Terroir as a concept in 16th-century France

In his sweeping treatment of ancient versus modern wines (Inventing Wine), Paul Lukacs identifies the seminal terroir events in France as the demarcation of the Burgundy vineyards by the Cistercian monks beginning in 1098 and the AOC system implemented in the early 20th century. But this apparent terroir desert misses the true formative period -- as well as the ups and downs -- of this concept, beginning during the Renaissance and continuing for two centuries thereafter. A period and history that is detailed in Thomas Parker's Tasting Terroir: The History of an Idea. I summarize Parker's history in a number of posts beginning herein with terroir in the 16th century.

According to Lukacs, the wine drunk during the Middle Ages was "ancient"; that is, it was either oxodized, sour, and additive-filled or a dried-grape sweet wine. And consumption was not based on sensorial characteristics. Rather, wine was drunk for spiritual communion, water purification, bodily nourishment, or social status. Thus there was no culture of wine drinking within which a concept of terroir would gain traction.

In France, creation of such a culture fell to the literary set with the works of Rabelais, the poets of the Pléiade, and Jacques Gohory leading the way. In the first two cases, the god Bacchus was the protagonist. According to Parker:

In the pages of Rabelais, Bacchus is a force not only of inebriation and folly, but also of conviviality, universality, and great wisdom. In the group of sixteenth century Renaissance poets known as the Pléiade, Bacchus often connotes enjoying friendship and maximizing the pleasure of daily life. But there is another element at play ... Bacchus appears in a naturalistic register of farming and place-specific wines, deployed not to celebrate culinary culture in itself, but to create linguistic identity and foster poetic inspiration. Instead of standing for a force of inebriation, he represents lucidity; instead of defining terroir in negative terms, he circumscribes it positively in a discourse on place and the origin of language.

Jacques Gohory's 1549 publication Dissertation on the Vine, Wine, and Harvest was the first technical book on wine written in the French language. According to Parker, the work was "a mix between a practical manual of viticulture and winemaking, an apology for wine itself, and a joyous fictional foray of consumption." Gohory's work normalized wine, provided pragmatic information in a place-specific optic, bolstered wine's reputation by appealing to its scientific and philosophical underpinnings, and provided the linguistic tools and specialized vocabulary in French that would be needed to understand working vines and making wines (Parker).

The "medical science" community also contributed to the concept of terroir during its formative years. Charles Etienne, a physician, wrote a Latin text in 1554 (translated into French a decade later as L'Agriculture et la maison rustique) which laid out in great detail wines from the various regions of France and other European countries with comments on their individual longevity, force of character, and potential impact on health. Etienne claimed that terroir affected taste, with lighter wines coming from Paris and its surrounds (the best wines and well suited to urbanites, the studious, and persons living sedentary lives) while wines from warmer climes "burnt the entrails and encumbered the mind."

Jean Bruyérin-Champier, physician to Francois I, wrote a Latin text called De Ri Cibaria in 1560 wherein he detailed categories of food, their history, and the sources of best production. He posited that France's wines were the most agreeable and healthful because of its soils. Julien Le Paulmier, also a physician, had his Treatise on Wine and Cider translated from Latin in 1589. This book, according to Parker, provided a "nuanced depiction of terroir" in a wine- and cider-specific text rather than in a broader agricultural context. Le Paulmier identified terroir as "one of the governing forces of a wine's merit or defects in flavor and constitution" and held that a good gourmet should be able to discern the qualities and defects of a wine or cider, its terroir of origin, and its age. He also held the belief that the taste of terroir was itself a defect because earth or minerals (its characteristics) were "dirty, unpleasantly earthy, or lacking in elegance."

The most full-throated exposition of terroir in that period was contained in the 1600 publication of Olivier de Serres titled The Agricultural Theater and the Management of Fields. This seminal agricultural manual had terroir front and center with 87 distinct mentions (Parker). De Serres held that "the climate and terroir (note that these are two distinct elements to him) provide wine with its taste and force in accordance with their properties so that it is completely impossible to account for the diversity of wine by the species of grape." De Serres viewed the knowledge of terroir as an essential element in planting decisions rather than as a sensorial pursuit.

