grape or terroire
A few years ago, afamous French wine-maker from Burgundy attending a wine conference in Oregon was asked what kind of flavours he wanted from his Pinot Noir grapes.
"Gentleman." he replied," I am not working with Pinot Noir, I am working with a specific terroire."
It is a typical French word, although now part of English vocabulary. Tom Stevenson, in his Sotheby's World Encyclopedia explains that terroir is an agricultural concept, involving the complete growing environment of an aerea. It comes with the territiry, the landscape, the climate,what you see and what you smell. It is the terroir that makes it often so difficult to find the same degree of pleasure in a wine drunk in the place of its origin, or some hundred or thousands of miles away.
That is why staff in a French wine shop are likely to be puzzled if you ask for a Merlot or a Chardonay. Hundreds of wines in France are made from Chardonay. All the Burgundy, the Chablis, the Poully, the Macon - but the name Chardonnay never appears on the bottle.
What's important to the French is the wine's origin. The region, the town, the plot - the grape is so flexible anyway, that one Chardonnay can be worlds apart from another.
But even the French have started to use the name of the grapes on some of their wines. This was partly the result of the pressure from wines arriving from the New Wine World - America, Australia, Chile and New Zealand.
If the French are labeling grapenames more frequently to identify certain wines, California is switching more and more to the old french style.
As American tongues get more sophisticated, ther is also a growing demand for complex assemblages, imitating the great wines of Bordeaux. the famous Opus One, produced jointly by Robert Mondavi and the late Raron Philippe de Rothschild is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
thee Australians have produced wonders by merging their Cabernet Sauvignon with the Syraz ( Syrah,France).
And although they too tend to emphasise the type of grapes, more attention is paid to the characteristics of specific areas.
The world of wine is ever changing and growing, and every part of the world is learning from others. This is the globalisation at its best. Globalisation of knowledge and of science, while retaining the individuality of the terroir.
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