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how-to-make-wine-taste-good
- Thread starter Oswaldo Costa
- Start date
Tristan Welles
Tristan Welles
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by SFJoe:
I may misunderstand you, but I had the impression that there was a lot of connoisseurship in classical antiquity if not before. Price variations between different sources as one index of established preferences.originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The attention to the quality of some wines and terroirs doesn't really begin until the Renaissance
I don't think you misunderstood me. And I may be wrong. I may have been inappropriately generalizing from the French understanding of their own wine. I know that the Romans assiduously planted vines. And it makes sense that, for those who had the money to choose, they could make preferences among the wines from their separate colonies. Given recipes for spicing, sugaring and treating the wine, I very much doubt they had any notion of tasting for terroir. But those who know more should feel free to contradict me.
Did the Burgundian monks not predate the Renaissance? Or were they not French?
Which Renaissance? Carolingian? They were midstream with it.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
I don't think they were thought of as French at the time. I also don't know what kind of work they did in the vineyards in the Middle Ages, except that they did do it. Are you saying that vineyard cru Burgundy had a hexagonal reputation in the 12th century? To judge from French literature, white Saumur was much more highly thought of than either Burgundy or Bordeaux in ca the 16th century and still held it own into the 18th and 19th (old Grandet's money comes in large part from vineyards in Saumur, though I doubt he was anybody's idea of a great winemaker).
I'm sure the crude elements of terroir--sunshine, heat, water--made it through to Roman wines as any others.
As brett can mask terroir, I'm sure that though there was discernible terroir perhaps garum may have obscured it in Roman times.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by Cliff:
I think objecting to their Frenchness is a fair point. But for our purposes, given the later history, it seems strange to say there was no idea of terroir in France until the Renaissance.
I believe this is the sentence that is causing the problem: "The attention to the quality of some wines and terroirs doesn't really begin until the Renaissance." If you take it to mean that people who made wine weren't aware that some places were better for it than others, the claim would be obviously false. If you take it to mean that in the 13th century in say Paris, somebody ordering a mug of wine paid attention to whether it came from Clos Vougeot or St. Estephe or anywhere other than from the barrels of the local joint he favored to buy his wine, however, I don't think the fact that people in Burgundy knew that it was a good place for planting vines is counter-evidence.
Joe's claim about Falernian is better evidence of valuing terrior because it did come from a specific place that they valued as a good place to grow the grape (though I don't know whether anyone ever checked to see whether the vineyard a few counties over could do as well or better or worse). But since this thread started with bemoaning what mass production does to taste, there I was arguing simply that given the way Romans preferred their wine, this isn't a great example of seeking le gout de terroir.