Terroir: Issues in a human built construct Terroir has slipped nature’s tether. It has been taken up by real estate agents and the tourist industry in partnership with government tourism offices to promote vacation travel, retirement sites, recreation facilities and festivals of all sorts. Several years back I came across the views of Sean Thackrey, winemaker and owner of Orion in Marin County, Ca., who said bluntly, “My objection [to terroir] is simply that it’s so ruthlessly misused, and with such horrifying hypocrisy”.1 I do not intend to answer the question: “What is terroir?” As Thackrey said, “It’s true that fruit grown in different places tastes different. In fact it’s a banality, so why exactly all this excess insistence?”2 If the reader wishes to review terroir as a practical definition, then I would recommend Jamie Goode’s erudite, The Science Of Wine. I review the basic history of the rise of appellations to help explain how terroir evolved as a French cultural artifact, as well as the foundation of their rural economies. By extension, this requires outlining the economic model behind appellation, based as it is on the terroir concept. This will help explain the use and misuse of terroir as tourist marketing. My contention is that after years of ignoring the fact that terroir has a commercial side, we are now enthusiastically learning from the French how to incorporate terroir into a business model. The concept of terroir, in an evolving argument, can be divided into three camps. In the first camp (the focus of this essay) is the generalist whose broad perspective encompasses socio/economic and cultural dimensions as well as the natural world. The second camp champions terroir as “Mother Nature” and includes farmers and scientist who work with the practical realities of weather, soil and plant. The third group takes a reductionist approach, viewing terroir as exclusively soil based. The system of Appellation (terroir understood) founded by the French and influential around the world, has produced a complex array of voices, all vying for the consumer’s attention. Roger Bohmrich recognized the difficulty of trying to sort it all out when he very astutely said that terroir has become “an ideological confrontation” reflecting “competing definitions of quality”.3 The difficulty with the French concept of terroir for all the rest of us who are not French is that in France the word embodies cultural and political dimensions that are not readily understood outside of that beautiful, complex culture. In her engaging book, The Taste of Place, Amy Trubek writes that: “In France terroir is often associated with racines, or roots, a person’s history with a certain place. Local taste, or goût du terroir, is often evoked when an individual wants to remember an experience, explain a memory, or express a sense of identity.”4 Trubek argues convincingly that in France the taste of food and wine evokes an emotive response in people that marries one’s sense of self with sense of place.In the1930’s when the French constructed their appellation system they did not aim for perfection. In the wake of the phylloxera epidemic, (1863 to about 1900) they were fighting to defend the very integrity of French viticulture and to protect their wine markets. Fraud was widespread, wines were routinely adulterated with cheap bulk imports, some even contained poisons. Consequently, quality and reputation plummeted. By controlling yields, production methods, place names and varietal control, French authorities worked to rescue a rural economy from further destruction.5 The format for the French Vins d’Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée can be thought of as terroir codified. It has become difficult to separate one from the other, surely a measure of AOC success. Vins d’Appellation d’Origine is based in large part on historically productive areas with proven track records based on price and reputation.6 The official classification of the Médoc and Graves of 1855 was, in part, the precedent. They also used Baron Le Roy, 1923 Châteauneuf-du-Pape rules as a prototype, as well as the first such effort of delimitation in the Douro Valley dating back to 1756. These historic examples helped form French wine law. But the broader context, its very soul, was the thousands of years of species selection, propagation, cultivation, trial and error, the shear bloody hard work that underpinned French winemaking. Of course they knew which areas were best suited to which grapes. They knew the land, the slope and pitch of it, from the drainage, heat traps and frost pockets. They call all this terroir. This agricultural legacy is embedded in French culture.It has often been written that part of the English speaking world’s difficulty with the concept of terroir lies in the fact that it is a French word with no direct translation. However, this overstated claim is only partially true. The science of Ecology has a word for the idea, niche, and a whole context, the ecosystem, which fits perfectly well. To say that the newly forming designated area in the Okanagan, The Golden Mile, has a mix of terroir is affirming a general truth because every square meter of this blue ball has an ecosystem supported by an indescribable number of niches. A niche, from the middle