Published in the first year of the 17th century, De Serres' work would have necessarily drawn on the works that preceded it. According to Parker, its view of terroir was both modern and early modern.

... modern because the French recognized that physiographic aspects of the land had an effect on flavors and because there was a nationalistic and nostalgic relationship between people and specific places as illustrated through agricultural production. Early modern in the sense that, as far as food was concerned, terroir was most often used in the technical context of deciding where to grow particular crops than in the context of culinary appreciation.

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Correcting Lukacs' Inventing Wine with Clark Smith's Postmodern Winemaking?

In a previous post, I reported on Isabelle Legereon's issues with modern-day winemaking (as presented in her book Natural Wine) and utilized information from Lukacs (Inventing Wine) to refute/contextualize some of her arguments. Information gleaned from a reading of Clark Smith's Postmodern Winemaking shows that some of the post-WWII winemaking innovations identified by Lukacs were (i) much more granular than indicated and (ii) originated in Germany, rather than in France (and Emile Peynaud).

As I described it in my earlier post,

The concept of human control of the winemaking process was not new, according to Lukacs. It began with Enlightenment scientists such as Antoine Lavoisier and Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in the 1700s, continued through Pasteur (with his discoveries of the role of yeasts and bacteria in fermentation and spoilage) and the work of Emile Peynaud, both in his lab and working with the Bordeaux Chateaus to convert his research to actionable inputs into the winemaking process. Peynaud's contribution included refrigeration, understanding the role of malolactic fermentation, and the need for rigorous selection in the vineyard. His efforts changed the stylistic and qualitative character of the Bordeaux wines such that the "whites became less tart and vegetal and the reds more supple and sensuous, fuller in flavor but less astringent."

Based on Clark Smith's interpretation of the history of that period, the "tools of 20th century winemaking" were stainless steel, inert gas, refrigeration, and sterile filtration (a product of nuclear energy) and this "modern winemaking revolution exploded out of Germany" in the form of Rieslings that were fresh, sterile-filtered, and completely without oxidative characters. According to Smith: "the idea of a light, sweet, fresh, fruity wine like Blue Nun was as world changing as color television." 

These tools and techniques were adopted by Peynaud and other scientists in France and, from there, migrated to the US. According to Smith, prior to the 1960s, 95% of California wines were either port or sherry styles. With the introduction of Blue Nunn, and the adoption of the associated technologies in Bordeaux, US winemakers followed suit such that, by 1970, the majority of California wine contained less than 14% alcohol.

Adoption of these new technologies was not trouble-free. According to Smith, fully 50% of the wine produced had one or more of the following afflictions:

• Volatile acidity
• Aldehyde
• Geranium tone
• Heat instability
• Cold instability.

Heroic work at UCDavis on issues such as pH, sulfur dioxide management, sanitation, oxidation prevention, temperature management, and control of malolactic fermentation led to "an era of clean, competent table wine production."

This base of quality production, plus their success in the 1976 Judgment of Paris, caused the US producers, according to Smith, "to shift from light European knockoffs to big Chardonnays and Cabernets that the French could not match."

In closing, while Lukacs identifies the post-WWII period as important, as it relates to quality winemaking, if Smith's history is accurate, then Lukacs missed both the origin and scope of the advancements.

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A brief history of terroir (After Lukacs)

So I am taking a class and we were asked to discuss selected aspects of terroir. Having read Lukacs Reinventing Wine -- and been impressed with his treatment of terroir therein -- I will use his work to explore the topic from an historical perspective.

