Every wine region claims its own terroir, but what does it all actually mean?
Terroir (pronounced terr-wahr) is a French term that, as with many of our adopted faves (like umami, schadenfreude and deja vu) doesn’t really have an English equivalent. Basically, terroir is a wine’s sense of place – all the aspects of its unique growing conditions like climate, altitude, soil types and microbial life that make wine from a particular area taste, well, like it comes from that area.
Consider this: pinot noir is planted in many Australian wine regions, but its flavours and aromas change depending on where its grown. When we spoke with winemaker Bill Downie about growing pinot in his patch of West Gippsland in Victoria, he nailed the concept. “Because most of the vineyards are planted on volcanic soil, you can always taste the red soil in the wines,” he told Dan’s Daily. “If you imagine drinking water out of old rusted pipes, there’s a character of that in the wines, always, which I think is one of the defining features.”
Compare this to, say, the clay soils of Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, and you’ll get pinot of a different stripe. Add in all those other terroir variables like climate and elevation, and you can have identical grape vines in different regions producing very different wines with their own unique, identifiable characters. That’s terroir.
Terroir isn’t all the factors that winemakers can influence, such as ageing in oak, fining and filtration, and using techniques like carbonic maceration or malolactic fermentation. These are big influences on the final wine, sure, but they’re not part of terroir. One reason why carbonic maceration cops some flack is because it creates flavour, but it can often overwhelm the subtle qualities of terroir. It’s not a bad thing (we bloody love carbonic wines), but it can mean trading off those specific regional characters for flavour of a different sort.
Terroir also isn’t necessarily the characteristics of a whole wine region – that’s often too broad. Instead, think of terroir as the characteristics of smaller plots, individual vineyards and subregions. The Barossa Valley, for instance, has altitudes varying from 112 to 596 metres while the Yarra Valley has two distinct soil types – sand and clay in the north, red volcanic in the south. From one vineyard to another, wines within these regions can be really different based on nothing more than nature. Terroir again, baby.
For you and me, terroir is a useful concept because it can help us seem smart when we bump into James Halliday down the shops. Really, though, terroir is a great way to get a sense of the regions, landscapes and climates in which wine is produced all over the world.
It also gives us a strong reference point for finding more wine that we enjoy, or understanding the things that grabbed us about a wine we liked. If we dig a pinot noir from West Gippsland or a riesling from the high slopes of Eden Valley, maybe it’s not just the winemaking – maybe it’s the characteristics of terroir.
Terroir also helps wines have their own identity. More so than drinks like beer and spirits, the flavours, aromas and textures of wine change markedly depending on their place of origin. It’s true that elements like local water can affect beer and spirits, but most of the ingredients are less noticeably of a certain place.
Winemakers hold the idea of terroir close to their hearts (as Bill Downie’s example shows) because it’s something that can’t be fabricated or faked – terroir must exist in nature, in the wine’s origins, or it will never exist at all. It’s for this reason that minimal-intervention wine styles exist – the producers want you to taste the landscape, the air and the weather that goes into the wine. Doing as little as possible to turn those grapes into wine is how they preserve those special characteristics.
If you want to taste terroir for yourself, it’s not some exercise in subtlety. It can be – compare wines, for example, from vineyards on opposite sides of a valley, or an inland site versus one right on the coast if you’re doing it on hard mode – but, to start with, at least, it’s better to pick big differences.
Take a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand’s Marlborough with all its classic, big tropical flavours and contrast it against the smoky, flinty sauvs of Pouilly-Fumé in France. Grab a big, bold, jammy shiraz from Barossa and compare it to the elegant, refined style of cool-climate expressions from the Adelaide Hills. Or taste the classic minty notes of Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon and contrast them against the rich black fruits of California’s Napa cabs.
The differences in these examples are stark but, except where winemakers add their own two cents, they demonstrate terroir pretty clearly. Variations in climate, altitude, latitude, soil types – it all changes the way a wine tastes and smells, giving wines from certain areas the characteristics that define them. So, next time you’re at a party and someone brings a wine of the same variety as yours but from a different spot, do a little side-by-side sampling in the name of research. Tell ’em Uncle Dan said it was okay.
