I still love natural wine

originally posted by Brzme:
Chateauneuf has always been a blend. Mine is not.
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It used to be grenache-mourvdre in red, clairette-bourboulenc in white. No more? Why? Just the Burgundian training?
 
originally posted by Brzme:
One day someone tried to grow riesling at Sainte Hune.
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In your opinion, was that person a spoofulator and heretic because he didn't plant what had always been planted there before?
 
originally posted by scottreiner:
I still love natural wine
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Beautiful Scott. So sorry I was stuck at work.

Opened the '08 Morgon when i got home. Magnificent wine; I was very grateful. I regret never having gotten to meet M. Lapierre, but what a legacy he leaves. We are lucky to have had him with us.
 
originally posted by Brzme:
originally posted by Thor:
If you regard traditional cellar practices as part of terroir, then you have to add viticultural practices and everything else humans do, and the entire concept of "terroir" is going to fall apart. Why overstuff the term? Why not just call those things "tradition" and say that both terroir and tradition are important in wine.
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Absolutely. It's tradition. It may even be typicity (though in the specific case of LdH, it's not a regional one...at least not anymore). But it's not terroir.

I do think that there's a French mode of argumentation that the two can't be so easily separated, and that's based on a slightly different understanding of the word (it's theirs, after all) than the more rigorous, functionalist one you and I are using. I respect the tradition (and typicity) of the word's use in that manner, but find the separation of the concepts much more useful in terms of discussing what each brings to the wine, and find the catch-all nature of the cultural/historical version frustratingly vague. Maybe a little like "natural" in that regard...

There's a long essay somewhere on my blog that says the above in several thousand times the number of words.
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So if I get both of you right, making a grenache/cabernet sauvignon grown on the land of Romane Conti with 100% carbonic maceration and then fermented with Anchor encapsulated yeast selected in south africa, then aged in redwood barrels would just a slightly different expression of the Romane Conti terroir!!!!

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Again, in the french acceptance of terroir, Romane Conti terroir as known today cannot exist without the fact that it is made only from pinot, and all the rest of what you call tradition...
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I see what you're saying, Eric, and the difference may only be semantic. Let me phrase it slightly differently: In my view, Pinot noir EXPRESSES the Romanee-Conti terroir, while different grape varieties, carbonic maceration, and redwood treatment OBSCURE the Romanee-Conti terroir. The goal is to choose the human tools that will open a clear window onto the terroir. While those tools are not a part of "terroir" itself, they are the means by which we can access it. But, as you suggest, if the wine is made with insensitivity, terroir can remain shrouded.

So in the case of your Frankenstein wine, we'd say: "I can't taste the 'Romanee-Conti' in this wine at all." The potential would still be there, but unrealized.

PS Big fan of your wines...
 
How many vineyards have had the same grape planted in them for eight or nine centuries, and worked on by man (and woman) for as long as that, as the Romane-Conti has? It is the most perfectly established case of terroir in the world. Not everyone has such ideal conditions. Many terroirs are being created right now worldwide.
 
originally posted by VS:
How many vineyards have had the same grape planted in them for eight or nine centuries, and worked on by man (and woman) for as long as that, as the Romane-Conti has? It is the most perfectly established case of terroir in the world. Not everyone has such ideal conditions. Many terroirs are being created right now worldwide.
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Victor,

I totally agree with this.

For the blend in Chateauneuf, I had the red in mind.
I stopped using the mourvdre from les Coulets after 2003 because I felt they deeply affected the expression of the old grenache from la Crau. I admit that I miss them in terms of balance in ripe vintages like 2007. I now rely on the very few field blended on the la Crau parcel which is 5% maximum.
 
So if I get both of you right, making a grenache/cabernet sauvignon grown on the land of Romane Conti with 100% carbonic maceration and then fermented with Anchor encapsulated yeast selected in south africa, then aged in redwood barrels would just a slightly different expression of the Romane Conti terroir!!!!
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No, you don't quite read me right.

Grenache/cabernet from Romane-Conti would express the terroir. I don't see how it couldn't. It might suck, but it would do so while expressing the terroir. Everything else you're suggesting is meddling with it...in your hypothetical scenario, atypically and anti-traditionally, but DRC meddles with it now, it's just that they do so in a traditional and typical way. This is also different than saying that we'd be able to identify the Romane-Conti terroir in the grenache/cabernet blend; it's as unlikely anyone could identify it in the very first vintage as it was with the very first vintage of pinot noir from that site.

