Cellar goodies

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
But I'm glad you didn't see fit to dispute my cookie crumble argument. Devastatingly effective.
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Or the rest of us have decided to ignore you.
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You are charming enough when you speak for yourself without presuming to speak for others.
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Your strident defense of your opinion as if it were everyone's facts belongs on other fora.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
But I'm glad you didn't see fit to dispute my cookie crumble argument. Devastatingly effective.
Click to expand...
Or the rest of us have decided to ignore you.
Click to expand...

You are charming enough when you speak for yourself without presuming to speak for others.
Click to expand...
Your strident defense of your opinion as if it were everyone's facts belongs on other fora.
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I don't see that I was strident nor do I believe that I characterized my thoughts, impressions or opinions as everyone's facts. But it is obvious that I have gained your antipathy, which I regret, particularly given your initial friendliness when I had difficulty posting a pdf.
 
I got so sick of having the pip-ripeness, only-one-time-to-pick argument with South African vignerons that I have basically chalked it up to crap plant material. Which, for a lot of the RSA vignoble, is the case.

Too bad Tom Lubbe's wines (from RSA) are so expensive. He would be the counterexample, and a damn good one if his wines cost the same as ESJ.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
Peter Cargasacchi ...
(and he thinks terroir as we see it is vodoo, it's all micro-climate to him).
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Can someone who works a vineyard actually think this? Without a definition of "micro-climate" that is so expansive as to take in everything else?
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It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

All of the things we attribute to terroir are just things that change drainage, heat retention, etc.

It's a defensible position and I think the burden of proof about "mineral" uptake is probably on those of us who might think it's true.
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
Peter Cargasacchi ...
(and he thinks terroir as we see it is vodoo, it's all micro-climate to him).
Click to expand...
Can someone who works a vineyard actually think this? Without a definition of "micro-climate" that is so expansive as to take in everything else?
Click to expand...

It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

All of the things we attribute to terroir are just things that change drainage, heat retention, etc.

It's a defensible position and I think the burden of proof about "mineral" uptake is probably on those of us who might think it's true.
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I had assumed I was a terroir type, but maybe not if it necessitates thinking that one can taste the minerals a vine is planted in in the wine from that vine. That sounds like homology to me. It's not merely that there is no known pathway. Really there's no reason to posit such a pathway.

That doesn't mean that minerals in terroir don't affect quite directly the flavor of wine, of course. All one needs to do is to eliminate the word "just" from VLM's penultimate sentence. If believing those things are enough to define differences in the flavor of wine down to the vineyard isn't enough to justify the word terroir, then I guess I don't qualify.

I distinguish between terroir and microclimate because the word terroir in French (and therefore in English, as far as I'm concerned) also denotes different cultural practices and I think that is also part of wine (see endless threads on defining spoofulation).

I'm of course, as an ignorant lit. type, more than ready to have explained to me how a pathway for taste transmission could occur, but as a skeptic, I'm not confident about it.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I don't see that I was strident nor do I believe that I characterized my thoughts, impressions or opinions as everyone's facts.
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That's how it reads to me.

But it is obvious that I have gained your antipathy, which I regret, particularly given your initial friendliness when I had difficulty posting a pdf.
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In this thread. Don't be so dramatic.
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
Peter Cargasacchi ...
(and he thinks terroir as we see it is vodoo, it's all micro-climate to him).
Click to expand...
Can someone who works a vineyard actually think this? Without a definition of "micro-climate" that is so expansive as to take in everything else?
Click to expand...

It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

...
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That's frankly a ridiculous theory that has nothing to do with how, say, soil pH and bivalent cation concentrations might affect plant secondary metabolism.

But I have to go taste Puzelats.
 
originally posted by VLM:

It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

All of the things we attribute to terroir are just things that change drainage, heat retention, etc.

It's a defensible position and I think the burden of proof about "mineral" uptake is probably on those of us who might think it's true.
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Isn't that basically a straw man? Are there still knowledgeable wine folks who seriously claim that mineral flavors in wine arise from mineral uptake by the vines? If instead we equate terroir with the different conditions presented to vines in different locations, I don't see how one can use microclimatic variation in opposition to terroir.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:I've not followed the bulk of this thread, but your comment sounds wrong, Rahsaan. Hermitage has a long and very celebrated history; Cte-Rtie somewhat less widely known, but still proud. Cornas and St-Joseph have historically been greatly overlooked until very recently.
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Ok, thanks for the nuance. I am ready to stand corrected and I guess I was mainly thinking of the growing international fame (and rising prices) for Cote Rotie and Cornas. But I guess that doesn't mean that they didn't have their own areas of fame and of course their own proud histories.

I was mainly responding to the notion that different regions come in and out of international popularity and that it is hard to say what is classic.

