“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

While Franzia may think terroir and terroirists are both full of schist, I’ve tasted enough wine to know there’s a big difference between the plonk produced in the Central Valley and the plonk produced in Pauillac. I hope this doesn’t mean Fred is going to un-friend me because I need all the friends I can get. I may have 3,500 Facebook friends but I still can’t find anyone to take me to the airport.

In an August 2008 TIME Magazine article, my very, very close personal Facebook friend Joel Stein had this to say about Franzia’s unilateral take on terroir.

Fred Franzia, maker of the popular $2-a-bottle Charles Shaw, told me that terroir–a French term embracing all things regional, from soil to topography–is a concept winemakers use to overcharge. “Anything will grow with sun and water. We can grow on asphalt,” he said. “Terroir don’t mean s- – -.”³

By the way, I also follow Joel on Twitter because I like the way he tweets me.

Last year a group of customers were in my wine store discussing Franzia’s Two Buck Chuck and I admitted I had never tasted it. A woman spoke up to say she had recently tried a bottle. The curious group turned to her in unison and asked, “So how was it?”

After considerable thought she said, “It’s worth every penny.”

I then sold her a stony Hermitage from the northern Rhone, which coincidentally featured the terroir-driven aromas of fresh asphalt.

To those of you unaccustomed to drinking wines that emphasize their sense of place over big fruit and oak, terroir may seem like a euphemistic device to describe wines that are otherwise just too subtle to decipher. The road to terroir enlightenment is simple; taste a lot of old-world wine. Come to think of it, that’s my answer to all of life’s problems. Don’t get along with your mother-in-law? Drink old-world wine. Got a mucoid cyst on your toe? Drink old-world wine. Can’t fit into your wife’s clothes when she’s not around? Drink old-world wine (and lose some weight for God’s sake).

Terms like slate, dust, flint, mineral, clay and a host of other earthy descriptors made it into the lexicon of wine-speak for a reason; they are in your wine glass. They’re also on my kitchen floor but that’s another story.

To be able to identify and describe terroir you must first taste it and then dig down into your sensory memory banks to form associations with your deep-seated organoleptic-memories. These associations will eventually make recognizing and describing terroir as easy as describing the fruit, oak, or texture of wine.

Once you learn how the terroir of a region affects the flavor of the wines produced there, you’ll have a better idea of which wine regions appeal to you. This will come in handy when you’re in an unfamiliar wine store in a foreign city and you can’t find your favorite label. Simply seek out wine from the same region or vineyard and chances are it will share some characteristics with the wine you’re searching for. And when you return home I hope you don’t expect me to pick you up at the airport.

 

¹ I think he means oats.
² Franzia, F. (December 28, 2010) Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Fred-Franzia/176647455703476
³ Stein, J. (August 28, 2008) TIME Magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1837245, 00.html (This was the link a couple of years ago. Now they moved things around and make you pay to read past articles. You’re just going to have to take my word for it or fork over $40.)