Terroir Talks

00:00:00: [Music]

00:00:15: Welcome to Just Another Wine Podcast. Today you're joined by all three of us. I'm Emily Harman.

00:00:23: I'm Doug Greg and I'm Jamie Good. What are we talking about today, gents?

00:00:29: Today's topic is...

00:00:32: Terrible.

00:00:32: [Laughter]

00:00:34: 'Taste the place'.

00:00:35: Can we taste the place?

00:00:37: Why have you gone a bit pirated?

00:00:39: This is pirate radio.

00:00:42: We're broadcasting from a boat in the Thames Estuary apparently.

00:00:47: Yeah, this is a subject that particularly fascinates me and I'm sure fascinates you

00:00:53: and we can get all nerdy about it but let's get more nuts and bolts to begin with.

00:00:59: So I'm going to set a scenario or is it...

00:01:01: Just imagine yourself in a vineyard.

00:01:06: Let's say Shabli for the sake of the argument.

00:01:08: There's another vineyard just across the road.

00:01:11: I taste the grapes.

00:01:14: There doesn't seem to be any difference.

00:01:16: The vines are set up in the same way.

00:01:18: And what I put in my mouth and crunch into...

00:01:21: Two entirely different flavour profiles.

00:01:25: I think, what?

00:01:27: How does that happen?

00:01:29: I follow...

00:01:30: I go down the road to the winery itself and the winemaker is there and he has two tanks.

00:01:38: In one tank is wine from one of the vineyards and the other tank is wine from the other vineyard.

00:01:45: And this is the finished wine.

00:01:46: It's just before it's about to be bottled.

00:01:49: And I taste the wine again and they are incredibly different.

00:01:54: So what is going on here?

00:01:56: Even my uncultured palate can taste the difference.

00:01:59: How is it, I ask myself, that despite all the chemical and microbiological transformations

00:02:08: occurring during the winemaking process, that must surely alter the essential nature of the grapes

00:02:15: and the wine itself.

00:02:16: There are clear, clear differences between the wines.

00:02:19: And I wonder if we might innocently wonder, is this the result of terroir?

00:02:26: So perhaps we need a textbook definition of terroir just to get us rolling.

00:02:30: And of course we're going to qualify everything 100 times.

00:02:34: For me, terroir is all that defines the wine in and of itself.

00:02:39: Its identity, all the preconditions and causes and actions that make the wine what it is.

00:02:45: So we'll start with the macroclimate as it's called rather formally, but that's the sort of the climate of the wider region.

00:02:53: Maybe the Loire might be one or Northern Burgundy might be another.

00:02:57: And then we move slowly inwards towards the mesoclimate as it's known,

00:03:03: which is a reference to the specific vineyard in which the specific vineyard and the conditions in which that vineyard is set up.

00:03:14: And finally to microclimate, which is the immediate environment around the vineyard and even the grapevines itself.

00:03:21: And certain blocks of grapes.

00:03:25: Then we can be a bit more precise.

00:03:28: We can talk about terroir in terms of the altitude of the vines, the aspect or orientation of them.

00:03:34: In other words, which direction the vines are facing, the drainage, the plant life around the vines,

00:03:40: the soil life and soil type and the very bedrock underneath the vines themselves.

00:03:45: So it's from the sun to the soil, sole, soil.

00:03:50: Anyway, that is the basic.

00:03:52: That's the background, but surely we need to be able to put some more flesh on this so we can really understand why a wine tastes different from one vineyard to another.

00:04:05: And why is it that a lot of people revere terroir and talk about it casually?

00:04:15: Can we actually make it a bit more definite?

00:04:17: Jamie, what do you think?

00:04:19: This is such a big subject and it's kind of like the foundational theory that underpins fine wine as we know it.

00:04:27: Because we pay more from a wine that comes from a specific site than we would from a generic wine.

00:04:32: And there's so many ways of approaching that, but I think one way of approaching it is this idea that you see terroir and the differences between wines.

00:04:44: It's evident in the flavour differences in the wines, but the roots of that flavour difference

00:04:49: we're postulating are in the physical site of the vineyard.

00:04:52: So it's a combination of soils.

00:04:53: It's a combination of all the factors you mentioned, the physical site of the vineyard,

00:04:58: seen through the lens of a particular grape variety or grape varieties.

00:05:02: And you mentioned tasting the grapes.

00:05:04: Well, it's actually very interesting because I imagine that tasting terroir in grapes is quite difficult.

00:05:10: It's much more difficult than tasting it in a wine.

00:05:12: But evidently, what is present in what we're thinking about terroir is already present in those grapes.

00:05:18: It's revealed through the act of fermentation.

00:05:21: And so immediately it becomes apparent that there's a partnership between the wine grower and the place that results in a wine that has a signature of a place.

00:05:32: So there's a level of interpretation involved here.

00:05:36: And the way I like to look at it is this idea of music.

00:05:41: So I like music.

00:05:42: I love music.

00:05:43: I like playing guitar and I'm not very good singer.

00:05:45: I only sing when I'm drunk with friends.

00:05:49: I've heard you sing quite a bit.

00:05:53: But it's the idea that you take the places, the score or the chord sheet.

00:05:59: It's the song, it's a notation of the song, but it requires that somebody to play that song and sing it then to bring that song into reality.

00:06:08: And this is where the art of the wine grower is crucial because there's lots of things you can do that can obscure that message.

00:06:15: You can have noise and that kind of drowns out that beautiful signature of place.

00:06:21: And likewise you can have different interpretations of that same place that are equally valid.

00:06:27: So you could have wine growers working in the same vineyard producing versions of that vineyard that have capturing that place in a unique way,

00:06:36: but in a way that really captures that place.

00:06:39: But it's different from the neighboring vineyard and the neighboring vineyard.

00:06:43: And so this is where it becomes very interesting and very complicated.

00:06:47: It's this idea of tuning a radio, the old radios, where you get a signal and oh, I'm recognizing a signal.

00:06:57: And then you tune it a bit more to get that signal in tune.

00:07:00: So I remember going on camping holidays to France and Spain.

00:07:03: I used to listen to Tessamore Special, it's on Longwave 198, a radio for Longwave.

00:07:09: And you could kind of, Longwave meant you could pick it up just but in the north of France, not in the south of France.

00:07:15: I used to love when we got back into range and just trying to find that signal on the radio.