If you want the incredibly long, boring version of this, which covers more of the exceptions and potential objections, it's here (and quite old at this point), but I suspect you have better things to do with your week.

As noted, I do understand that there is a French way of talking about terroir that includes tradition. I'm not saying it's wrong. How could it be, as a French word and a French concept? All I'm saying is that this conception is less useful than something narrower, and that's why I prefer to use a definition restricted to natural inputs. If you think I should then choose a different word, because that's not what "terroir" means in its own language, I'm fine with that and open to suggestions.

Wine is presented as a finished, whole product, but behind it are nature and man. What man does is informed (but not necessarily controlled) by individual practice and, when applicable, traditional practice. To use terroir in the French way, inclusive of tradition (which means you're necessarily including typicity, as it's the way tradition is made manifest, and I know you're an immense fan of rigid adherence to typicity...let me know if the sarcasm wasn't clear there), you're cherry-picking a tradition. Well: what tradition? When Montrachet was sweet? When Mcon or Sancerre were weren't were weren't sweet? When Alsatian wines were varietal bottlings or when they were blends? When Burgundy was part gamay except when it was part God-knows-what from the Rhne, or later, or even later after they replaced all the crappy clones? When Cte-Rtie tasted like syrah from Cte-Rtie, or when it tasted like coconut-encrusted toast? All those are tradition, depending on your lens, and thus part of the tradition-inclusive part of terroir. But the wines from the same sites across producers and eras are different, aren't they? And so to identify a site's terroir in a tradition-inclusive way, one must consider all those different traditions and the very different wines that have resulted. In other words, the terroir (in this usage) has changed, because the tradition has changed. Worse, it's unidentifiable.

For me -- and this is undoubtedly my Scandinavian fetish for precision at work -- to talk about terroir in this way, in which it means so many different and occasionally opposing things that it means nothing precise or bounded, is no more than a fun parlor game...the sort of drunken rambling about the philosophical importance of radishes in Estonian literature that one might engage in at 4 a.m. If it's going to be a useful concept, I think it needs to be able to mean something: that this site lends this character to what is grown on it. Because then, we can talk about what the site brings. And we can talk about tradition (both adherence to and rebellion against) and how it changes. And we can talk about man, and how he interprets both terroir and tradition, and then adds his own stamp. And finally, we can look at each factor across different wines and gather information to help us understand the commonalities and differences between each input and each wine, which (among other things) leads us back to a better understanding of what, exactly, it is that the site is giving to the wine. If one cares at all about "terroir wines," I think the desire to do so is understood. But if terroir means nothing identifiable, I don't see how that care can be satisfied.

Anyway, that's how I use it now, and how I intend to use it in the future. I will be as mindful with you as I always am, when speaking to French vignerons, that this is not necessarily how they, or you, use the word.

Oh...and FYI, Clos Ste-Hune is very, very rarely inoculated. True for all the estate wines, actually. It's correct that they don't consider it an important decision, though, and will inoculate if they feel it's necessary.
 
There are blurred lines between terroir (whatever the definition) and what we identify as terroir in the glass. I would caution even the best of tasters to think twice before rejecting Eric's definition - much of what we perceive as indigenous characteristics are a fusion of site specifics and long-standing cellar traditions.
 
I fully agree, but I'm not talking about perception of terroir. That is, as you say, a more difficult thing about which to be clear; especially so in the case of a monopole, less so in the case of a vineyard with multiple outputs that we can compare and contrast. I consider the actual terroir effect, which is what I was talking about above, to be something that exists independent of our ability to identify it in the finished wine, even though I know for some the existence of such a split means that terroir doesn't actually mean anything. (I don't agree.)

And I don't reject Eric's definition at all. I just prefer another.
 
originally posted by Thor:
I consider the actual terroir effect, which is what I was talking about above, to be something that exists independent of our ability to identify it in the finished wine, even though I know for some the existence of such a split means that terroir doesn't actually mean anything.
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I couldn't agree more.
 
Thor, FWIW, I was not replying to your post, which I had not yet read at the time.
I am way behind.
 
They've spotted the chatter, and they're taking the homeland security level to Orange plus.

So what's up with '06 d'Angerville Volnays? Do they actually suck?
 
funny thing about those 06s from d'Angerville. When I asked whether the percentage of new oak had changed in that vintage, the answer was no. Only much later did I discover that average age of used barrels had changed significantly. I guess you have to ask the right questions.
 
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