Terroir--Not Just Dirt

Terroir—Not Just Dirt

By Codey Foster

The other day I was unpacking our most recent shipment of Lopez de Heredia Grand Reservas, the 1995 Bosconia. The Lopez Grand Reservas come wrapped in a transparent white tissue paper and, although I like the look of the tissue wrapped bottles in the store and in my cellar, I always try to unwrap at least one of the bottles to put on the shelf as a display so everyone can get a good look at the label, and vintage, and so fourth. In any case, I noticed that the ’95 that I’d freshly unwrapped had a pretty healthy layer of dust deposited on the bottom of the bottle so I wiped it off with my finger and smelled it. That’s what us wine people do after all—were always smelling and tasting things, random things, even things that ought not be smelled or tasted. Anyway, that dust--Lopez de Heredia dust, undoubtedly—smelled like only one other thing that I’d ever smelled before, and that is Lopez de Heredia wine. All wines from Lopez (red or white) come with a distinct spicy/pungent quality to them, a quality that I’ve long attributed to combinations of American oak and soil, however, after analyzing the dust deposited on the bottom of that particular bottle of Grand Reserva, I can only believe that at least a major part of that spicy/pungent flavor profile that is Lopez de Heredia, must be imparted into the wine from the winery itself.

This does make some sense after all. With the Grand Reservas especially, the wines are allowed to age in barrel for almost ten years at which time the especially porous American oak permits a slow gas exchange, allowing small amounts of winery air into the barrel and ultimately into the wine. Frequent racking and re-racking also facilitates atmospheric contact with the wine over the course of barrel aging. The winery influence, however, doesn’t stop here but continues in the bottle as the wine ages on its cork, a process through which it continues to breath Lopez air for almost ten years and sometimes even more before it is released onto the retail market. All said and done, the end result is a spectacular range of reds and whites with complex secondary and tertiary aromas that could not have been produced from a vineyard alone.

And so it is my personal belief that the mold, the dust, the funk, and the air that make up the Lopez cellars are all a contribution of Terroir, and in some cases perhaps an even more substantial contribution of Terroir than the soil itself.

Now, Lopez de Heredia is perhaps the most prominent example of Terroir outside the vineyard however, similar although less obvious examples exist all over the Old World. Even in Burgundy.

I once heard (or read, I can’t remember) a winemaker attest that fruit grown in Vosne-Romanee but fermented in Morey-st-Denis took on more of a Morey flavor profile than a Vosne-Romanee flavor profile and similarly Morey-st-Denis fruit fermented in Vosne-Romanee took on a little more of a Vosne-Romanee fruit profile than a Morey-st-Denis fruit profile. This variation suggests only one thing—that the native yeasts of each village conduct fermentation to their own accord in order to produce wines that, regardless to vineyard site, are characteristic of the village where they were fermented.

Also in Burgundy--as with Lopez de Heredia--terroir of producer can sometimes manifest itself over terroir of vineyard site. I’ve seen this happen with Gouges, Laurent, and sometimes even Coche-Dury (all first-rate producers, or course) however the most prominent example I can think of is Harmand-Geoffroy, a producer that imparts a distinct and refined truffley earthiness (sometimes bordering on Brettanomyces, but only stylistically) into his wines. This distinctly Geoffroy quality is most annunciated in his Grand Crus and Premier Crus, however, even in his most basic Bourgogne ‘La Nouroy’, Geoffroy swagger is evident and firmly delineated.

Please understand though that these observations are in no way to denounce the relevance of vineyard site, and soil. Vineyard site is the most influential element of terroir for many domains in Burgundy (and beyond) and wines from producers like Fourrier, Barthod, and Jadot (among many others), truly attest to this. That’s why Burgundy is Burgundy—it’s why so many winemakers go to the trouble to tediously vinify different vineyard plots separately—dirt matters. That said, it is not the only thing that matters. So many other factors contribute to a sense of place other than vineyard site. Ultimately terroir is a package of where a wine is grown and where a wine is made, as to give the drinker a true sense of place as instilled in the wine in the vineyard and winery.