First up, a trigger warning… I’m approaching this article from the premise that terroir exists. It’s a position to which I would hope most readers of this site would subscribe. But in the age of Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists, and of establishment newspapers running 1,600-word articles exploring the theory that Brigitte Macron is actually a man, you can never be too sure.
So for the sake of clarity – and Sunny Hodge – let’s start with a quick recap. It’s terribly old-fashioned, I know, but when it comes to things I don’t understand, I tend to trust people who actually work in that field. And it’s funny how winemakers – you know, those people who spend all year in and around vineyards – all tend to believe in terroir, whereas it’s the provocateurs working in hipster urban environments who don’t. As Brad Greatrix – winemaker at English fizz trailblazer Nyetimber – neatly outlined in a rebuttal to the terroir scepticism of Hodge (bar owner and author of The Cynic’s Guide To Wine), if you take just one single element of terroir – temperature – it is clear that the same grape variety grown in, say, Sussex will produce a different wine to that of the same grape grown in Barossa. Which is why England grows Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, while South Australia grows a lot of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Terroir exists. End of. A more fertile subject for debate is just how relevant it is to fine wine today – and whether accepted definitions of some terroirs, in particular, are under threat. Because I would argue that, in certain places in the world, the impact of terroir is in danger of becoming increasingly diluted – particularly at the top end of the market.
Take Bordeaux. Classed growths in the Médoc boast of their strict selection, aided by optical sorting which examines every last berry, all to ensure the ultimate expression of their vaunted terroir. So rigorous is the selection that it is not uncommon, in challenging years, for top châteaux to use less than 40% of their crop in the Grand Vin. Great wine – as we are told ad infinitum – is made in the vineyard. But is that really the case if a producer is eliminating more than half of that vineyard’s raw material?
Part of conveying terroir is surely about remaining true to the character of the vineyard in any given year – inconsistency and all. Complexity in wine comes partly from the qualities lent by contrasting components. Vintage variation is, along with the nuances of neighbouring communes, one of the cornerstones of what makes Bordeaux so compelling. The wines are not meant to be uniform. Yet in the pursuit of perfection, they are in danger of becoming so.
There is another factor at play here. And for this, you have to recognise the reality of climate change (another thorny topic, though hopefully no-one here is still denying its existence, irrespective of what you think might be causing it). The hierarchy of the Médoc’s classed growths is predicated on their quality (and price) back in 1855. But Médocain terroir is very different today to how it was 170 years ago. And not just in terms of meteorological elements (Bordeaux’s average annual temperature in 1860 was 12.2˚C; in 2022 it was 15.5˚C). The human input, driven by technological progress, has been similarly transformed. Back then, there were no second wines and scant selection – production prioritised quantity over quality. Hence the 1856 vintage, according to data from Tastet-Lawton posted on Jane Anson’s site, was ‘affected by flavours of rot’; 1859 was ‘ordinary’, its ‘taste heavily affected by powdery mildew’.
No-one is advocating, of course, a return to such rudimentary winemaking. As the ever-sage Margaret Rand commented when I raised the topic over a recent lunch, ‘If you were to really stick rigidly to a vineyard’s terroir, you’d include all the grapes – even those affected by disease.’ Not even natural winemakers do that. But it’s fair to say that the supposedly sacrosanct terroir upon which the status of many Bordeaux châteaux is built is not set in stone. It evolves.
And that’s before you consider each château’s actual vineyard land. Without wanting to re-interrogate the 1855 classification, there is an anomaly within its very fabric that has been exploited by several classed growths, whereby any new land purchased – provided it is in the same commune – is automatically upgraded to Grand Cru Classé level. Take just one estate – Château Pédesclaux. When Franco-Swiss real-estate magnate Jacky Lorenzetti bought the Fifth Growth in 2009, Pédesclaux totalled 26 hectares. Six of these were immediately deemed sub-standard, and ripped out. In their place have been added previously unclassified vineyards, largely acquired in the purchase of the until now unheralded Châteaux Haut-Milon and Béhèré. Today, after further acquisitions, the Pédesclaux holdings span a patchwork of 52 hectares, twice the hectarage when Lorenzetti took over. With investment in vineyard and cellar, Pédesclaux is a much finer wine. Whether or not it reflects the Pédesclaux terroir is another matter. Indeed so widely spread have its holdings become that it is almost impossible to talk about ‘the Pédesclaux terroir’ as a coherent entity.
