First, there may not be any good reason to exclude Champagne from the criteria of importance of site distinctiveness. The winemaking process is more manipulative than any still wine, so it seems natural that Champagne is contemplated first from the perspective of how it is made, rather than how/where it is grown. Yes, there are a few single vineyard Champagnes, but not many. There are more that express a communal or village terroir signature, and this is trending upward. But mainly, Champagne expresses the hand of the maker, and that is why I am puzzled to some extent by the recent rise of Champagne to near-deity status among otherwise terroir-appreciative wine geeks. Personally, I don’t “get” Champagne. I like the stuff fine, and I appreciate refinement, subtlety, and complexity. But I don’t often spend up for the best, nor do I really miss it when it doesn’t show up for its appointed role as the opening act.
No and yes. I think some wines can be clearly said to exclude site expression altogether. With very high ripeness, for example, varietal and winemaking expression crushes site expression. Other cellar techniques can and do as well. Exhibit “A” would be numerous Bordeaux wines that have ramped up ripeness, barrel fermented, and invested in micro-ox and reverse osmosis concentration machines. And what about wines that are blended from all over the place. Other wines might be from a non-distinctive site, and so expressing that site doesn’t do much for the wine, so yes, I agree with your second part.
I absolutely agree with this. And the pace of discovery may be increasing. It will be a slow process, however, because there is a lot of serious investment in the wrong sites (IMO). And the process has been obstructed to some degree by the media focus on personalities rather than sites. As long as critics and wineries can sell the notion that Helen T or Phillip M can conjour up exceptional 100-point wines just from their magic touch, the pace of progress will go slowly. But I do believe in the (distant) future, much of what is marketed today as high-end CA wine will be relegated to the domestic equivalent of low-priced generic Bourgogne or villages wine.
Adam, I want to add one more thought. I mentioned Rhys and Anthill Farms as good examples of site-expressive CA wines. I choose these two to mention as I have more recent experience with them than most other CA wineries. But others in this thread have made the case for other wines, including Siduri and Novy and Carlisle and Turley, etc. I’m glad to hear that, and intend to sample some. So just to clarify, I’m not trying to say only a couple CA wines give voice to their site.
I think this is another important point. A wine can “express terroir” as purely as any other, but if the terroir it’s purely expressing is average, at best, then the resulting wine could very well be boring.
Pure terroir expression — whatever the hell that is, anyways — is not the end all be all of wine making. That said, I do find the exploration of different wines and what causes the differences and similarities between them fascinating, as I assume most (if not all) of us do.
A quick note from the peanut gallery: There is no doubt in my mind that certain wine making decisions like ueber-ripeness, massive extraction and overly aggressive use of oak (to name just the three most obtrusive), can and do mask the terroir of CA wines. Unfortunately, high alcohol is often the result of ueber-ripeness and ueber-extraction, so I have avoided those wines with the highest alcohol contents as a general rule.
That said, there are some vintners who have always gotten it right and many more are getting it right these days. Apart from all the obvious candidates that have already been named like Rhys, Copain, Kutch, etc. I would submit that one of the most interesting producers from a terroir perspective in CA has to be Varner.
Their Chardonnays in particular are a tour de force lesson in terroir. The Amphitheater, Home, and Bee Block are so vastly different that it has always blown my mind. They are all good, but very very different. For those who have not already tasted them many times, the Amphitheater is a very lean style of Chard with extreme minerality and a Chablis-like leanness and crispness. The Bee Block is on the exact other end of the spectrum. Riper, plusher, and dominated by Citrus flavors and aromas. The Home Block is somewhere in the middle…neither as cutting nor as citrus dominated.
Just wanted to add this one because Jim and Bob deserve some recognition for their attention to terroir.
…you can identify the terroir easily enough, but you can’t identify who the heck made it?
Recently, for Cabs the Dr. Crane Vineyard has seemed pretty obvious to me, with some subtle differences in the makers, but there’s something just…well, “Dr. Crane”, that is identifiable. I think at the end of the day though, there are so few 100% Dr. Cranes that I could probably still tell who made them…I haven’t tested that out though, but that’s a good idea for a wine night theme
John (or anyone, for that matter), is it your view that a winery should keep certain wine-making decisions constant from bottling to bottling, so that the vineyard signatures are easy (or easier) to detect? If “yes,” which wine-making decisions do you think should be kept constant? (for example: barrel regimen). Does your answer to this question change depending on whether the wines are being compared to their stablemates or to wines from the same terroirs but other producers? For the purposes of this question, take “terroir” to mean vineyard; region; etc. — whatever “terroir” is the topic of consideration/comparison.
Basically a bunch of very good NZ winemakers were enlisted to make a riesling from grapes harvested from the same block in the same vineyard. An interesting concept.