00:07:20: I guess it's like that when you make a wine from a site, you recognize that site's got characters.

00:07:24: Obviously using the lens of a different variety, you know, specific variety or groups of varieties to show that signal.

00:07:32: And you then fine tune it so you adapt your wine making approach or your picking day to whatever to what you think shows that terroir most clearly.

00:07:43: So terroir is almost an intuitive relationship between the vineyard, who's like the more the conductor in this scenario.

00:07:50: And unique nature of the land, the vineyard, but in this case understanding what needs to be done each year.

00:08:00: So terroir is not necessarily a constant, it is like a song, but it changes according to every vintage because the circumstances.

00:08:08: Yeah, I think it's a great description, a continual conversation between the vineyard and the vineyard.

00:08:14: Emily, what are your thoughts?

00:08:16: I'm glad you said that Jamie, I was hoping you were going to say that anyway.

00:08:20: Because I think the human factors, not usually spoken about, I think there's a lot of light shone on soil being one of the kind of key factors in terroir.

00:08:29: And we obviously think we probably all agree on the fact that soil does play a really important role in the final wine.

00:08:37: But just even thinking about the soil health in which the vine is growing in, that's very dependent on the decisions that that person makes.

00:08:45: What is the life in that soil doing? What's the mineral uptake going to be from that vine because of the decisions of the person who is the steward of that parcel of land?

00:08:55: The thoughts, I feel like you two have both encapsulated the definition of terroir quite concretely.

00:09:03: But I think the question that I have for both of you is, what do you think is the most relevant or let's say important factor of all the, like all of the little inputs that create this idea of terroir.

00:09:20: So we talk about soil, we talk about weather, we talk about climate, we talk about great variety.

00:09:25: We talk about the human factor. We also can also talk a little bit about cultural heritage as well, traditions in the place also impact that final wine and the story of that wine and what we end up experiencing.

00:09:38: Do you think there's one factor that is most significant or that stands out the most as the most impactful?

00:09:44: Well, as Jamie said, I think the choices of the vineyards and their hundreds and hundreds over the growing season, you know, like months and months, the human factor is really important.

00:09:55: For me, the nature of the quality of farming, because ultimately we're growing grapes, the connection between the vine and the soil, you know, the encouraging root systems to delve deep and, you know, pick up minerals.

00:10:13: Pick up yeasts. And then I think, of course, terroir can be undone like anything. It can be undone by clunky farming, bad wine making, overuse of chemicals, overuse of inological tropes.

00:10:30: I'm not saying that you can't make terroir without interventions. Interventions are necessary. They're constant and physical. But again, it comes back to engaging with the wine and tasting the wine and understanding the true voice of the wine.

00:10:48: I think the more you try to manipulate the wine, then the further away you get from that expression of singularity, which is what terroir is, it's not the same. The wine is never the same two years running, which shouldn't be otherwise than you've sacrificed that the voice of the vineyard.

00:11:07: Jamie.

00:11:08: I think I'd say all in all, it's the soil that's the most important, because I think there's, you know, when you travel the world, you see, you see the site differences between two sites that are adjacent to each other.

00:11:22: And when we talk about climate, obviously, a vine never sees a climate. The climate's an average. The vine sees weather of the year. And where you have consistent site signatures showing up in the wine, year after year, whether the climate or the weather has been quite different across those different years,

00:11:42: then you're saying that it's something that's more permanent than climate, that's conveying this local character to the wines. And as I've studied by Uli Fischer, who's at Neustadt in Germany, he's a researcher, and he looked at terroir in Riesling, and he did lots of vineyard sites, and then did these spider plots of the sensory work from there.

00:12:03: And what he showed is that, that, that, compare for instance, Moselle and Rinehessen, quite different wine regions. But in the Moselle, you've got one site with red clay soils, Ertzic, a Wirtz garden.

00:12:16: And then Rinehessen, most of that is red clay. And the flavor signature of the Riesling were so similar, and those two sites where they're quite far apart, very different climates.

00:12:25: But the Riesling had a similar flavor signature when you did the sensory work, which the logical explanation of that is that the soil type is shaping something.

00:12:36: Indirectly, obviously, it's not the translocation of soil elements to the grapes, it's then causing the wines to have different flavor.

00:12:42: But it's shaping the way those grapes develop, and this sort of flavor precursors, they accumulate, indirectly, maybe through altering gene expression or something,

00:12:51: that is giving you a similarity between sites that have the same soil but different climates. And for me, that's very interesting.

00:12:59: But isn't Erwara even more subtle? I mean, if microclimate is the climate around almost an individual vine, then the nuances can be incredible.

00:13:09: The nuances can be incredible, but they won't be consistent across years, because you see that there'll be a different weather each year.

00:13:16: So the safer instance, you've got two sites that are adjacent, and they produce quite different wines, like in Burgundy.

00:13:22: That parcelation in Burgundy is remarkable. You can see it's 1247 climates.

00:13:27: If you had a village-level site that you could give care and attention to, so it would produce a wine that's equivalent to a ground crew,

00:13:40: you would do that, and people do that, and they can't. Occasionally you get Premier crews that are better than ground crews,

00:13:46: occasionally you get Village-level wines better than Premier crews.

00:13:50: But through history, these climates of climates have maintained their position.

00:13:57: So where you're seeing small differences or small geographic areas,

00:14:04: then the differences in microclimate that the grapes are seeing will vary more from one season to another,

00:14:13: than from one site to another. So it suggests that it's actually the physical thing in the site that's the same every year,

00:14:21: is going to be the more dominant feature.

00:14:24: When I was doing a harvest at Commando G in 2018 with Danny and Fair,

00:14:30: it was quite interesting because we did blind wines every night, which is quite common when you do harvest.

00:14:35: I mean, you guys have done harvest, right, like at the end when you have dinner.

00:14:38: And the guys were really focused on every time that we tried blind wines,

00:14:43: that we had to guess the soil that the wine, like the wine we were trying was coming from.

00:14:49: And that was the first time I'd really looked at blind wine, like blind wine tasting that way.

00:14:56: At first I was like, wow, this is a bit abstract.

00:15:00: But actually, it was a really great tool to start focusing on soil expression in the wine,

00:15:06: because once you can grasp that, or at least attempt to grasp it,

00:15:11: it gets much easier to start guessing where wines come from.

