Tonight we have a barnburner. Alice Feiring delivered a talk about terroir tonight at Whitman College, and the Walla Walla wine community will be talking for the next week. Life in Eastern Washington moves like the wind through the wheat. Back and forth. Back, and forth. And ultimately, still in the same place.
Alice Feiring’s blog can be found at www.alicefeiring.com. She hails from New York, and Walla Walla welcomes wine writers and lovers from all walks of life. Without people to enjoy wine, why make it?
Alice expounds the beauties and nuances of terroir driven wines while trying to tear down the wall that Robert Parker created by suggesting that 90+ point wines should be over-ripened on the vine, over-extracted in the fermentation, over-oaked during aging, and over-priced at the store — or better yet, unavailable to meager peons.
The terroirists so far are on-board with this line of thinking. So what constitutes a terroir-driven wine, and how do we find such things? How much does a terroir-driven wine cost? Can I find it at Wal-mart or do I have to travel to wine country to find it? Never fear, the terroirists are here to sort the truths, and answer the questions. As we believe, no wine question is stupid…wine reflects joy, not pretentiousness.
Alice goes on to suggest the following criteria for a terroir-driven wine. Irrigation should only be used to keep a vine alive, otherwise it is overly manipulative. Packaged yeasts deny terroir. Adding acid to correct over-ripened grapes is cheating. Adding water to correct excessive sugar dilutes flavor and relegates wine to the factory-driven model. Putting wine through reverse-osmosis relegates one to the 5th ring of Dante’s Inferno (the ring where thieves in lizard form are constantly stealing one another’s shape and form).
Terroir driven vineyard?
Ok, let’s address the holes. Grapes require a certain amount of water to survive. True. Weather is beyond man’s control. True. Irrigation is a science. True. Some soils hold more water than others, and some soils absorb water quicker than other. Also true. Some of Europe’s appellation systems do not allow irrigation. Still true. None of America’s AVA’s restrict irrigation. Why? Because American wines are not terroir driven?
No. It is because Europe receives summer rains, and the American West receives rain in the winter and spring. American West soils can hold Mother Earth’s liquid nourishment for only so many months, and then we send the water down the black plastic tubes to keep our vines alive. A good farmer can calculate the exact amount to maximize flavor compounds, and a poor farmer can do whatever he wants.
Yeast? Ok. Some terroir-driven wines are indeed only fermented with native yeasts. Saccharomyces is the genus of yeast that make sourdough bread, wine, beer, and eats sugar on almost every continent on Earth. Some of these strains are efficient at making rich and flavorful wine, and some die very easily when the wine is still sweet and 7% alcohol, and would spoil easily.
Yes, I am drinking a classic Tawny Port right now, on a rocking chair, but the important point is that yeasts are ubiquitous. They are everywhere. Their spores are a mile up in the atmosphere, and they are alive a few inches down in the soil. But they don’t all efficiently make wine. Here’s the clincher, all the flavor and aroma compounds that they make in wine are volatile and tend to disappear in the wine at about three years. The grape flavors and flavor precursors however, remain…
Alice’s criteria suggest that over-manipulated wines should be abandoned in search of wines that reflect Nature’s true course. Vitis vinifera is the species of grapevine that almost all of the world’s most popular and sought-after wines belong to. Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Lemberger, Pinot Noir…all Vitis vinifera. Concord? Vitis labrusca.
Vitis vinifera did not naturally spring out of France or Italy. It was brought there by Romans and Greeks. Is this manipulation? Does this mean that every wine except those from the Republic of Georgia or Northeastern Turkey are manipulated? Hmm…
Is harvesting grapes with a mechanical harvester manipulative? Maybe. It’s also a good way to harvest bird nests. Is using a truck to haul your terroir-driven wine to your winery manipulative? What about harvesting with a pair of scissors? Maybe we should harvests with our mouths? Maybe we could make use of native birds to bring in the grapes for us.
Is using a trellis a manipulative winemaking technique?
Okay back to yeast. Make a cutting of a vine that grows in naturally in Armenia, hop on a Phonecian trade vessel, get off on Sicily, put it in the ground, and you’ve changed the course of history. Collect a yeast cell from this same vineyard, isolate it in a laboratory, put it in a package, take it to Walla Walla, add it to your vintage, and you’ll get a 14.1% alcohol wine.
Alright, let’s wrap it up here. So what? Let’s say the same Walla Walla winemaker who is driven by free-market economics and supporting his family, and uses packaged yeast, dumped his pressed grapeskins in his vineyard last fall. Now, let’s imagine that his neighbor only uses “wild yeasts,” doesn’t use irrigation, plants grapevines on horseback, and only let’s you drink his wine if you are on his wine list. I’ll let you in on a secret. Do you know what a fruit fly is capable of doing?
He can carry the yeast from one vineyard to another. The fruit fly can land on the composted pile of grapes, pick up a “packaged yeast” on his legs, and can carry the “killer” yeast strain to the terroir-driven vineyard across the fence. Our friend the fruit-fly has inoculated the neighbor’s “wild fermented” bin of rotting fruit and finished his wines for him, because his “wild” yeasts were too lily-livered to finish the job.
Wine does come from a vineyard, somewhere, so say yes to terroir, say no to velcorin, and ask questions. Especially to winemakers, because there’s a lot of cool stuff to learn about. And if you think you are being deceived? Ask us. We know about stuff.
Your Friend,
Michael “the Microbiologist” Penn
Posted by michaelthemicrobiologist 
Terroirists - probably the best wine blog in the world 