But I agree with Yixin, I don't understand this thread either anymore!
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
... the word terroir in French (and therefore in English, as far as I'm concerned) also denotes different cultural practices ...
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News to me.
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Here's Petit Robert:

Rgion rurale, provinciale, considere comme influant sur ses habitants. And it gives as an example, speaking of a person, "Il sent sont terroir" or "speaking of traits of language or culture," "Idiotismes qui sentent leur terroir."

In an ebob thread, Squires, while arguing that the word meant merely soil, came up on another definition from the Academy dictionary that was more explicit. He explained his way around it. I'm really surprised it is news to you. Somehow I have the impression of hearing about regional writers like Pagnol with some regularity that they bespeak their terroir.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
... the word terroir in French (and therefore in English, as far as I'm concerned) also denotes different cultural practices ...
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News to me.
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No it isn't. Thnk about it -- that's why AOCs are limited, for example, to certain kinds of trellising of the vines, or indeed to certain types of grapes.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
... the word terroir in French (and therefore in English, as far as I'm concerned) also denotes different cultural practices ...
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News to me.
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No it isn't. Thnk about it -- that's why AOCs are limited, for example, to certain kinds of trellising of the vines, or indeed to certain types of grapes.
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Surely the evidence that the word does mean that doesn't disprove the fact that it does mean that isn't news to her.
 
Claude, you're talking about controlled delimited appellations and the practices that, by law, must go on within; not the same as "terroir." As we know, there can be multiple terroirs within an appellation.

Jonathan, interesting quote; but it's more metaphorical in that sense. Like calling someone in the US a southerner or something. Would you say that there are specific cultural (in the sense of social, not cultivation (the latter seeming to have been Claude's argument)) practices pertaining to a site-specific terroir? The way someone spits? How high he hikes his trousers? Do men in Cte-Rtie whittle the ends of sticks one way and in Hermitage, they do it some other way?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Claude, you're talking about controlled delimited appellations and the practices that, by law, must go on within; not the same as "terroir." As we know, there can be multiple terroirs within an appellation.

Jonathan, interesting quote; but it's more metaphorical in that sense. Like calling someone in the US a southerner or something. Would you say that there are specific cultural (in the sense of social, not cultivation (the latter seeming to have been Claude's argument)) practices pertaining to a site-specific terroir? The way someone spits? How high he hikes his trousers? Do men in Cte-Rtie whittle the ends of sticks one way and in Hermitage, they do it some other way?
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If you rule Claude's example of a practice out of court as not terroir, then, of course, you are right that the meaning I quote is separate and a metaphorical extension. It is, of course, an extension since the word, in some contexts, refers only to a terrain. Metaphorical extensions, however, are how meanings accrue. The force of Claude's example is that an AOC ruling controlling practices would be based, at least in part, on the cultural practices of that area as part of its distinctive character (a large part of what AOC is supposed to protect)and there is dictionary cover, at a minimum, for capturing that under the term terroir. It comes down to this, though. When, with regard to wine, winemakers I speak to use the word terroir, they sometimes mean rocks and dirt and they sometimes mean rocks and dirt and a way of getting along with rocks and dirt. And that is what a meaning is.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by VLM:

It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

All of the things we attribute to terroir are just things that change drainage, heat retention, etc.

It's a defensible position and I think the burden of proof about "mineral" uptake is probably on those of us who might think it's true.
Click to expand...

Isn't that basically a straw man? Are there still knowledgeable wine folks who seriously claim that mineral flavors in wine arise from mineral uptake by the vines? If instead we equate terroir with the different conditions presented to vines in different locations, I don't see how one can use microclimatic variation in opposition to terroir.

Mark Lipton
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I want to be clear that I'm paraphrasing here, and maybe not well.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
Peter Cargasacchi ...
(and he thinks terroir as we see it is vodoo, it's all micro-climate to him).
Click to expand...
Can someone who works a vineyard actually think this? Without a definition of "micro-climate" that is so expansive as to take in everything else?
Click to expand...

It comes down to the fact that there is no known pathway for "minerals" and such to get from the soil to the wine.

...
Click to expand...
That's frankly a ridiculous theory that has nothing to do with how, say, soil pH and bivalent cation concentrations might affect plant secondary metabolism.
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Agreed. However, do we have a theory about how the deposits in soil might have a pathway to phenol expression in the finished wine? AFAIK, we don't. I think it has to be true, but it doesn't seem to exist.

FWIW, I am paraphrasing, and maybe not well. This was also an argument between those that thought they could taste chalkiness in the wine because of limestone, as if it were directly transferred.

But I have to go taste Puzelats.
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My favorite day of the trip (well and Marc). Rouillons! Krunk! Give Thierry and Jean-Marie my best. Kind of missing it as I sit in front of my fucking computer crunching numbers.
 
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