00:15:14: So then once you know what a volcanic soil tastes like, or how it expresses itself in the final wine,

00:15:20: then you can be like, OK, this limits this to these geographical places.

00:15:25: What's it probably made from? What's the alcohol showing itself to be?

00:15:31: What's the acidity showing itself to be? What's the ripeness of the grapes?

00:15:35: And then it becomes a kind of a different approach of like getting to the end result,

00:15:40: which you hoped for with blind wine, which, you know, I'm very humbled to say that doesn't always happen very often.

00:15:47: But like, at least you can strive for it.

00:15:49: And I think the growers kind of intuitively understand that, that the importance of the soil

00:15:54: and how it really expresses this sense of place that you can taste the origin, if you like, in the final wine.

00:16:02: And I think sometimes, at least with my sommelier background,

00:16:06: that's not really how I thought wine tasting in my early days of my career was really like,

00:16:12: guess what the grape is? Think about it from a winemaking perspective, which was kind of a backwards view on it.

00:16:18: Wasn't there a period of time, I seem to remember working in restaurants as well,

00:16:22: when terroir became almost unfashionable as a concept, when the embracing of the varietalisation, as I called it,

00:16:30: that the variety was the signature and terroir was irrelevant, terroir was just soil, ground, earth, you know,

00:16:37: anyone can plant a vine in earth. And yet it's extraordinary when you taste a wine blind, as you said Emily,

00:16:44: that you can detect the adjectives you use to describe the wine are granitic, salty, volcanic.

00:16:57: And it's not as if you're not working back from knowing the terroir, that's what you automatically imagine or taste in your mind's eye.

00:17:08: And then it turns out to be true. So how is it, what is being transported Jamie in these sort of flavours, these flavour impressions?

00:17:18: Why does wine taste volcanic? Why does it taste granitic? Presumably that means terroir exists for these singular distinctions to take place.

00:17:29: I think we have to think about where does the flavour of wine come from. So evidently, when you harvest grapes, the flavour of the wine is going to be,

00:17:42: from that point onwards, what is in those grapes or maybe in the stems as well, because if you've got a whole bunch component,

00:17:50: then you've got the stems in the mix as well, so everything's going to come from there.

00:17:54: So in the grapes you've got some components, flavour components that make it through fermentation and then they're going to be present in the wine.

00:18:07: So there's relatively few of those flavour components that go all the way through to methoxyparasins would be a good example.

00:18:13: They're present in the grapes and you taste them in the wine.

00:18:16: Then you've got precursors present in the grapes that are then transformed by the yeast during fermentation and also the myelactic bacteria, if myelactic fermentation takes place.

00:18:28: And those components change form or so you can have precursors that like the precursors to the polyfunctional thials that give that that sort of passion fruit and grapefruit

00:18:41: and sort of elderflower character to to soviens blanc for instance.

00:18:46: Those are precursors present in the grapes that don't taste, but they're transformed by the yeast and suddenly they become aroma compounds.

00:18:52: So you've got those two elements.

00:18:54: Then you've got obviously acids which change during fermentation a bit as well, but largely what's present in the grapes.

00:19:04: Then you've got components that flavour components that are produced entirely by the yeast, the activity of the yeast and of course the bacteria.

00:19:13: So those are manufactured de novo.

00:19:17: So effectively what you're seeing there is you're seeing the the the must as a growth medium for microbes.

00:19:24: So you change the characteristics of the must that will change how the microbes grow and it will change the sort of components the microbes produce.

00:19:32: I think it's really interesting.

00:19:33: So you've got these three different elements.

00:19:35: So the grape derived flavour compounds, the grape precursors that are transformed by the microbes and then the stuff the microbes make.

00:19:42: And so in some ways what Terrell is doing is it's producing great composition, bearing in mind these three different components and also very importantly producing a medium for growth for microbes that then will cause the production of a range of different flavour compounds.

00:20:00: And so it's very indirect in that sense.

00:20:02: But so when we're looking at terroir, what we're looking at is we're looking at how the site characteristics influence the production of these different compounds.

00:20:13: And then of course you've got the microbes and another question is where do the microbes come from?

00:20:19: Are you using microbes that are present in the vineyard come in on the grapes or are you adding them inoculating?

00:20:26: And so this is all very interesting.

00:20:28: It's all different sort of layers of and then of course we have flavour compounds that come from the process of alivage and largely they would be like oak derived compounds when you use oak.

00:20:38: You might have some compounds that come from say for instance if you use terracotta, there may be some flavour compounds in the terracotta.

00:20:46: I don't think it's completely neutral.

00:20:48: But all these things together produce the final wine.

00:20:50: And I think it's really interesting the question is how much is that signal degraded or amplified during that wine making process.

00:21:01: And I think a really skilled wine maker looks to amplify their local signature.

00:21:06: But clumsy wine making, you know, picking too late or even picking too early doesn't allow the terroir signature to come through strongly.

00:21:18: And obviously if you do all sorts of things like if you adjust the must or if you acidify or if you don't have cleanliness during your fermentation process, you get some wine faults developing or you have, you know, maybe a heavy handed approach with oak,

00:21:35: then you're producing things you're introducing elements that maybe degrade that signal.

00:21:40: So to classic sort of big international red wine at 15% alcohol, 100% new oak, 29 bricks, you know, harvest, that sort of thing is just, this doesn't matter where it comes from.

00:21:53: We've really just completely lost any sense of place whatsoever.

00:21:57: It's that tightrope though, isn't it, of trying to amplify or express terroir, but equally doing the work to not obscure it.

00:22:06: Finding that balance.

00:22:08: But don't you think a lot of growers, they want to vaunt their terroir, whether they've expressed it admirably or not within the wine.

00:22:17: But then, Jamie, you're talking about almost like the must or the eventual grape juice, the wine, almost in an objective way.

00:22:26: What about the subjective side is like people taste terroir differently in different wines.

00:22:34: The first impression is, yeah, that's got tremendous minerality.

00:22:38: It's a beautiful expression of terroir.

00:22:40: Some probably don't taste that at all.

00:22:42: They taste more the extraneous factors like the the the elevage of the wine or the variety or whatever.

00:22:51: So for me, terroir is like there's a certain imponderable element of the whole thing.

00:22:56: You get, you know when it's there or you sense when it's there, but you can't quite define it because it's this uniform,

00:23:03: it's unifying all the elements so they're in harmony rather than certain elements standing out out much more than others.

