“Terroir Don’t Mean S_ _ _!”

Chapter Eleven. Part Five.
When it comes to the unique “sense of place” that makes wine regions unique, most wine professionals have a tendency to take terroir for granite. But there is one influential wine professional who claims terroir is nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes, a cunning contrivance to keep wine on a pedestal and inflate prices.

Fred Franzia, the man behind Bronco Wine Company, California’s fourth largest winery, is often at odds with those who preach the gospel of terroir, people I call terroirists. In 2010 Franzia wrote on his Facebook page,

Does anybody complicate Cheerios by saying the wheat¹ has to be grown on the side of a mountain and the terroir in North Dakota is better than Kansas and all this horse s- – -?²

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