There is the of sorts. ZAP has made a Zinfandel from a UC Davis research vineyard in Oakville that has used a different Winemakers each year. Info can be found at http://zinfandel.org/default.asp?n1=18&n2=787&member=.
I do believe that the BASIC winemaking principles should be employed across a variety of different terroirs/vineyards, but some winemaking decisions HAVE to be made with the vineyard in mind, and therefore may be different from one vineyard to another. For example, one vineyard may produce incredibly tannic fruit, which may necessitate more or less oak than fruit from a vineyard that naturally produces less structured wines. Of course, I am assuming that a certain level of ageworthiness is being targeted. I would understand if some said use the same technique and let the chips fall where they may, but that would not produce the best wines from each plot.
Steve’s wines most certainly display their respective terroirs. While not as “ripe” (in quotes because I believe the fruit is ripe, just not extremely ripe) as some they still show the sun drenched fruit of California, but with a less in-your-face style. Edmunds St. John is the single largest holding of non-European wines in my cellar (followed by Rhys), and will stay that way as long as Steve keeps making wines.
In Tom’s original post he mentioned that he thought he could identify many of the wines he mentioned in a blind tasting – by where they were from, although he also thought that the winemaker’s style would be present, or even overpowering in the case of Ridge.
I doubt this premise, or at least this criterion. I’ve been at a lot of blind tastings with Tom, and sometimes the grave variety can’t be identified with any precision – and I don’t mean to pick on Tom, just that he’s the one who made the claim. I don’t believe he could do it, and I don’t believe very many people could. If any. I’ve found that the people who are really good at distinguishing their different wines, and where they’re from, are the winemakers themselves.
But this doesn’t mean that they’re good at identifying terroir – just how that vineyard behaves in their hands in that year. I’m quite unconvinced they could do it with, say, four Hudson Vineyard syrahs, four Cargasacchi pinots, and four Napa cabs from one specific area (say, Morisoli Vineyard, as mentioned above). Put those wines in among a bunch of similar wines from different places and I don’t think many , or any, could pick them out.
This isn’t to say that those winemakers aren’t expressing their sites’ terroirs. It’s just that it’s very difficult to identify them blind. And how do you know what the “correct” expression of that site’s terroir is, anyway? It’s tough in burgundy, but there you have maybe 30 or 40 vintages you might have tasted, from 15 or 20 producers.
How do you know when a winemaker is purely expressing terroir?
Drifting away from the original question … but, if terroir is so critical and impressive, I would assume it can be discerned relatively easily by sophisticated palates in blind tasting, right?
Obviously, this is a loaded question designed to stir the pot. I really don’t know the answer.
Tom, I would argue that terroir is not a flavor you taste.
Terroir is the physical characteristics of a site that don’t change. Terroir affects flavors, but as a reflection of rainfall, heat, sun. Things that are reflected differently in the terroir every year.
Good site physical characteristics are what make good terroir. Slope direction/aspect, soil drainage, soil depth, soil structure, cation exchange, rooting depth, aerobic vs anaerobic, water holding capacity, pH, etc. etc. etc.
That is what determines how a vine grows, but it happens with the trellis and the growing conditions of each unique year.
That translates in to vine morphology and grape and berry morphology/physical characteristics.
Example of terroir, low vigor sites. Low vigor produces small berries on vines. Small berries make intense wines because as the size of a sphere the ratio of surface area to volume increases exponentially. Skin to juice ratio changes dramatically as site vigor effects berry size. That is terroir affecting and creating flavor.
Do you taste the terroir or do you taste how the terroir affects the constituents of the wine? You taste the quality of the product, not the terroir.
Terroir is not a flavor, it is the substrate, it is the immutable conditions of a site. And we need to do something to remember Bob Senn.
No, I don’t agree with that premise, Chris. There are too many wines, from too many terroirs, and too much noise from producer styles and from vintages and often from grape varieties for that to be a reasonable test. And the terroir-derived signals are often very subtle as well. Consider vintage variations… Vintage conditions can have a huge impact on wine quality and character, and yet we know from blind tasting that it is very difficult to correctly identify the vintages for a flight of wines tasted blind. Does that mean vintage variations don’t matter? No, they matter a lot. Or insert “producer” instead of “vintage”, same thing.
To me, the real reason terroir matters so much is that site-derived distinctions and nuances and complexities are endlessly varied, and thus never boring. In contrast, wine character that comes from human technique is inherently limited and easily reproduced, thus soon becomes repetitious. And add to this the fact that site distinctions are entirely natural, not artificial, and this adds to the intellectual stimulation that the wine provides.
Just my 2 cents, YMMV.
(Added on edit: It goes without saying that the human part has to also be skillfully accomplished for the wine to succeed, including the farming and the winemaking. A poorly made wine that expresses its terroir is a poor wine.)
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