00:23:13: Unless you believe that you are tasting granite and you are tasting volcanic soils.

00:23:21: Is that possible?

00:23:22: Can we be tasting these particular elements within the wine?

00:23:28: Well, I would say that when we say we're tasting granite, we're saying we're tasting the impact of granite on wine flavour,

00:23:37: not tasting granite itself.

00:23:39: And I think granitic soils are very interesting because I think they often give, I would say they give kind of bright,

00:23:44: focused fruit flavours.

00:23:46: There's almost like a linear quality to granitic wines,

00:23:51: where it's just for instance, much broader flavours, the way you feel it in the mouth.

00:23:57: I wouldn't say I was tasting a schist or I was tasting granite.

00:24:01: You must, Emily, you must feel this having worked at Commando G and heard Danny and Fer talk about there's not just granite,

00:24:10: it's granite with quartz or granite on sand.

00:24:13: But for them granite is all about verticality in the mouth, you know, it's lifted,

00:24:18: whereas schist is like and volcanic is sort of broader, you know, broader.

00:24:24: It describes like a sort of richer, broader, warmer shape.

00:24:28: Limestone is another soil that they say is, you know, it gives the same properties as granite or, you know,

00:24:38: that verticality or linear, actually linear dimension to the wines.

00:24:43: What do you think?

00:24:44: Yeah, I mean, I always find wines on limestone to have almost like, I think of it a little bit like a firework.

00:24:50: That vertical expression that you describe, but then this kind of almost like melting sensation at the end,

00:24:57: you know, like when a firework fizzles out.

00:25:00: Whereas if I was to compare that to wines that I have tried from volcanic soils, I find them to be very uncompromising.

00:25:09: Like a perception of freshness that I don't find necessarily in other wines that starts from the beginning.

00:25:17: It's almost like a wave coming in, a very large wave that literally breaks and powers through from the break all the way to the coast.

00:25:27: And then with that sort of added saltiness, smokiness, savoury quality that you get,

00:25:34: at least the eye perceive in volcanic wines.

00:25:37: And I agree with Jamie on that delicacy, that lifted delicacy and that brightness and, yeah,

00:25:44: like a lifted perfume that I find in granite wines and, yeah, I mean, especially grade us for a number of reasons like that.

00:25:53: It's a very special combination of factors that make those wines that are full-bodied wines ethereal, you know, like it's very beautiful.

00:26:03: But yeah, I think it's something that, again, we don't talk about enough as sommeliers, right?

00:26:10: I haven't had many of these conversations with psalms. It's always with winemakers or nerds like you two.

00:26:17: But I think for me, this was part of the wine course that I ran this year, was really getting people to blind taste wine,

00:26:25: introduce the concepts of how you might perceive a certain soil in the expression of the final wine,

00:26:32: and then getting them to taste the wines blind, different soils, but with the same grapes, for example,

00:26:37: and then seeing if somebody could perceive any nuance or difference or this soil expression.

00:26:43: And, you know, this was with people that had just done the WSTT level three, weren't necessarily working in wine roles,

00:26:49: but working in F&B roles. And actually, again, it's only anecdotal from my own very limited survey on that.

00:26:57: But like people can grasp that concept quite quickly, actually, and guess quite accurately.

00:27:03: So I think there's something also quite intuitive about thinking about wine.

00:27:08: Yeah, intuitive and associative. I mean, yeah, if you think about it, yes, we're interested in the nuts and bolts,

00:27:13: how the wine works, you know, in a sort of clockwork way. But actually, when we taste, we close our eyes and we're transported to a place,

00:27:20: and we allow sensory impressions to wash over our palate.

00:27:25: And I think then we experience wine at a sort of maybe a deeper level, perhaps a more rarefied level, I don't know.

00:27:32: But we're not sort of analyzing too much. But then when we unpick the wine, and actually here, I would sort of like do a bit of unpicking

00:27:41: and just ask Jamie a couple of sort of tech questions. Stay tuned.

00:27:46: One is pH of soils and pH of wine. Does this help? Is this precursor towards, from mineral expression in wines?

00:27:55: Does it enhance our appreciation? Low pH? Is it good?

00:28:01: That's a good question. I mean, we're looking at sort of granitic soils tend to be higher pH and obviously limestone soils tend to be lower pH,

00:28:08: but they both make very interesting soils and very interesting wines, you know.

00:28:11: So I think that that's maybe too much of a simplistic sort of dial down.

00:28:17: I would say, though, one thing is that, you know, there's these two things that fascinate me about Teowel.

00:28:24: One is this idea that not all sites are created equal. So some sites are really good for growing wine groups that make fantastic wines.

00:28:32: Yeah, some sites like, yeah, it makes a perfectly good table wine aquafo, but it's not going to make something interesting and profound.

00:28:39: So we have Teowel on one level, which is about the potential ceiling for quality from a particular site.

00:28:45: Then we have the other sense of Teowel is like, can you recognize the place in the wine? And that's fascinating.

00:28:50: me as a geek. I don't necessarily want a wine to taste great, just for it to taste honestly

00:28:55: of its place. And it's like, I can't appreciate. Now, I don't want to taste the perfect wine

00:29:00: every time. I want to taste wines that sometimes challenge me a little, that are different.

00:29:06: And so on one level, we've got terroir as a potential, you know, to say, well, maybe

00:29:12: the great thing about this terroir is it gives me a wine of a certain quality that I might

00:29:16: blend with another wine of a certain quality and end up with something very, very high end.

00:29:20: You can't dial down from that wine to site because in sense that site has been lost from

00:29:24: blending. It doesn't mean that blending wines means that terroir doesn't matter because

00:29:29: you need to do good terroir to make good blending components. And then the other level is that

00:29:34: sort of passillation where we really like to try something. And you know, if you're

00:29:39: a wine grout, it must be fascinating to know that that corner of your vineyard gives you

00:29:43: something very different to this. Even if you blend them together, you know, you taste

00:29:46: that difference reproducibly over the years. And then that also brings together this sort

00:29:51: of notion of scale. So you could say, well, I recognize, you know, New Zealand Pinot Noir,

00:29:56: I recognize this, you know, you could say on a good day with a with a favorite wind, you

00:30:01: could probably set with a table of New Zealand Pinot Noir and maybe with 70% accuracy allocate

00:30:07: the Pinot Noir to Central and Targo, Martinborough or Marlborough or North Canterbury. You know,

00:30:13: if you know a bit about New Zealand Pinot Noir, you know, obviously not 100%, I don't

00:30:17: think anyone would do that. Fakers, I mean. But no, there's a one level is a scale or

00:30:24: you might say, well, this is a Californian Chardonnay. And this is Burgundy Chardonnay.

