I try not to become embroiled in oenophilic arguments -as a person who long ago switched to Rivaners or Rieslings with their reduced alcohol contents, I usually just smile and nod if the issue arises of whether the grape or the soil is the principle determinant of flavour. Both make sense, I guess, but my money would be on the grape -after all it is the thing being fermented, not the dirt that its roots scrabble around in; it is the grapes that provide the carbohydrate, the fibre, and the aromatic hydrocarbons when they are crushed.
Still, the vines take up water from the soil which contains important nutrients as well.
Fortunately, I came across an article in the BBC Future series by Alex Maltman that tackled this very controversy: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180628-why-wine-geology-may-be-a-myth He is perhaps not a completely unbiased source, though, having written a book Vineyards, Rocks and Soils in which, as the introductory bio explains ‘[he] points out many of the geological errors, misconceptions and misunderstandings rife in wine literature and descriptions.’
Nevertheless, ‘The idea that a vineyard’s ground is important for wine took hold in the Middle Ages when, legend has it, Burgundian monks tasted the soils to find which would give the best tasting wine.’ Unsurprisingly, the idea didn’t really catch on until relatively recently, however, and even now, the weight of evidence still favours the grape. And, ‘[…] most vineyards are routinely gouged, fertilised and irrigated. With this amount of artificial manipulation, is this new preoccupation with the natural geology justified… The fact is that the claims largely are based on anecdote: the scientific justification is slender.
‘That’s not to say the ground isn’t relevant. It governs how roots obtain water, in a pattern that is pivotal to how grapes swell and ripen. We know of 14 elements that are essential for the vine to grow, and almost all of them originate in the ground. Some may make it through to the finished wine, in minuscule amounts that can’t be tasted, though in some cases they can influence how we perceive flavours.’
Also, ‘there recently has been excitement in scientific circles about the possible importance of microbiology in the vineyard because new technologies have revealed distinct fungal and bacterial communities at different sites. [Even though] It’s not clear what effect this has on wine taste.’
I suspect that the final word has not yet been written on the subject of what determines the characteristics of a wine.
Written, or spoken. Jacob doesn’t know one wine from another, I’m sure of it, and yet he has a variety of opinions, depending on his mood or -more likely- the amount of wine he has consumed. A wine’s qualities have always been known to be contextual, of course -the character of some wines seems to be contingent on the food, and in others on the company they keep, the milieu they inhabit.
Jacob has never committed to any particular favourites. Like the books he leaves open and scattered about his house as if he’d just put them down when the doorbell rang, he prefers to keep his options open in the event he’s losing an argument. But he is usually more relaxed with me -like Socrates, I know that I don’t know, so I can only ask questions.
I saw Jacob on a ferry to Vancouver Island the other day. I almost didn’t recognize him in his Tilley hat, light canvas jacket and khaki Bermuda shorts -or whatever you call those pants that end just past the knees and are garnished with long white socks. He was sitting by himself at the window, immersed, not in the scenery, but in sleep or, to be charitable, inward reflection -I couldn’t tell which. At any rate, there was a page open to a picture of a bottle of red wine on his lap, so he obviously meant well. The hour and a half trip wears heavily on the ferry, even with an exciting book.
I decided to sit beside him.
“Saw you coming,” he said and opened one eye as soon as he felt the cushion deform beside him.
He sighed and blinked a couple of times in the sunlight. “I was thinking,” he said, and glanced out the window at the whitecaps that seemed to be racing for the boat under the clear blue skies. “I’ve never been to any of the wineries over there,” he added, nodding in the direction of the hazy specs of land in the distance. “So I decided to have a look at their terroir.”
He thought the word would impress me, I suppose. It did -especially his unsuccessful attempt at giving it a French accent. “What’s a terroir, Jacob?” I asked, but mainly to be polite.
He rolled his eyes, as if he thought everybody knew what it was. Then he mounted a condescending little shrug and sighed again. “A terroir is the environment in which a wine is grown -so it includes, soil, topography, climate, farming practices…” He glanced at me to see if I recognized it now, but when the look on my face betrayed not the slightest hint of recollection -or interest, for that matter- he shrugged again, but this time more disdainfully. “Think of a terroir” -I could almost see the italics- “as contributing to a wine’s characteristics as much as the grape.” He allowed a faint smile to besmirch his face, and lowered his head as if he wanted to peer over the top of his glasses like a professor giving a lecture. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t wear glasses, so it looked rather silly, I thought. “The district and the soil, matter almost as much as the grape, you see…”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t really.
He sat back in the seat, still smiling. “I want to tour the area to check a few things…” He paused for a moment to allow me to ask about it, but when I didn’t, he repeated his sigh and rolled his eyes condescendingly. “I want to ask the various owners if their soils have been tested…” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and glanced at me. “In other words, do they actually contain any slaty para-gneiss and amphibolite, or maybe mica in them?” he added smugly, sure that I would wonder, too, and allowed his smile to linger.
But I remembered the fustian description of an Austrian Riesling wine I’d read in that BBC article. The words he used were just too familiar -too similar to be coincidental- and I allowed my own smile to linger as well…
