When I get off a plane in Europe, something smells differently European, and it takes a moment to register what it is: people. They don’t smell in America. Oh, sure, the occasional heavy smoker or gutter-dweller telegraphs his presence quite clearly. What’s missing is the normal smell of bodies, vibrant and strangely pleasant, like someone had turned up the warm tones on the color monitor of life. It’s hard to find an American who doesn’t take a shower at least once a day--twice if he does anything sweaty--and it’s hard to find a European who does.
I wonder if this cultural subtext explains a wine issue that also divides along the Euro/American fault line: Earth. When you taste blind, earthiness (or lack thereof) is a major clue to a wine's origin. Wines from the Old World mostly have it; wines from the New World seldom do.
The term earth is pretty broad. It encompasses, for instance, the category of minerals. Petrol and diesel are easy to smell in older German Riesling, but slate, a term often used for the younger sort, is elusive. I’ve ruined more than one emperor’s fashion show by pointing out that rocks don’t smell. I’m usually told to think about rocks after they’d been rained on. Chalk baffles me, too. Chablis is sometimes described as chalky, and there’s talk of “dusty, chalky aromas.” But when I read about “smooth, chalky raspberry and cherry flavors,” I’m not sure if the beverage rated was Rosé or Robitussin.
Mostly, though, earth means something organic -- truffles, topsoil or leaves rotting on the forest floor. Even if you can’t quite wrap your nose around bramble, a heaving pile of composting mulch should be a cinch. Dust and cobwebs describe the drier side of earth.
Where do these flavors and aromas come from? I have not yet met the winemaker who doesn’t claim that the soils of his vineyard are mirrored in his wine. Flinty wines from flinty fields, chalk from chalk, and the club-soda-like minerality of gneiss and loess from their respective alluvial beds. Whether or not this reflects heartfelt belief or a clever profit/loess statement, scientists dispute the concept.
Research in Australia, California, and Europe claims earthiness is a result of clonal selection and that if soil composition has anything to do with it at all, it’s not the mineral content but the soil’s capacity to retain or drain water that makes a difference.
The lion’s share of earthiness comes from brettanomyces, a wild yeast that can either bless or curse a winery. When it comes, it doesn’t just pay a visit -- it unpacks its pajamas and toothbrush and moves in for good. Almost all red wines have a trace of brett. At low levels it adds complexity. You can thank it for the traditional regional characters of the finest from the Rhône, Burgundy and Bordeaux. Besides earth, its tang also evokes game, bacon, leather and mushrooms.
Some people--especially squeaky-clean, well-showered Americans who prefer their wines fruity--consider it a fault. Their vocabulary for Brett includes barnyard, wet dog, stale hamburger, sweaty horse blanket, band-aid and chicken droppings. And everyone agrees that too much Brett overwhelms fruit and renders wine revoltingly undrinkable.
Yet the sort of wine that sends shivers up and down the spines of enophiles is inevitably earthy. Why should this be? Think of a wild crush you had, preferably someone who broke your heart. What image brings back that familiar stab of pain and/or pleasure? Abs of steel? A perfect set of Miss America chiclets? I doubt it. More likely something unique: mussed-up hair, a certain freckle, an attitude. A mole becomes a beauty mark when it punctuates a face of mathematically-bland perfection. In the same way, earthy oddness, that cannot be manufactured in the winery, balances the correct flavors that can. Think of earth as wine’s birthmark, the thumbprint not of its maker but of its Maker.
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