00:30:29: You might do this. So that's the whole sort of pan regional sort of scale as well. But

00:30:33: then you've got the within one vineyard looking at the different sites and different plots.

00:30:38: So you've got this terroir operating at multiple scales, which I think is also quite interesting

00:30:42: as well.

00:30:43: Yeah, I've got a couple of observations. One is that obviously in some regions, these

00:30:50: vineyards have been mapped for 1000, sometimes even 2000 years. So Clotivine Domaine, which

00:30:58: was planted by the monks from Abia Cluny in 910, supposedly, when they actually did did

00:31:06: analysis of the like, like they sent up a drone to look at it, the Romans were making

00:31:12: wine there, planting vineyards had planted vineyards there 1000 years previously. So

00:31:17: there's something sacred about the vineyard site. Now flip that over. Someone who planted

00:31:23: vines in a place that they really like, maybe five, 10 years ago, which has no reputation

00:31:30: for vine growing particularly, but it's just a great place with really nice soils and lovely

00:31:35: climate like Vermont for the sake of argument. Can great wines, can terroir establish itself

00:31:43: in the wine in a really short space of time is my question to you both.

00:31:47: I think we need a glass of wine for that.

00:31:49: I think we've got the wine that may help us to think about that question. So I just open

00:31:55: it.

00:31:56: That was a genuine sound. So this is, this is let me pour a few. This is from a wine grower

00:32:03: in South Africa called Saki Luton. And the wine itself comes from a region called Olifant

00:32:14: Sereviere, which is also referred to as it's, it's like it's a larger region. It's got things

00:32:20: like scurffberg, an informal name for it, sister's dahl, even pecanese.

00:32:24: Cedarburg is in Olifant Sereviere. So this is a column bar, 2023. And it's called a

00:32:33: Vludvlak, from Saki Luton. And think about column bar is this, that these vines originally

00:32:41: planted, they're on a sort of like, I've got the term for the soils, they're not silty

00:32:50: soils.

00:32:51: Silty soils and sandstone.

00:32:52: And the cover, the label of the wine shows when the vineyard was flooded one year. And

00:32:59: anyway, so the thing is, these, these can produce heroic yields in like, we're talking

00:33:04: like 30, 40 tons a hectare, you know, they're planted for brandy production back in the

00:33:10: day. So column bar was chosen.

00:33:11: It's one of the first grapes that was planted because they wanted to make lots of brandy,

00:33:15: so the brandy coke. And they thought that, you know, that this is, but obviously what

00:33:22: Saki Luton's doing is taking these vineyards, planting are quite interesting soils. And

00:33:26: along with, you know, all the people in Swatland and everything where again, the story there

00:33:29: was it's about food production for brandy.

00:33:33: People starting to farm these soils with the varieties that are in place is the lens to

00:33:37: show them through. And column bars, not a very distinguished variety, with a view to

00:33:42: seeing what sort of terroir can be established, what sort of place can be established. And

00:33:48: obviously, I think we see with Evan Sadi's old vine series, you know, exploring different

00:33:52: terroirs in the Western Cape. And there's some incredible wines coming out of that because

00:33:57: it's a sensitive winemaking. It's listening to the site. It's farming well. And then producing

00:34:04: something really interesting. And I think that's very exciting. So you don't need a thousand

00:34:09: years necessarily, but it's like recognizing places and then almost developing terroir.

00:34:14: So I haven't tried this wine for a while, but there are not a lot of neglected grape

00:34:19: varieties. Columbard is one. Pelorameneth, I guess is another one in South Africa. But

00:34:26: also, you know, when it was fortified in Spain, well, you don't need good grapes. But imagine

00:34:32: you had old vines and you made a dry wine. It's fascinating.

00:34:36: Well, the sherry story is fantastic. The modern story of making unfortified phenos basically

00:34:41: biology creates sherrys. As back in the day, pheno would have been unfortified. So what

00:34:48: they do is they pick the grapes. And this is before big sherry took over in the 70s expanded

00:34:52: the vineyard area. There was these wines of terroir. The pago was important. The wines

00:34:56: were made on the pago. People would bring the grapes, they'd lay them out for a saleo

00:35:01: for one day to get the alcohol, potential alcohol up to 15 because that supports floor

00:35:06: growth better. And then they'd just press them, make a barrel of wine. Then when the

00:35:12: wine had fermented, they'd take it down to Herat or to San Luca. And then this is the

00:35:18: interesting one is that you've got this idea of the second terroir because the badigas

00:35:22: were effectively the second terroir. Yes. The characteristics of the badiga would then

00:35:26: influence the layer of floor that grew on the top. So it's effectively a place that's

00:35:32: influencing the character of the wine. So vineyards are important. You know, the vineyards

00:35:36: there now, people are differentiating amongst the vineyards and six different types of

00:35:40: alvarito. And that's kind of cool, I think. This idea of terroir being rediscovered and

00:35:50: also this idea of two terroirs. And that brings into another question and this is making terroir

00:35:56: very complicated, I know, but it's like the idea that local practice can be part of terroir,

00:36:02: where that practice is shared amongst all the growers of a place. It helps to shape a

00:36:05: wine of place. So you can say immediately this wine comes, I recognise where this comes

00:36:10: from. And part of that character might come from the way that the people tend to work.

00:36:17: And they might share that way of working, but then produces a level of similarity amongst

00:36:22: all their wines that could be described as terroir. Like the oxidative wines of the Jura.

00:36:27: Yes, that's true. I've got a little vignette about, I visited some grows in Styria and

00:36:33: I noticed they all had Covevery, George and Clay Potts and other amphora, receptacles.

00:36:40: And they were, in each one of them was a cactus or pot plant, a similar pot plant. I said,

00:36:46: why aren't you using them? I said, well, it's not part of the terroir. The terroir is Austrian

00:36:51: wood, oak, and it holds the wine and it imbues it with the terroir that, you know, whatever.