French, nicher, meaning to nest, is, simply, a species address, where it lives and what it does there. This encompasses all the elements of a terroir within the very functional construct of the ecosystem. And so our word for their word is another one of their words. Wonderfully ironic isn’t it? I acknowledge that I’m using niche in a casual manner, but the point is clear. If you want to really get a handle on a contemporary approach to this concept, ecology is a good place to start. James Wilson defines this wonderfully well as, “vineyard habitat”.7 The science of ecology and the empiricism of old world terroir continue to merge and evolve. Consequently, I think of terroir as synonymous with ecosystem, not something wholly “French” and somehow unique to that nation. This equivalency (ecosystem / terroir) provides a perfect working context for understanding new trends such as “natural wine” (see Radikon), the biodynamic movement and South Africa’s Biodiversity and Wine Initiative. In the New Wine World, all those areas outside of continental Europe where Vitis vinifera is an introduced species, we view and understand terroir almost exclusively as a thing of nature. We look at rainfall, soil and topography as measurable and therefore as the more easily understood pieces of the puzzle. Even more narrowly, we assess the viability of this grape species primarily in terms of sunshine hours, which is one reason so much modern viticultural research, and the resulting vineyard management, focuses on the vine’s canopy, extensively researched by Dr. Richard Smart. The New World has sought to control the chlorophyll factory because in this context, it is understood to account for over seventy percent of the ripening process, leaving everything underground like soil composition, soil chemistry, soil drainage and root stock, the remaining thirty percent. One of the reasons we ignore everything else the French imply in terroir – like culture, agricultural regulation, political as well as economic aspects – is that it is difficult, time consuming and seldom applicable to our immediate needs, especially at the retail level. We have taken the more obvious scientific bits and ignored all the rest of it. In other words we have taken the concept out of its French historical and cultural context. As a consequence we have ignored the economic reality behind the fact and the narrative of terroir.Consider for a moment the “back-ground” role economics plays in the business of delimiting an area and then marketing its terroir, because in fact, that is exactly what the French do with their system. When a piece of land is marked out by a defined, codified boundary, involving as it does, surveyors, lawyers, the courts, government, etc., the property value of that parcel of land increases.8 A defined viticultural area is the setting up of a monopoly that seeks to imbue the wines within its boundaries with exclusivity. It requires that everyone within the demarcation agree on general principals and that they act together for their common good. It is in a sense, a regulated commons. Ideally it is mainly regulated from within by the founders and very loosely regulated from without. (Not unlike the Italian system.) This exclusivity enhances, to use a term from classical economics, economic rent – the value of the land and its produce – which allows the wine to be priced a little higher than its neighbors. With an eye to the market such a system also facilitates the control of supply and hence the price. Fair enough, after all they suffered through the process, took the risk and paid the bill.9 This can also be the case for a gated community selling condos, or a golf course with health spa, or in our case, for a wine area and its vineyards. In the Hunter Valley north of Sydney, or around Stellenbosch, South Africa, one can readily find all the above within the same delimited parcel. This model is now being developed in the Okanagan Valley. Usually there is a logical reason for this act of demarcation that helps to market and sell the concept. Gated communities trade on the need for security, real or imagined, golf courses pitch both relaxation and competition in an outdoor setting, vineyards market terroir and its alleged influence on wine quality. For marketing purposes, the features of a place are offered up as definably unique – most often they are. Sometimes these claims are embellished. Occasionally they are invented and then folded into the marketing package. Over time this marketing further enhances the land’s value by associating the product, in our case wine, with the land itself.Wine-makers like to say it’s all about the soil, as if their degree in enology, to say nothing of all their hard work, didn’t play a significant role. But deep down they know that sweat equity is also part of terroir. That being true, it is somewhat ironic that wineries tend not to over promote their wine-makers. To do so would be to suggest that the quality of the wine is human-made and not the result of the land. To fix distinctiveness to place is a long-term strategy that, as stated above, enhances land value. At some point your wine-maker may bootstrap her career to a higher bidder. Labour after all is mobile, but land is fixed. The use to which the land is put, time share, sport, or wine, creates