Let us begin with a definition of terroir. According to Lukacs, this is a fairly modern term which has its roots in the Latin word terratorium and was used in France to mean territory. During the 19th century additional meaning was placed on the original skeletal framework where the word was now used as a descriptor for an "area of land valued specifically for agricultural properties." In the 1900s terroir began to be used as a designator for a vineyard's natural environment and to characterize the wines made from the grapes grown therein. According to Lukacs' research (summarized graphically below), modern wine did not arise until the advent of the relevant scientific and technological advances of the Enlightenment.

Prior to that period, wine drinkers consumed oxidized, sour wines which were "fortified" with all manner of additives designed to either slow its decay or make it more "palatable." Even in those days, however, there was some sense of preference for wines from specific areas: in Classical Greece, the Aegean Isles; in Rome, initially, wines from the south and then, later in the empire, wines from sub-regions (Falernum, for example) of the Bay of Naples or Latium. These wines were from broad geographic areas, would have been awful to our modern palates, and the appreciation would have been as much for the additives as it was for the wine.

According to Lukacs, the "first wines prized for their ability to display ... individualized aroma and flavors" were made in Burgundy by the Cistercian order which had been founded there in 1098. This order was focused on piety and hard work and devoted a lot of effort to tending their vineyards. Over the course of many vintages, these monks were able to identify the characteristics of individual vineyard plots and to note that these differences were, in some cases, manifested by "only a few steps separating an excellent grape-growing spot from a merely good one." The monks marked out these plots by their differences, in some cases building a stone wall to create a "cloistered vineyard." Lukacs takes the position that the monks did not intend that their demarcations single out one vineyard as better than the other. Rather, they were saying that the grapes sourced from these vineyards made reliably noticeably different wines and they thus needed to be so identified.

The wines from Clos Vougeot and other Cistercian crus were perceived as being so different as to be worth the trouble and expense of overland shipping to the relevant markets or waterways for onward transit.

While the grapes grown in that time/space clearly demonstrated terroir differences, it is not clear that the wines had the same experience. Not for long anyway. After all, the winemaking practices at the Abbey was still normative and the rudimentary production and storage techniques still made wines susceptible to the pull of vinegar. As shown in the figure below, the Burgundian wine of that era was still classed as "Ancient" and, as such, the over-riding characteristics would have been oxidative and acetic. If these were the dominant characters, is it possible that, even in those days, marketing reigned supreme where terroir was concerned because I find it hard to understand "more finely oxidized" or "elegant acetic."

Burgundy has had a long tradition of vineyard-specific crus and associated wines, a luxury that was denied Bordeaux. And the Burgundy tradition translated into desired wines and high prices. Bordeaux saw tradition as the "value proposition" and set out to have its wines don that mantle. It began with Arnaud III de Pontac doubling the price of the wines from Haut-Brion in 1660 because his estate, he said, was "special." There was no contemporary evidence to back up his claim of "specialness" but his calculation was that if his wines were bought at that elevated price, the buyers would not have the gall to adulterate it with "lesser wines" prior to sale to the final consumer. Rather, they would aid him in the projection of the special nature of his wine by selling it into the market at that elevated price plus a markup. This was pure marketing. Madison Avenue would have been proud of this guy.

The rest of the Bordeaux establishment built on this brazen arrest and seizure of quality by stipulating that consumers buying from the Chateaus were assured of quality wines because of the tradition of producing same. So while the vineyard site may expand or contract, and the fruit may be sourced from different plots in the vineyard, the Chateau remained constant; and so would the quality of the wine. The cru in Burgundy was a vineyard or plot; the cru in Bordeaux was a myth. The wine in Burgundy was a mono-varietal; the wine in Bordeaux was a blend.

A number of other European wine regions saw how Bordeaux has successfully re-invented itself and wanted in on the action. So they either brought French winemakers to their territory or went to Bordeaux themselves so that they could learn the "tricks of the trade." Examples include Piedmont (1843), Biondi-Santi in Montalcino, and the Rioja region of Spain.

What Lukacs termed the First European Golden Age of Wine came crashing down around the continent's ear after the visitation of a series of vineyard pests and diseases beginning with Phylloxera  in the 1860s.

