Chapter One
Terroir
I admit to a firmly held prejudice. I have a distinct preference for the traditional wines of western Europe and a matching skepticism about most of the wines produced in the New World as well as for those wines made in the Old World that seek to imitate the characteristics of their New World brethren. My perspective, once so common in the wine trade, is now shared by a small, probably aging, minority of wine merchants. Nevertheless, I am content with my choices.
When I first stumbled into the wine business in late 1977, learning about wine was essentially a series of geography lessons. The market for wine, small as it was at that time in the United States, consisted almost exclusively of the wines of western Europe, with a smattering of wines, mostly of rank commercial quality, from a few other grape-growing regions such as the vast central valley of California, where volume rather than reflections of a wine merchantquality was paramount. It was a given that the finest of wines came from the Moselle and the Rhine in Germany; from Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Loire and Rhêne valleys of France; from Piedmont and Tuscany in Italy; and on the Iberian peninsula, from the Rioja in Spain and the Porto district in Portugal. There were hints of possible worthy competitors elsewhere, but the game was to be played on the European fields.
The romance of European wine was, for me, like the experience of map reading in which the names of far-off places stimulated the imagination. The seemingly infinite series of villages, little communities that gave their names to the wines produced there, whether in Italy or France or Germany or Spain or Portugal, created a library of potential stories. And, as I dug into the reference works and scanned the labels on the bottles of wine and engaged in an endless series of tastings, it became clear to me that a wine was a creature of its geographical origin; for if it were not, then there would never have beenany reason for this memory-straining list of appellations and subsets of appellations, all providing with greater and greater specificity the details of a wine's birthplace.
In many ways, that era was a simpler time. There were perhaps a handful or two of American importers of the finest wines; harvest time occurred from mid-September through early autumn, sometimes extending into November or perhaps December for thecurious eisweins of Germany; everyone knew the names of the great growths of Bordeaux and the group of powerful family firms in Burgundy or the Rhêne or Tuscany that controlled much of the production in those regions; and there was usually aretailer or two in each major American city who had branched out beyond the sale of spirits to embrace the snobbish trade in fine wines. This was the world of wine in the States at the moment of my almost inexplicable immersion in the commerce ofwine.
Much has changed since the late 1970s. There has been, in the intervening years, an explosion of interest in both the making and the consumption of wine. Vineyards have proliferated in places where the grapevine never existed before or where European influence may have placed only an occasional grapevine to maintain a cultural habit. There are vast tracts covered with the vine throughout the west coast of the United States, from Washington State through Oregon and on through much of California. The valleys of Chile produce massive quantities of wine, as do the plains of Australia. There are vineyards to be found almost everywhere now, including China and India. We are awash in wine and there are, as a result, armies of wine merchants plying this new-growth industry. Harvest now occurs in February and March in the southern hemisphere, and six to eight months later in the north. Our understanding of vintage quality is a more difficult feat to master. The wine market is a veritable souk with a different set of rules—or perhaps with no rules at all.
To simplify this jumble of wines and places and traders, initiates now more often start by reading about, or hearing, the litany of grape varieties. The list is a short one, certainly when compared to the large number of wine appellations that have been recognized and authorized. This approach makes comparable, and comprehensible as well, an Australian Chardonnay, a Chardonnay from Meursault in Burgundy, and a Chardonnay vinted in Sonoma County, California. The geography of wine, the standard with which I grew up, becomes submerged in, and perhaps even obliterated by, this simplified approach to wine.
This is more than unfortunate; it is blasphemy. Learning of chardonnay, pinot noir, syrah, and the other grape varieties is an exercise in botany. It is interesting, but it doesn't become compelling until the vine is married to the place where it can flourish. More important, it is a list that, for me, lacks the drama and reflections of a wine merchant the history of the rules of geography upon which I built my love of wine. To contemplate the reasons why a wine made from the chardonnay grape planted on a particular hillside in the Cête d'Or of Burgundy differs so markedly not only from its kin harvested on a slope in Australia thousands of miles and a hemisphere away but also from its sister wine made from grapes harvested by the same grower just meters away is to begin to grasp the logic of the phenomenon known as terroir. The concept that the particulars of a zone—the combination of soil, climate, grape type, and, perhaps, human history—are responsible for producing very special characteristics that are unique to a quite specific spot turns the consumption and the study of wine, as well as the commerce in it, into more fascinating and ultimately more satisfying activities. It also reveals the truth about wine and anchors us to a respect for the natural world that is fundamental to our well-being. The most satisfying of wines reveal their characters slurp by slurp as they speak of their origins and their traditions. The best of wines always proudly tell you from where they come.
There are isolated voices in the wine trade that decry the existence of terroir, yet, by and large, the wine community not only believes in the concept but considers it fundamental. That is why, for example, in those areas where growing grapes for the purpose of making wine is relatively new, there is an ongoing search to define places that appear to produce wine of special character. Regard, for example, the decades-long and still incomplete process of delineating territories in northern California, first separating Sonoma as an appellation from Napa and further refining Napa to carve out the Stag's Leap and Mayacamas Mountains and Rutherford Bench areas, just to name a few. All of this is based upon the rational European idealthat finds its most complex expression in the rigorous appellation laws that not only define special geographical areas known after centuries of farming to be the source of special vinous habitat but also control what grapes get planted where and often even in what proportions. Despite the modern notion that man can create miracles given enough money and time and expertise, and despite the extravagant praise thrown at wines that appear on the scene without a scintilla of heritage, to truly understand the hierarchy of wine we must reference the trinity of soil, climate, and grape that is canonized in rules established by the Europeans.
It is that set of standards that has disciplined my efforts over a thirty-year career as a wine merchant. My selections as a wine merchant are grounded entirely on my understanding of those rules, and I marry that discipline to my personal tastesto assemble a portfolio of wines to present to the public. I am comfortable within this world of wine. My tastes have been honed by wines bearing allegiance to these concepts, which explain the prejudice that informs what I do.
Excerpted from Reflections of A Wine Merchant by Neal I. Rosenthal.
Copyright © 2008 by Neal I. Rosenthal.
Published 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
