Word: terroir
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their wine cred is that Europeans, and now Californians, contend that the specific soil their vineyards sit on makes their wine good, that the flinty rock or dusty earth imparts a distinctive flavor. But 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 climate 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...
...attempt to debunk terroir was more difficult than I had anticipated. Though all 50 states make wine (ever since North Dakota joined the pack in 2002), it's not so easy to get a bottle from each state. Most wines are sold only locally, and Alaska won't even ship its product, which is made from grapes from other states. So if you try to duplicate this project, know that it's best undertaken slowly while traveling around the country--or during the summer, when you have a lot of interns...
...reviewing somewhat randomly selected bottles priced around $15 to $20, I learned a few general truths. White is easier to make than red. Wines made at golf courses are not good. And the importance of terroir is definitely questionable, since no region of the country seems ill suited for winemaking except the Deep South, all of which I think Sherman salted. Though I didn't touch the dirt on these vineyards, my impression is that it's more a matter of finding the right grape for your climate. (Michigan's riesling was one of my favorites...
Recently, the terroir concept - that a wine should express the specific soil, microclimate and cultural traditions that produced it - has become more widespread in the Champagne region. In exceptionally good years, some houses are now producing vintage wines profiling a single year's harvest, or single-vineyard wines made from a particularly outstanding parcel. But not without controversy: at the Champagne Information Bureau's annual tasting in London in March, some winemakers wrote off the single-vintage mono-parcel champagnes as a ploy to market novelties as luxuries...
...harvest is expected to bring in 400 million bottles. With a steadily increasing demand, winemakers have asked French regulators to commit what would once have been considered heresy: to redefine or even expand the boundaries of Champagne. The beverage, after all, gets some of its character from its chalky terroir and rough climate. Yet the Syndicat Général des Vignerons de la Champagne, the grape-growers union, argues that an expansion would simply be a return to Champagne's origins. When the region was first defined in 1927, it included 128,500 acres (52,000 hectares), but that area...