00:36:59: It's like, it's just a natural match. And when we used these, we felt they were alien

00:37:05: to the wine. And I understand that, you know, the sense of place is everything that goes

00:37:11: in. And yeah, the winery is very important, component of terroir, another small story.

00:37:17: We visited Emilio Dalgo and we said, so the, your old vines.

00:37:20: Does Sherry produce there for those of you who are?

00:37:23: Yes, Sherry produced it in Haaret and said, he said, you on like, whatever, Alburita soils.

00:37:31: He said, the terroir here is the north facing wall. And he said, like that barrel on the

00:37:37: north facing wall, now it's to taste one of the sort of south facing wall. They're totally

00:37:42: different. You know, this biological aging sort of, you know, this transformation that

00:37:46: goes on. And yes, the terroir is like the point of difference, as we said. And of course,

00:37:52: we mainly think about it in terms of the vineyard and the farming, but it can also be in the

00:37:58: production process when it's a natural cultural production process.

00:38:03: I mean, imagine an old barrel, like an old barrel that's even been used for Van Joan or

00:38:08: for Sherry, like what's living in that barrel and impacting the flavor and how that like

00:38:13: the whole process of just the vessel itself. Yes.

00:38:16: The journey of the vessel.

00:38:17: I heard this story with Ghanava and I'm not sure it's true, it's probably one of those

00:38:20: apocryphal stories. And you know that he has a Nagosian business, which he runs with his

00:38:26: sister. And, you know, they make a lot of different wines, whites and reds. And then

00:38:31: if you taste the domain wines and then you taste the Nagos wines, you think that's extraordinary.

00:38:36: They taste almost identical. The Nagos wines can be from all over the place. They can be

00:38:40: from Beaujolais. They can be from Alsace, from the Rhône. And the story is that Ghanava

00:38:45: said, smiled when someone said that his Gronach from the southern Rhône tasted like Poussar.

00:38:51: And he said, well, it's been a fight with the Ghanava yeast. Like the yeast that had

00:38:56: been in the winery, you know, extraordinary number of different yeasts sort of working

00:39:01: out in the wine, transforming any wine that was made in that winery into Poussar. It's

00:39:08: a red wine and presumably, I don't know, Chardonnay topped up for a white wine. Extraordinary,

00:39:14: like when you taste them side by side. Yes, of course, there are nuances, but there's

00:39:18: a signature of the of the winemaker and not a heavy handed signature just of the winery,

00:39:25: Lin.

00:39:26: And what do we think of this? Yeah, you're going to ask the same question. Yeah, this

00:39:29: wine.

00:39:30: What do you think of the Columba?

00:39:31: I think this is a wine that has a lot of personality and it's got this saline twist

00:39:35: I really like. It's fresh. It's linear. It's pithy as well. Yeah. It's brightly citrusy,

00:39:44: green apple.

00:39:45: I like that it's all of that, but there's still some concentration to it as well that's

00:39:48: unexpected, at least from my perspective in Columba, but there's some texture there because

00:39:54: I think often there can be the assumption that it's just kind of very acidic, light,

00:39:58: very neutral, but this character.

00:40:00: Columba can make sweet sour sort of styles. I mean, acidity is really high, I think, in

00:40:04: this, but actually, as Emily said, in the mouth, there's texture, which is also, I think,

00:40:10: what you're looking for in terroir. If a wine was just a line of acidity or just anan or

00:40:15: whatever, it would be pretty boring, wouldn't it? I mean, it'd be sort of one note. Whereas

00:40:20: a wine which has, which, what Jamie called salinity or saltiness, which makes you, you

00:40:27: know, sort of want to almost chew it a little bit just to sort of get the most out of that's

00:40:32: a really intriguing wine, I think. And actually, which brings me on slightly to skin contact

00:40:37: wines because one of the accusations leveled against that style of wine making is that

00:40:42: it obfuscates the expression of terroir, what do you think, in examples of skin contact

00:40:48: wines that you've tried?

00:40:50: I think we haven't had enough access to trying, like, skin contact wine to actually be able

00:40:55: to answer that properly because until every producer that we're trying white wine from

00:41:00: is making an orange wine, how can we actually comment on that? Because I think it probably

00:41:04: does, but it's a different expression.

00:41:07: I think I agree completely. I think it's our lack of experience because we have no problem

00:41:12: in describing terroir to skin contact reds, skin fermented reds. It's just that with skin

00:41:18: fermented whites, you know, skin fermented reds come in a wide diversity in styles, so

00:41:23: just skin fermented whites.

00:41:24: To quote Disney, a whole new world.

00:41:26: It's a whole new world.

00:41:27: I'm going to sing it for us.

00:41:28: No, I'm saying that for you after we open the second bottle.

00:41:32: We'll not my rendition be a good interpretation of a whole new world or will it be a flawed

00:41:40: interpretation?

00:41:45: So now I think that it's almost like a land grab, isn't it? You know, it's like the Wild

00:41:54: West. People are going in there and doing lots of things with skin fermentation and

00:42:02: learning what works and what doesn't work.

00:42:06: The stylistic diversity is huge and that's a big hurdle to mount, but I think there's

00:42:11: no reason to think that in 15 years time, 20 years time, there'll be a much clearer understanding

00:42:17: of what terroir looks like through the lens of skin fermentation in whites.

00:42:25: Do you think it may be also to do with the fact we're not, I mean, we are relatively

00:42:30: experienced, but that a lot of people are not experienced in tasting the skin contact

00:42:34: wines and perhaps too hung up on Tannen or Phenolics and they can't get past this sort

00:42:41: of block of texture.

00:42:43: But actually it is in the texture that the terroir neurosis will present themselves, but

00:42:47: they'll do it in a completely different way than to like a straight pressed wine.

00:42:53: We just need more people to concentrate on making skin fermented whites and then.

00:42:59: More people to taste them.

00:43:00: Yeah. Maybe we should try to see if we can spot terroir in a skin fermented red.

00:43:04: Yes.

00:43:05: My favorite type of red is skin fermented by the way.

00:43:08: Can I open it up? The duck bought this wine.

00:43:10: I did and you may.

00:43:12: And it's Kelly Fox, Marshmignard Pino 22.

00:43:15: Yes. And there's even within Marshmignard there are rows of lines and bits of natural

00:43:23: information.

