Cellar goodies

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

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).

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?

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.

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 don't know that I'm handing out types here, but I think that I want to be a terroirist but I would also like to have the facts on my side, not just a dreamy alternate reality.

I'm of course, as an ignorant lit. type

Don't be so dramatic.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

But I agree with Yixin, I don't understand this thread either anymore!

Yixin is lying. He's right in the middle of it, or maybe in the deep end.

 

[Claude Kolm]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

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 ...

News to me.

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.

Surely the evidence that the word does mean that doesn't disprove the fact that it does mean that isn't news to her.

But she was aware of the limitations, apparently just hadn't reflected upon them.

 

[Claude Kolm]

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?

You can have aspects typical of a terroir that are the same as other terroirs that are nearby or even within a whole region.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

"I'm of course, as an ignorant lit. type

'Don't be so dramatic.'"

I wasn't even attempting to be falsely modest. I really don't know enough about chemistry and biology to begin to comment on theorized processes--except to the extent that the theories strike me as out of accord with meta-determinations that sciences have come to about how the world work that can be understood via intellectual history and history of science.

And I do narrative, not drama.

 

[Claude Kolm]

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.

You can have aspects typical of a terroir that are the same as other terroirs that are nearby or even within a whole region.

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?

This won't get you all the way there, but there are various other cultural or historic practices that are recognized or not. At Hermitage, you can make a vin de paille because it was a tradition to make it there, but not at Cte-Rtie or Condrieu or St-Joseph or Crozes-Hermitage. And the vin de paille has to be made by drying the grapes (not necessarily on straw though, see Chapoutier), not simply from grapes allowed to get overripe. (Although I have tasted from Viognier grown on Hermitage that was made simply from overripe grapes, but it is only allowed to be vdt.)

 

[Jeff Grossman]

Don't be so narrative!

Doesn't have the same force but we work with what we have.

 

[Thor]

Jeff, please calm down.

There's no doubt in my mind that red and white table wines are the mainstream and everything else, including ros, is a niche

Honestly, to disregard Port, Champagne, and the wines of Jerez in this way is crazy to me. Not to mention Tokaji and Madeira (which you already dismissed). I mean, for some very long-standing wine-consuming cultures these are as "classic" as wine can possibly get. Maybe they're not for you, and maybe they're not for me, but let's root around in a few English cellars and see how "niche" some of those wines are.

This seems to be going about as well as Jamie Goode's ill-fated attempt to define "serious" as "grapes I like that are expensive."

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?

Cargasacchi's argument is that "terroir" is a concept that's only meaningful to farmers, and that applying it to the appreciation of finished wine is impossible and only exists for the marketing purposes of those that promote it. (And all the while he markets his own arguably extremist philosophy in just the same way, but...hey, look over there, a comet! Pay no attention to the man behind the Geneva double-curtain...) That's what VLM meant by "terroir as we see it." The idea that someone can taste "Richebourg" or "Pisoni" in a wine is charlatanism to him.

I'll leave this space for your response: [ ].

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.

There are a few others, and it's indeed a shame about the prices, but yeah...mass as a substitute for complexity or balance is a real problem down there, and more than a few producers -- even some really successful ones -- noted the lack of quality of the vine material that they're working with.

Are there still knowledgeable wine folks who seriously claim that mineral flavors in wine arise from mineral uptake by the vines?

Yes, and in my anecdotal experience they're all European winemakers. At least, I've yet to hear it from anyone who wasn't. They're part of this frustrating cross-cultural argument in which people who know better on all sides are still fighting off counter-arguments to things they don't believe but that their compatriots believe, and this is one of those notions that causes lingering debate (along with "wines under screwcap don't age/corks allow a necessary slow ingress of oxygen," "there is no terroir in California," and more tomfoolery along related lines).

Rgion rurale, provinciale, considere comme influant sure 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."

