase of flowers could be better expressed by breaking down its form and color into more symbolic representations of its reality than by straightforward depiction.

How this relates to wine is found in the issue of terroir versus ego. The Burgundian world that discovered terroir centuries ago drew no distinction between what they discovered and called Chambertin and the idea of a representation of Chambertin. Previously, there were only two parties involved: Chambertin itself and its self-effacing discoverer, the winegrower. In this deferential view of the natural world, Chambertin was Chambertin if for no other reason than it consistently did not taste like its neighbor Latricières. One is beefier and more resonantly flavorful (Chambertin) while the other offers a similar savor but somehow always is lacier in texture and less full-blown. It was a reality no more subject to doubt than was a nightingale's song from the screech of an owl. They knew what they tasted, just as they knew what they heard. These were natural forces, no more subject to alteration or challenge than a river.

... In seeking to establish the voice of a terroir, one has to concentrate — at least for the moment — not on determining which wines are best, but in finding the thread of distinction that runs through them. It could be a matter of structure: delicate or muscular; consistently lean or generous in fruit. It could be a distinctive goût de terroir, something minerally or stony; chalky or earthy. Almost always, it will be hard to determine at first, because the range of styles within the wines will be distracting. And if the choices available are mostly second-rate, where the terroir is lost through overcropped vines or heavy-handed winemaking, the exercise will be frustrating and without reward. Terroir usually is discovered only after repeated attempts over a number of vintages. This is why such insight is largely the province only of Burgundians and a few obsessed outsiders.

Nevertheless, hearing the voice of the land is sweet and you will not easily forget it. Sometimes it only becomes apparent by contrast. You taste a number of Meursault "Perrières," for example, and in the good ones you find a pronounced mineraliness coupled with an invigorating, strong fruitiness. You don't realize how stony or fruity, how forceful, until you compare Perrières with, say, Charmes, which is contiguous. Then the distinction of Perrières clicks into place in your mind. It's never so exact or pronounced that you will spot it unerringly in a blind tasting of various Meursault premiers crus. That's not the point. The point is that there is no doubt that Perrières exists, that it is an entity unto itself, distinct from any other plot.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Wine and Place by Tim Patterson, John Buechsenstein. Copyright © 2018 Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0520277007
• ISBN 13: 9780520277007
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 329
• Éditeur: Patterson Tim, Buechsenstein John
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Allemagne