As you will have gathered by now, my wife is the foodie in our home and I am the wino, so to speak. Elizabeth has asked me to write a post about my passion for wine. We have a 4,000+ bottle wine cellar and I guess this begs the question what makes wine so fascinating for me. Well, to put it succinctly: it's terroir! Terroir for some is quite a controversial notion, but I guess we should not make things more complicated than they are. Terroir is the vineyard habitat, the defined place that grows wines both great and small. Vines have a unique ability to translate their habitat into the glass. As the great Burgundy wine grower Christophe Roumier puts it: "We don't make Pinot Noir, we make wines from terroir that expresses itself through Pinot Noir."
I love Pinot Noir. Any well-made Pinot Noir is a joy, whether it be from France, New Zealand or Germany. But the joy doesn't stop there. "Pinot Noir (like Riesling) is a lens that brings the soil into focus. It captures soil, climate and vintage weather and reveals them without mercy" (Hugh Johnson, Wine: a life uncorked, p. 314). To the organoleptic pleasures of (merely) enjoying a glass of good wine, the notion of terroir adds the more intellectual pleasure of being able to distinguish between good wines from different vineyards. Burgundy is a case in point. The flowery, fragrant character of a Chambolle-Musigny Les Amoureuses is very different from the earth and iron of a Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Saint-Georges. The list of Burgundian variations on the theme of Pinot Noir is endless. The palate does need a bit of help though. I think it was the great English wine connaisseur Edmund Penning-Rowsell who answered (famously) when asked if he had ever mistaken Burgundy for claret: "Not since lunch."
This terroir thing is not a vain boast. I have put it into practice. Last April I conducted a blind tasting of Rheingau wines for the Académie des Cinquante, a long-established association of Dutch wine amateurs (in the good sense of the word!). The first flight consisted of three Erste Gewächse from 2007, an Erbacher Schlossberg, the Schloss Johannisberg and a Hallgartener Hendelberg. Hardly any of the participants had any experience with Rheingau Riesling and they would not have been able to identify the wines put before them blind. But when I explained the differences among the three vineyards (less than three miles apart!) to them, they had no problem telling which wine was in which glass.
Claret is also a fertile hunting ground for those in search of terroir wines. On the left bank, from Margaux, via Saint-Julien and Pauillac to Saint-Estèphe, the soil gradually becomes heavier and the pebbles smaller. The character of the wines changes accordingly. The fact that they use three different grape varieties (Cabernet-Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot) in varying relative quantities can obviously blur the picture. But even in the same village, the differences can be very recognizable.
A favourite example of mine are the Chateaux Du Tertre and Giscours. Both are Margaux Crus Classés, under the same (Dutch) ownership and (perfectionistic) management. The vineyards are literally only a mile apart. Du Tertre is well in-land, located on a magnificent mound (croupe, as they call it here) of gravel and uses about 20% Cabernet Franc. Giscours is located on slightly heavier soils, albeit closer to the river, and uses hardly any Cabernet Franc at all. You will have gathered by now that the difference between their wines is unmistakeable: Du Tertre has more feminine 'generosité' and the typical pepperiness of Cabernet Franc; Giscours is a more masculine wine - firmer and more muscular.
I could go on for ever - but don't worry, I won't. I hope this post will inspire you to read more about wine and - particularly - vineyards. The joys of discovering how different terroirs translate into different wines are boundless. But if you don't sign up for this journey, I will not blame you: just drink the wines that you like!
Xavier Auerbach