Eric Texier and I just had a discussion in some other thread (that was resurrected not long ago) in which he raised this issue. In my (I guess) Northern European need for precision, I like a fully scientific and bounded definition of terroir so we can discuss and experience it while speaking a common language, and better understand its role in wine that is the result of more inputs than just terroir. But as Eric correctly pointed out, that's not the only way it's used in France, and some of the ways it's used there are indeed historical/cultural and renderthe sort of precision I'm wishing for impossible. That works better for the French than it does for Norwegian-Americans, I think. Certainly it works better for him than it does for me.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Thor,

You can always propose your own, more or less, artificial definition to achieve the boundedness you want. If philosophers and scientists create special terminology, why shouldn't wine geeks? The problem may be that the precision will wind up calling out of bounds half of what people want to talk about. In any number of fields of knowledge, and wine at least at this stage is certainly one of them, accepting imprecision and recognizing that one can't be certain about one's claims is the cost of having any knowledge at all. I am always astonished by the number of people, particularly in fields where precise, measured data aren't possible, who nevertheless insist that if they can't prove things to a certitude, the alternative is rampant relativism. Although the stereotype about the French is not that they are pragmatic but rather that they are rigid rationalists, in this case, vive ce francais.

 

[Thor]

You can always propose your own, more or less, artificial definition to achieve the boundedness you want.

I did. Hence the link.

The problem may be that the precision will wind up calling out of bounds half of what people want to talk about.

Indeed. Which is why I was agreeing with the notion that there is a cultural element (and, at times, difference) to the understanding of terroir. Their version is not useful to me (by which I don't mean the same thing as "useless"), and I'm sure my version is strangely limited to them. So be it.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Thor,

You can always propose your own, more or less, artificial definition to achieve the boundedness you want. If philosophers and scientists create special terminology, why shouldn't wine geeks? The problem may be that the precision will wind up calling out of bounds half of what people want to talk about. In any number of fields of knowledge, and wine at least at this stage is certainly one of them, accepting imprecision and recognizing that one can't be certain about one's claims is the cost of having any knowledge at all. I am always astonished by the number of people, particularly in fields where precise, measured data aren't possible, who nevertheless insist that if they can't prove things to a certitude, the alternative is rampant relativism. Although the stereotype about the French is not that they are pragmatic but rather that they are rigid rationalists, in this case, vive ce francais.

A timely reminder. In this thread, I was taken to task for proposing my own, more or less artificial definition of "classic," as if imprecision and the impossibility of being certain made a concept useless.

When I did my undergraduate in Economics, I was amazed at how many felt uncomfortable with the messiness of it being a social science, and wanted to econometrize that away with precise, measured data. Our discussions, our lives, would be unimaginably impoverished if we confined ourselves to what can be rigorously demonstrated.

 

[Yixin]

All drama is narrative, badly rendered.

 

[Thor]

Oswaldo, I can only speak for myself, but I'm not concerned with the "messiness" of your use of "classic." My objection is that I don't think it's the word you want to use.

I base this on your repeated attempts to justify it by external factors...history, name recognition, and so forth. If "classic" was only "European wines I prefer to other European wines except for those that don't fit my argument" in your usage -- which I think it is, despite the percentage of this thread devoted to arguing otherwise -- then there would be no problem, though it would be better for group communication if we skipped the interstitial stages and got right to the latter definition. In this, "classic" becomes no more or less problematic than "spoof," which Jonathan made an admirable but ultimately, from the perspective of a lover of precision, fruitless attempt to pin down many months ago. I think we deal with the fact that we have different ideas about "spoof" pretty well...and also "balance" and "ripe" and all manner of oenopornographic I-know-it-when-I-see-it concepts.

But for me, it's the attempt to argue, "no, really, 'classic' has a meaning that's sensible to others, and here it is," when it's fairly clear from the evidence in this thread that the definition you're providing isn't sensible to others, and is causing the very minor agony over your use of the word.

