In another thread, several of us are wrestling once again with the exact meaning and nuance of the term "terroir."
It occurred to me, while penning an impassioned response to Hoke just now, that part of my personal issue with this may just be that the meaning - and perhaps the importance - of "terroir" in wine-geek terms has changed dramatically and significantly over the past 20 years, perhaps under the influence of wine publications and online discussion groups.
Mike H. put forth a definition of "terroir" from Karen MacNeil's "Wine Bible" that's probably as good as any for a current understanding of the term:
"....terroir. This French word means the total impact of any given site---soil, slope, orientation to the sun, and elevation, plus every nuance of climate including rainfall, wind velocity, frequency of fog, cumulative hours of sunshine, average high temperature, average low temperature, and so forth. There is no single word in English that means quite the same thing."
But in discussing this, it suddenly occurred to me that the books from which I learned wine didn't say anything like that. To the extent that they discussed terroir at all (and not all of them did), they described it entirely in terms of earth and soil, and not really in a complimentary way.
In Alexis Lichine's 1967 "New Encyclopedia of Wines & Spirits," 1987 edition, he dismissed it in two lines, alphabetized under G for the longer French term:
"<b><i>Goût de terroir</i></b>
In French this means, literally, earthy taste; it denotes a peculiar flavor imparted by certain soils, and not the taste of the soil itself."
In his 1983 "New Encyclopedia of Wine," Hugh Johnson devotes a couple of pages to a quick overview of soils and microclimates without ever using the T word at all.
Things start to get interesting in Alexis Bespaloff's 1988 revision of the 1975 "New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine." As I recall, this was a true revision, incorporating a lot of rewriting, changes and updates. The section on terroir, still brief, really reads as if Bespaloff read Schoonmaker's old definition, left it in place, but then tacked on the evolving new understanding. (I wish I still had my old first edition so I could confirm this.)
<b>"Terroir (tair-wah'r)</b> French for 'soil' or 'earth,' used in a very special sense in the phrase <i>goût de terroir</i>, or 'taste of the soil.' Certain wines produced on heavy soils have a characteristic, persistent, and sometimes unpleasant earthy flavor; the German equivalent is <i>Bodenton</i> or <i>Bodengeschmack</i>. The word <i>terroir</i> is also used in an extended sense to describe the soil together with the associated climatic conditions of a district or a vineyard; the English equivalent might be microclimate."
Finally, in preference to the quirky redhead, I think I'd rather turn to the beloved Jancis (in the form of correspondents J.G. & R.E.S.) in the Oxford Companion to Wine, Second Edition, 1999. Terroir has obviously become important by this point ... they devote four columns to it. But this excerpt pretty much says it sll:
"Major components of terroir are soil (as the word suggests) and local topography, together with their interactions with each other and with macroclimate to determine mesoclimate and vine microclimate. The holistic combination of all these is held to give each site its own unique terroir, which is reflected in its wines more or less consistently from year to year, to some degree regardless of variations in methods of viticulture and wine-making. Thus every small plot, and in generic terms every larger area, and ultimately region, may have distinctive wine-style characteristics which cannot be precisely duplicated elsewhere. The exent to which terroir effects are unique is, however, debatable, and of course commercially important, which makes the subject controversial. Opinions have differed greatly on the reality and, if real, the importance of terroir in determining wine qualities."
They also note, perhaps inspiring MacNeil, "No precise English equivalent exists for this quintessentially French term and concept."
Maybe. But it still seems to me that "Terroir" has come to mean something very different from its use, as a much more arcane and rarely used term, back when I was a mere youth learning about wine.
Any of you other old-timers have thoughts on this?