00:43:24: So this is golden crowned sparrow block because I believe that when she is harvesting or spending

00:43:34: time in her favorite vineyard, these like little critters are jumping away.

00:43:39: There's a beautiful story on the back about how she hears a bird singing in a tree and

00:43:44: looks up and then sees these sparrows.

00:43:47: Lovely. This looks good from the start.

00:43:52: Just drop a drop of it on your very white page there, Jamie.

00:43:56: Okay. In the middle of that.

00:43:57: This is a weird thing to say, but it just curds me. Sometimes I look at a wine and it's sort

00:44:02: of like clear and transparent and yet it's not filtered in any way.

00:44:08: But there's a sense of the wine even before I smell it and taste it that it's going to

00:44:14: be delicious.

00:44:15: It's really inviting.

00:44:17: It's probably because I think there's like the wine is true to itself.

00:44:20: It looks like a real wine.

00:44:22: And it's a quite indefinable thing to say.

00:44:26: You know, you're talking about properties within the wine, which are inside the wine,

00:44:30: not external.

00:44:31: Can we talk about Kelly Fox for a second and how magical she is as a human being for

00:44:35: anybody that might not have ever had the lucky chance to meet her or taste her wines?

00:44:40: Well, she's listening to this. She can blush now.

00:44:42: You won't blush, Kelly.

00:44:44: Yes. So she's a female vigneron who's worked at various wineries before she lighted on

00:44:54: her own project, Kelly Fox wines in Oregon. And Oregon, I would say is like the epicenter

00:45:03: of organic and bio-dynamic farming.

00:45:05: And she's very much, you know, a fishnado that style of wines, but not just for the

00:45:12: sake of it, not just to say that she's working in that way.

00:45:15: But I think she sees herself as a midwife, if I can use that word, for terroir.

00:45:21: She wants to express the soul, the spirit of the vineyard in the wine. And for her,

00:45:28: Pinot Noir is the great, great for doing that. It's a great way.

00:45:33: To interrupt, do you think there are some great varieties that are better at Chang-Toe

00:45:36: wine than others?

00:45:38: Very good question. I mean, I would say, you know, we've talked about Comanergy previously

00:45:43: and their contention is that Gunnacha in Greidos is the Pinot Noir of Spain. It has

00:45:50: this, it's articulate. It shows nuances.

00:45:55: With some other great varieties, yes, they show terroir, but maybe Syrah-Syrrahs is a

00:46:02: much more impactful, straight thing. Maybe it doesn't have layers like this. Maybe it

00:46:07: has a gripping minerality. And these wines are warmth and an openness and a sort of,

00:46:15: what's the word, seductability? That's not a word.

00:46:19: Yeah, or I think a transparency. But I don't know, I want to question that a little bit

00:46:26: because I think maybe we're a bit biased because of the kind of wines we like to drink. Are

00:46:30: these lighter styles? And I wonder as well, like we've talked about this definitely before,

00:46:37: the idea of better grape varieties, right? Like, I think as I go on more and more, I'm

00:46:43: trying more grapes. I'm trying grapes that I really didn't like. And then all of a sudden

00:46:46: I try one produce and I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty good. So is it just that some

00:46:51: grapes, we haven't quite worked out how to make them shine or for them to be able to

00:46:56: showcase it? I don't know.

00:46:58: But we're allowed to have preferences. And that's the thing. But actually, let's talk

00:47:03: about maybe girlfriends like, off track.

00:47:08: We want to get you back to Kelly though.

00:47:09: Okay, I'll get you.

00:47:10: Go be back.

00:47:11: Maybe stick with Kelly before you forget exactly what you're doing.

00:47:13: So Kelly's wines, for me, they have really good energy. And by good energy, I don't want

00:47:19: to go down that road. But but I feel they're like medicinal in the best sense nourishing.

00:47:24: They make me feel good about myself and about wine in general, because they come from a

00:47:29: deep place, a beautiful place, obviously a place that she feels impelled to talk about

00:47:35: the song of the sparrows that sort of inspires her love of nature comes through the wines

00:47:41: taste natural, not in the sense they're natural wines, but naturally from a very specific place

00:47:46: that she cares about. So her hand is very the way she touches the wine. I've seen her

00:47:52: work in the vineyards very briefly. And, you know, she sings to the vine so he touches

00:47:57: them in a very soft way. And the way she makes the wines is very gentle. You know, it's not

00:48:02: about pushing or scrunching or doing like a lot of things to manipulate the wine. It's

00:48:09: about what would leave the grapes like almost naked, like as if they perfectly expressed

00:48:15: this vintage, this block of Pino vines, this environment of nature that surrounds this

00:48:23: particular block. How can I capture it without putting my personality into the wine itself?

00:48:30: Of course, you can have it not do that. Your personality is always is in the wine because

00:48:35: it's the choices you make during the growing and the elevage. But I think she so respects

00:48:42: nature. She so takes a step away from process that it comes through really eloquently in

00:48:50: a wine. So if you taste them blind, I would submit there's something that it's Kelly at

00:48:56: this vineyard, Marsh and Oregon, you know, it's all these things and volcanic. Yeah,

00:49:02: she has it. She has it. This is a beautiful wine. I'm really enjoying this. I think it's

00:49:07: got it's got silkiness, it's got finesse, but it's got this bloody iron sort of savory

00:49:14: twist that really throws into relief that beautiful, sweet, silky fruit. And there's

00:49:19: a lightness, but also presence. It's like, it's quite profound. I think this is one of

00:49:24: the best Oregon Pino's I've tried. I think it's got a real beauty to it. And me too.

00:49:30: And this is an intelligent interpretation of place. It doesn't require us to be able

00:49:34: to drill down blind to a site, you know, because obviously the things we all have limited experience.