I think what you really want to argue (again, based on what you've written) is that, for you, the paradigmatic expressions of many grapes, blends, or wine styles are those with the coolest and longest growing seasons, etc. Obviously that's a subjective judgment on several levels, and thus problematic to those who need unambiguous truisms, and will draw debate (perhaps not so much here) about why that is necessarily so, and yet no one is going to argue that they don't understand what you mean by a paradigm, only that they do or don't agree with your choice of paradigm.

I don't think your personal definition of "classic" is "useless," as you write above. I think it's distracting you and your audience from what you want to say. Not by its imprecision, but by its tangentiality.

(This episode of Talking About Talking About Wine, v.12, brought to you by the Fine Foods division of Whothefuckcares, LLC.)

 

[Scott Kraft]

originally posted by Yixin:
All drama is narrative, badly rendered.

Ouch.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

Thor, that's mostly very fair. I do see "classic" as a concept that exists meaningfully in the world and that can be used, even though each one of us may have a different definition (like "art"). But perhaps I erred in trying to defend its use by listing the places that I see as classic, because that brought down disagreement that distracted from the main point which, as you say in your last paragraph, could have been made without resort to the concept. But I would certainly not define classic as "European wines I prefer to other European wines except for those that don't fit my argument" because that would be tautological and a waste of everyone's time (including mine), even if I skipped the interstitial stages. I was trying to pin down, quite independent of my own preferences, what I impressionistically see out there as currently considered classic (in dry reds and whites) in the morass of places that generate these impressions - message boards, blogs, auction catalogues, store displays, magazine and newspaper articles, books, encyclopedias, wine courses, and, last & not least, conversations with animate people. But I fully agree with your paraphrase of my position in your next to last paragraph. As for those for whom subjectivity is problematic and need unambiguous truisms (and I certainly don't begrudge the comfort of a good rule every now and then), well, there's always therapy.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

When I did my undergraduate in Economics, I was amazed at how many felt uncomfortable with the messiness of it being a social science, and wanted to econometrize that away with precise, measured data. Our discussions, our lives, would be unimaginably impoverished if we confined ourselves to what can be rigorously demonstrated.

Without econometrics, Economics is worthless vodoo. Precision is its own reward.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by VLM:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

When I did my undergraduate in Economics, I was amazed at how many felt uncomfortable with the messiness of it being a social science, and wanted to econometrize that away with precise, measured data. Our discussions, our lives, would be unimaginably impoverished if we confined ourselves to what can be rigorously demonstrated.

Without econometrics, Economics is worthless vodoo. Precision is its own reward.

Actually, with econometrics, economics is voodoo. It claims a precision its performance doesn't warrant. Without it, and lacking the claim of predictiveness, it becomes a social science, as interesting as the others.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by VLM: Without econometrics, Economics is worthless vodoo. Precision is its own reward.

So Gerschenkron and Polanyi didn't have anything to add to our understanding of the world! I think they were pretty darn useful and non-voodoo-ey.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by VLM: Without econometrics, Economics is worthless vodoo. Precision is its own reward.

So Gerschenkron and Polanyi didn't have anything to add to our understanding of the world! I think they were pretty darn useful and non-voodoo-ey.

Fucking Polanyi. Wow. My dad was all about Polanyi, peppered his dissertation with it, I think.

I don't know who the fuck the other DWM is.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by VLM:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

When I did my undergraduate in Economics, I was amazed at how many felt uncomfortable with the messiness of it being a social science, and wanted to econometrize that away with precise, measured data. Our discussions, our lives, would be unimaginably impoverished if we confined ourselves to what can be rigorously demonstrated.

Without econometrics, Economics is worthless vodoo. Precision is its own reward.

Actually, with econometrics, economics is voodoo. It claims a precision its performance doesn't warrant. Without it, and lacking the claim of predictiveness, it becomes a social science, as interesting as the others.

Well, there is the issue of application.

There are very good, if confounding, models of individual choice and decision making. The problem is turning those into workable theories. Technically, this is behavioral economics but it is really mathematical psychology and a cousin of econometrics. There are things that econometrics does very well. Many things, in fact.