The period post the 1860s, and into the Early Post WWI, was characterized by widespread misrepresentation of the wines that were being sold to consumers. This cheating was hurting the image and the pocket of responsible French growers so they began to seek the government's aid in developing mechanisms that would reassure the customer as to what he/she was buying. Lukacs: "The original rationale for demarcating particular regions as the source of particular wines had been a desire for authenticity. By requiring that only wines made in specific areas be identified as such on labels or invoices, the French authorities tried to halt the sale of counterfeit cuvees."

With the passage of time, officials began to pack additional requirements onto the original framework to include items such as the varieties that could be used in the region, how they should be planted, the yield, how the wine should be made, and how it should taste. As a result of these practices, the particular taste of the region's wine was solidified. Lukacs again: "The appellation system became a mechanism for a legally sanctioned hierarchy of quality." It improved French wine by "distinguishing those that employed a genuine particularity of aroma and flavor from those that did not." One of the other facets of the French AOC system was that it also, for the first time, made quality wine available at the table of the common man. All of the other European countries instituted similar sytems to regulate their local wine industries.

New world wines did not begin to compete effectively with French wines until the 1970s and 1980s and their vintners did not set much store by the French focus on the double-T's -- terroir and tradition. They instead stressed the double-V's -- variety and vision. A classic example is Penfold's Grange, the grapes for which are sourced from a number of disparate vineyards but yet, year after year, produces a distinctive wine with an immediately recognizable flavor profile. This was, according to Lukacs, a testament to the winemaker's vision and execution.

Based on the foregoing, terroir, as construed today, differs significantly from its origins and intent. The Cistercians demarcated their vineyards to show differences in grapes grown there and, as a result, established a tradition of Burgundian wines. I maintain that they initially established a tradition of Burgundian vineyards -- because the wines should have been indistinguishable from others due to oxidation and sourness -- and that evolved into a tradition of Burgundian wines. Somewhere along the way there was a successful marketing effort to traditionalize the industry and then to monetize that tradition. Bordeaux recognized the pecuniary benefits of traditions and sought, successfully, to establish its own. They did not spend the hundreds of years getting to understand the characteristics of their vineyards -- as the Burgundians had done. They just claimed it. The AOC system, set up to deter counterfeit wines, evolved into a "deviser" of taste and quality. It was not set up around terroir. Rather, terroir was devolved upon it.

New world vintners rightly eschewed pursuit of terroir and tradition in their winemaking efforts. They were not confronting the same issues or experiences as had their old-world brethren. Yet they have been able to turn out wines of high quality. Should these winemakers pursue the adoption of terroir wines? If they want to. But I have seen no scientific evidence which shows a "terroir effect" The research which has been done by Maltman, for example, shows no correlation between vineyard soils and grape/wine composition. To my mind, terroir is all about tradition and monetization of same.

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Class, quality, and terroir: Wine through the ages

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Book Review: Inventing Wine

In the Introduction to his book (Inventing Wine: A New History of one of the World's Most Ancient Pleasures, Norton, 2012), Paul Lukacs contends that all previous histories have depicted the wine story as a continuum but that "... while wine is old, wine as we know it is new." As he sees it, "Far from being the end point in an unbroken series of vintages stretching back to antiquity, today's wines are the product of a set of radical, even revolutionary changes involving both how wine was produced and why it was drunk."

Lukacs makes his case in this comprehensive, multi-layered, multi-faceted treatise which organizes the history of wine into seven chapter-specific periods, all of which are connected by underlying themes of class, quality, taste, wine styles, and terroir, with today's wine as a constant reference point.