The Bordelais will demur. Indeed a recent defence of Médoc terroir came from an unlikely source. Twenty years ago, uber-consultant Michel Rolland was cast as the enemy of terroir, as he took his formula of ripe, extracted, generously oaked winemaking to a multitude of properties across Bordeaux and the world, with many of his wines finding favour with the similarly influential (and supposedly one-dimensional) critic Robert Parker. The late Michael Broadbent, by contrast, lamented how, under Rolland’s stewardship, Margaux third growth Château Kirwan tasted more like a Merlot-dominant Pomerol. Fellow critic Jamie Goode – not talking specifically about Rolland – went so far as to claim that making ‘this sort of over-ripe, big wine’ when Bordeaux’s terroirs were ‘capable of finesse, balance, complexity and ageability’ was ‘morally questionable’.
Speaking to Rolland recently, he told me such criticism was misplaced. ‘It’s not possible to make a Pomerol in Margaux,’ he argued. ‘The place will always be much stronger than the winemaker. Take Pauillac, and Pontet Canet. Pontet Canet will never be bad, but it can be average, good or very good. If you look at older Pontet Canets, they’re not so nice. But they’re still Pontet Canet – just not the best expression of Pontet Canet.’
It just so happens that another winemaker associated with Merlot – former sculptor of SuperTuscans Ornellaia and Masseto, Axel Heinz – recently unveiled plans to make a Merlot-dominant wine in Margaux, at his new employer, second growth Château Lascombes. In a neat about-turn, he said he intends to reshape the style of the Grand Vin, returning the make-up of the wine closer to that of the original, Cabernet-dominant 1855 profile, and making a separate Merlot-led cuvée. The latter, though, will cost twice the price of the former, which rather begs the question as to the worth of that original terroir, and the typicity of the new wine.
Rolland, of course, also makes a ‘Wine of the World’ in his £600 Pangaea cuvée, blended from five different countries – the very antithesis of terroir. In such an undertaking, ‘We have to give the wine a style,’ he said, rather than taking it from its terroir. I got the impression he rather enjoyed this freedom. So is the fine wine world moving towards more terroir-flexible wines?
Grange has long been the poster boy for such wines, a multi-regional blend whose constituent parts change from year to year but is constantly held up as Australia’s finest. Its producer, Penfolds, has recently taken the concept a step further by releasing several ‘cross-country’ bottlings. The latest, the £2,000 Grange La Chapelle blend of arguably Australia and the Rhône’s most celebrated cuvées, was rapturously received at a lavish gala dinner by critics who ordinarily hold terroir dear, suggesting glitz and glamour can outrank soil and site.
And what of Burgundy, the region that surely epitomises terroir more than any other, where a wall or road can be the difference between a Grand Cru and a village blend? The rise in prestige – and price – of its top wines in recent years speaks to the status of its most treasured sites. ‘Yet more and more, the conversations I have about Burgundy are about the winemaking – whole-bunch, yeast, élevage, oak – rather than the vineyard,’ says consultant Richard Bampfield MW. Man’s choices should be considered part of terroir, he argues, with our notion of the concept increasingly influenced by human decisions made to mitigate challenges – climatic or otherwise. ‘Even organic viticulture, which should be the ultimate natural expression of terroir, is a human enterprise.’
Federico Radi, the technical director of Biondi-Santi, spoke recently of the extensive measures he is having to take in the vineyard (replanting trellising and training systems, reducing tillage, encouraging regenerative viticulture) in order to be able to manipulate lower temperatures in the vines, thereby mitigating climate change, and making wines of the same style and elegance as 30 years ago. But at what stage does intervention deny a site’s natural terroir? And if, through climate change, a terroir changes, should winemakers change with it? Or should they stay honest to the evolved terroir, even if that means the style of the wine changes?
We’re in danger of veering into philosophical territory at this point, but it is hard to argue that the terroir of many regions isn’t changing, both through the climate and via increasingly hands-on winemaking practices. And that human factor – be it in the vineyard or the winery – surely plays just as significant a role in shaping a wine’s character. To me, there is a danger that such intervention risks more and more wines sharing similar winemaking qualities at the expense of their vineyard character – just what people accused Rolland of facilitating 20 years ago.
When discussing this piece with Tim, he pointed out to me that in places such as Rioja and Argentina, terroir is becoming MORE important, not less. I wouldn’t argue with that – but in many such cases, be it Viñedos Singulares in Rioja or single-site Malbec in the Uco Valley, these are relatively new, niche terroirs (at least to consumers). Less established producers in less established sites love to talk about their particular microclimate, which lends their wines their intrinsic character. But not all of them will turn out to be great. And is a wine automatically to be viewed as more worthy of deference simply by dint of it being from a particular plot? Would a wine made from vines grown in the raised beds of my patio here in West London also qualify?
Perhaps I could do so by taking a leaf out of the book of a winery I visited last month in Hampshire. There, the vines were planted in coir (coconut husk) and grown under a polytunnel, facilitating the production of England’s first Syrah. It was a world away from the polished Grange La Chapelle Shiraz, but at both ends of the scale, the wines represent the very definition of circumventing terroir. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll let you decide…
Photo by Tim Atkin MW