Wine & Spirits - Fall 2012 - (Page 18)

by Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop, MW FALSE IDENTITY when terroir character is the sum of the faults “In France, the meaning of terroir for a long time was not particularly positive,” Michel Bettane said at a recent conference. The noted French wine critic explained how goût de terroir referred to an earthy ﬂavor that may be likeable but not ﬁne. As he said, “Wine with a goût de terroir is supposed to be born in a second-rate vineyard.” Or should this refer to second-rate winemaking? Some of these earthy, animal, gamey ﬂavors are not directly attributable to the vineyard at all. This raises an interesting question. Could it be that there is a link between certain vineyard sites and certain wine faults? And do some tasters, even expert tasters, wrongly ascribe wine fault compounds to expressions of the terroir? hether you ask winemakers or seasoned tasters, there is little agreement about how terroir plays out in the glass. While it is possible to come up with a tight definition of terroir in relation to the physical properties of vineyard sites, it’s much harder to link these site characteristics to flavors in wine. When it comes to taste, terroir is an intangible concept that requires a significant amount of personal interpretation. Wine flavor is complex and scientists are still only just beginning to get a handle on the molecules responsible for it. This research is made more complicated by the fact that wine flavor is an emergent property of the combination of these various flavor-active chemicals. For example, rather mysteriously, a particular flavor compound present below its sensory threshold can influence the perception of another. Therefore reductionist science, which breaks wine flavor chemistry down into individual compounds to study each in isolation, can reveal only limited information. Imagine sitting down with a winegrower, tasting her wine. She turns to you and asks, “Can you taste the terroir in this?” It’s a diﬃcult question to answer. Terroir is most clearly evident in comparative situations, where you have two wines diﬀering only in vineyard site, and they show diﬀerent characteristics. Sensory appraisal of wines is extremely complex. It’s true that many experienced professionals can identify unique ﬂavor qualities in wine made from the same vineyard parcel, year in, year out, but we have no reliable scientiﬁc means of pinning speciﬁc wine ﬂavors to soil types. Sometimes the impact of terroir might not be in terms of overt W ﬂavors, but more a textural eﬀect. However, this is still contributed by speciﬁc chemical entities, either alone or in combination, and so should theoretically be measurable, if we knew where to look. Currently this is beyond the capacity of science. Many of the known ﬂavor compounds in wine are formed by yeasts during fermentation, often from precursors present in the grapes. In a sense, terroir is hidden, only to be revealed by the process of winemaking. The freshly picked grapes do not demonstrate the full extent of terroir when they are tasted. This means that the winemaker has an important role to play in the interpretation of terroir. Just a few of the ﬂavors in wine come directly from the grapes. The vast majority of ﬂavor compounds in wine are introduced by primary fermentation or maturation in oak vats, and where malolactic fermentation takes place bacteria can synthesize a wide range of ﬂavor compounds. The formation of these ﬂavor compounds will depend on their precursors in the grape must (this is a factor of vine genetics, physical characteristics of the vineyard site and also the weather during the growing season, as well as the human decision of picking date). There are also factors under human control—the fermentation conditions such as temperature, choice of fermentation vessel, length of skin contact and concentration of sulfur dioxide, the decision about whether to inoculate and the choice of whether to add nutrients or ﬁning agents. Clearly, the existence of terroir eﬀects on wine ﬂavor shows that the vineyard has a role to play, but dissecting the speciﬁc contribution of terroir in shaping this overall ﬂavor is hugely complicated, because many of these eﬀects are indirect. 18 W I N E & S P I R I T S FA L L 2 0 1 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2012

Wine & Spirits - Fall 2012
Contents
Can You Taste Terroir?
Bordeaux Underground
False Identity
Life in the Dirt
Hi-Fidelity Terroir
Dirt Prophets
Five Elements
Terroir Top 100
Vegetable Terroir

Wine & Spirits - Fall 2012