One of the devices utilized by Lukacs to illustrate the lack of continuity in wine history is to highlight the dominant conception of wine by contemporary drinkers through the ages. Using this approach he identifies the shifting utility of wine over time: a religious drink restricted to the elite from the early years through the Fall of Rome; "secularization of wine" during the Middle Ages and its use as a calorie supplement; scientific and technological modernization during the Rennaisance driving a "first European golden age of wine" in the 19th century; the second European golden age of wine; and stylistic and qualitative globalization in more recent times. In the first two periods mentioned, wine was characterized largely by poor quality and taste, situations that held until the Rennaisance and the invention of corks and hardy bottles and a better understanding of the science of fermentation. It was during this period that consumers began to store wines and appreciate qualities such as balance, depth, and length. This was truly the invention of modern wine.

The scope of this undertaking is truly breathtaking. Beginning with wine's discovery in the Neolithic period, Lukacs follows its trail through the ancient kingdoms into Egypt, Greece, and Rome, all the while painting a picture of its utility and utilization. And that trail continues to today's globalized wines and the arguments and discussions surrounding them. But it is not a purely longitudinal effort. Lukacs writes eloquently about the scientific and technological breakthroughs that brought wine to its current state but also delves into the lives and motivations of the leading oenological scientists. He not only writes about the wine regions that come to the fore over the course of history but also writes about the pioneering vineyardists and the writers who wrote about their vineyards. He writes about wine but also writes about the origin and strengths of competing beverages and spirits and the forces that propelled wine above the fray. He writes about the development of the middle class and the role that they played in the development and democratization of wine.

One of the ongoing discussions in todays wine press is the role of terroir in the production of fine wines (As a matter of fact, in some cases the discussion is much baser with the definition of terroir differing from author to author.). Lukacs weaves a history of terroir into this undertaking going back to the times when place was not a consideration and working his way up to the Cistercian monks and their seminal work on terroir to include, not only the growing environment, but also the grapes that were best suited to their operating environment in Burgundy. Lukacs goes to great lengths to explain that the Cistercians did not wall off vineyards in Burgundy to show which wines were better; they actually sought to identify differences in characteristics of the wines grown on separate plots. But he also shows that perception of quality can be pushed beyond the limiting factor of terroir. Lukacs points out that while a cru in Burgundy is a single plot, a cru in Bordeaux is a single proprietor. The concept of quality being extended to tradition was first mentioned in Jullien's 1816 publication Topographie and was fully embraced by Bordeaux proprietors in the 1850s where quality came to be defined as quality = cru (estate) + grapes (blend) + tradition. The success of Bordeaux vintners in getting customers to buy into the concept that demonstrated long-term quality production would most likely be repeated in present and future vintages led a number of visionary producers in other regions - Barolo, Gattinara, Asti, Montalcino, Rioja -- to invent traditions of their own and gain market acceptance of their wines in relatively short timeframes.

Lukacs sees this invention and re-invention of wine as continuing to the current day. The 1982 Bordeaux vintage is seen as an inflection point with more powerful wines gaining the attention of influential critics and, as result, the customer base. This move to power is accentuated by (i) producers vying for the attention of the critics and manipulating their wines in order to improve their scores and (ii) more intensely flavored wines being made from international grape varieties grown in environments where they ripen fully.

As good as it is, Inventing Wine suffers from a few shortcomings, the most obvious of which is limited copy editing prior to its finalization. Disconcertingly, the word "because" appears in numerous sentences throughout the book for no apparent reason. It does not fit into the sentences, has no correlation with the words preceding or succeeding, and basically renders the sentences indecipherable. It would appear that someone made a global change to the final version with unintended consequences; consequences that were not caught. Another shortcoming, from my perspective, was the paucity of statistics on vineyards, wine consumers, etc., so that one could get a sense of growth/engagement through the ages.

The foregoing notwithstanding, this book makes a clear and detailed case that modern wine is the result of a series of inventions that were made along the way and continue to this day. Some of these inventions were substantive while others were perceptive; some were wine-specific while others were tangential (the rise of restaurants, for example, helped to link the consumption of wine and food). Inventing Wine will increase your appreciation of modern wines and the wine industry but will require a significant time investment in order to reap its full benefit. It is best read with a pen and accompanying notepad.


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The first golden age of wine

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Infographic: Wine through the ages

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