00:49:41: You know, for that sense of place to be authentic only requires one person in the world to actually

00:49:46: reliably recognize that sense of place. Somebody who's very closely connected with that place

00:49:50: could probably do that. And so just one person can do it's true. And for the rest of us,

00:49:56: we almost like our sense of terroir is an act of trust. We trust that the wine grower

00:50:02: is producing something that's true to its place. And we partake in this. And we were

00:50:07: talking about this. You talked something early on, Doug, you mentioned something that I thought

00:50:11: was quite profound. It's about the actual, the person tasting this, our perception as

00:50:16: well is very important in this. And it's almost like we're doing something, you know, terroir

00:50:22: is we said only present when it's interpreted by wine grower, but it's also only present

00:50:27: when it's interpreted by a taster as well. And as we come to taste, it's almost like

00:50:31: this, this sense that we're improvising around the characters in the glass, we're, we're

00:50:37: doing some of the work here. When we taste thoughtfully and mindfully, we're doing some

00:50:42: of the work in terms of ascribing place to this wine. And that's really interesting for

00:50:47: me this sort of the sense that we participate in tasting, because it's perfectly possible

00:50:50: for somebody to take this and just drink it off red wine. But it's, no, it's, we will

00:50:56: have a different experience of this one, depending on our expectations, depending on our investment

00:51:01: in, in discovering that place and that character.

00:51:05: I think the word investment in discovering is, is absolutely bang on. I mean, this takes

00:51:10: me to a place and actually a lot of great wines take me to places that I've never been.

00:51:14: And somehow I'm transported. I, I can give a lot of producers. And it, it's a wonderful

00:51:20: skill to be able to capture a place. I think that's the other thing. Something I would

00:51:26: say about this wine, just parenthetically is, remember something that Thierry Germain

00:51:30: said, he was talking about biodynamics, but he said like, red equals life, like the heartbeat

00:51:36: blood, black is death. It's when the fruit is like gone over, or the extraction is too

00:51:42: high. And for me, red, this is energetic wine. It's sort of like Jamie described the sort

00:51:48: of, all the little transitions in the palette, but it's moving. The wine is like not static.

00:51:54: It's evolving. It's his own character. It's sort of capricious almost. And it's a really

00:51:59: beautiful thing because places don't are not static. They're like full of life and full

00:52:04: of energy. And just to be able to capture that and transform it into wine is, is one

00:52:09: of the greatest skills of all.

00:52:10: Yeah. She's a poet. She's poetry. Her wine is a poetry. I'm totally biased, but I'm

00:52:15: a huge Kelly Fox fan for a number of reasons because she's a very beautiful individual.

00:52:21: And the wines, they always have that, that Kelly Fox fingerprint for me. Yeah. I always,

00:52:29: I don't know. I just imagine myself in the Japanese mountains or something. There's like

00:52:33: this purity and almost minimalism, but in the best sort of sense, like the paired back.

00:52:40: Yeah.

00:52:42: And I'm sure in a way you're right because

00:52:45: organizing that by the time.

00:52:46: You know, without trying to read, read a personality, but Kelly loves, you know, Japanese

00:52:50: art and philosophy. And this sort of Zen almost detachment from the wine. The wine is the wine.

00:52:56: The winemaker is taking the steps back and puts the wine on its feet to use a Georgian

00:53:04: expression. And the wine lives, lives by itself. And it lives because it's from a living vineyard.

00:53:12: So we're kind of, we've been on this quite interesting journey over the last 50 minutes or so

00:53:19: where we've, we've taken this concept and rather than trying to narrow it down and define it,

00:53:25: we've expanded it into almost a universe of complex, interplaying possibilities,

00:53:31: like a neural network of ideas. And, but I think it's very exciting because what it means to me

00:53:37: is when we come and share a glass of wine together, should we choose to, should that wine have that

00:53:41: capacity to do it, to provoke imagination and thought and discussion. Then, then this is truly

00:53:49: the ultimate expression of terroir, that a place is given rise to something that then

00:53:53: enables us to participate in something that's, that's really quite fun, you know, and, and is

00:54:01: mentally engaging, but is also emotionally and soulfully connecting as well. And this is the

00:54:06: other thing is we're talking about ideas with words and, and sometimes it's the words can stop

00:54:12: and we rush to words so quickly as wine professionals. We want to describe what the wines like, we want

00:54:18: to capture it, but then sometimes it's good to be soulful and just to be wordless and not so good

00:54:25: for a podcast, obviously. Yes, as we struggle, as we struggle to describe things. I mean, I love,

00:54:31: no, I totally agree. I love intangibility. I love mystery. You know, mystery is a beautiful, it's

00:54:36: almost a religious word. And I think we're doing honor to the wines by not trying to pin them down.

00:54:42: Shall we rename the podcast the Wine Mystics? Yes, we'll get a lot of strange looks,

00:54:47: if anyone's listening, by the way. We're gonna have robes.

00:54:57: So yes, just before we, we closed then, Doug, I mean, you started things. You want to,

00:55:02: and Emily as well, you know, what, what sort of closing remarks would you come with?

00:55:06: Who first? Oh, you go first. Okay. Yes.

00:55:11: I feel that anything that I'm going to add right now would just be very reductive

00:55:17: after such a broad conversation. I just think it's a topic, I think, that I hope that we can

00:55:26: continue to discuss because we're just sort of scratching the surface of understanding it, you

00:55:31: know, and comprehending it. And I, and I think going back to the, the point around language,

00:55:38: right, and I saw you had a little quick, I saw some of your questions that dug around

00:55:42: language and terminology. And I think it's beyond comp, like it's, it's beyond

00:55:49: definition in a way, which makes it pretty hard to, we all have our own interpretation of what

00:55:56: that definition is. But I think that's kind of the beauty of it, like, and that is the mystery of

00:56:01: it. But yeah, see, I'm just repeating everything that we've kind of gone over now. I think when

00:56:05: you look at, when you read poetry, or look at great art, or listen to, you know, spellbinding

00:56:12: music, you feel it on your pulses, and you're in a different mood each time anyway. So your

00:56:17: interpretation is different and different people experiencing the same things will experience

00:56:23: different elements. And I feel that terroir is something you feel, you sense. But you can talk

00:56:29: about all the physicality of terroir, you know, the soil types to your sort of blur in the face,

00:56:34: it doesn't really make the wine come alive. And for me, like, the, what makes wine distinctive

00:56:40: is the sense that it is a living product, or I hate the word product, living something or other,

00:56:46: living product for sake anyway, because it's fluid, it's mutable, it's beautiful.

00:56:53: There we are. That's a great way to end this podcast. Yes, exactly. So dear viewers, listeners,

00:57:02: thank you for bearing with us the last hour. I mean, I feel this is a subject we will return to

00:57:09: again. So signing out from this podcast, I'm Jamie Good. I'm Doug Reg. I'm Emily Harmon.

00:57:16: And you can find us on Instagram at just another wine podcast. Cheers.

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