income which pays the costs of holding the land, pays the taxes, general upkeep, attention to infrastructure. Having the land pay its way while waiting for the property to appreciate is the key. Surpluses may allow for property enhancement, even expansion and further marketing. But the true investment, both the initial acquisition and future value, is the land itself.So how do you package such complication into a marketing plan? You tell stories. You talk about vine roots, family roots and cultural roots. You talk about how the Cistercian monks in Burgundy tasted the soil, actually put it in their mouths, hoping to better understand why vineyard x differed from vineyard y. Even with modern science we can’t quite put our finger on such differences. (Although, we are very close which may give the reductionists the last word.) And if taste is mainly subjective what did tasting the soil tell them? Perhaps not all that much. But the purpose of such stories, spun with narrative charm, is to create a romantic façade behind which exists a more private world of land ownership, control of supply, response to demand, and influence over price, in short, everyday trade and commerce. All of which makes for very boring marketing. Consumers are allowed the fun of the endeavor and are spared the accounting. Marketing encourages the fun while creating a buffer deflecting too many questions, especially of the big players sourcing grapes from hell-west-and-crooked who also talk the game of terroir. David Ricardo (1722-1823) published his theory on economic rent long before the establishment of the AOC system. But as we know from the 1855 case study, savvy vineyard owners with preferential locations understood the full economics of geographical delimitation. We shouldn’t be surprised that this aspect of French viticulture is so well developed that we barely see it. And don’t think that this business acumen means that they don’t care about making very good wine. In their case one does not exclude the other. Can Canadian winegrowers do both? This model is mainly the preserve of smaller, individual producers who need the added clout of an association of like-minded producers just to survive in a global market. It is wines of a place that (in part) explains the rise of The Golden Mile in the Okanagan. What is unfolding in the Okanagan Valley is a case study in how the economics of demarcation and terroir will work and for whom. Will vineyards and wineries become mere lures for tourism, or can the wine industry develop demarcated areas to protect themselves and the environment, including terroir yet to be realized? Writing about the Okanagan Valley, Carmichael and Senese, point out that, “Wine regions provide the consummate “destination branding” through designation of appellation and claims of terroir”.10 The above succinct sentence, explains the manipulation of a concept so powerful every industry wants a piece of it. The New World has caught on to the potential of terroir, as marketing tool married to the 21st century’s idea of the brand. Writing specifically about the Okanagan Valley, Carmichael and Senese, while agreeing that world class wines, competitive on the world stage, are being made there still argue that “the production of wine itself appears secondary to the production of the wine tourist experience.” As they point out, far more money is going into regional branding than into viticultural research and development to help wine-makers build a young industry.11 Should we be surprised that terroir has developed such central importance in an area so young? Is the tourism industry using terroir as a synonym for scenery? As we know, terroir is more than that. Christian Moueix said, “To judge the potential quality of a vineyard, I need five minutes. To understand the terroir, I need many years”.12 Canadian vineyards and wineries, like their New World counterparts everywhere, have come to understand the economic leverage of demarcation and are fast developing their own designated areas. They are not just strengthening their economic advantage. From the outset the founders are fighting to control their own narrative. Which story will be told and by whom is not yet clear.Notes:1 Quoted in Jamie Goode, The Science of Wine: from Vine to Glass (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) p. 29.2 Goode, The Science of Wine, especially chapter 2.3 Journal of Wine Research, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), 4 Amy Trubek, The Taste of Place: A cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 51. 5 For a general discussion of this point see The Oxford Companion to Wine (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 6 Andrew Jefford, The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine (London: Mitchell Beazley, 2002).7 James E. Wilson, Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture in the Making of French Wines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 5.8 Tim Unwin, “Terroir: At the Heart of Geography”, in Peter H. Dougherty (ed.), The Geography of Wine: Regions, Terroir and Techniques (New York: Springer, 2012), pp. 37-48.9 C. Bramley & JF. Kirsten, “Exploring the Economic Rational for Protecting Geographical Indications in Agriculture” Agrekon, Vol. 46, No. 1, (2007), pp. 69-93.10 Barbara A. Carmichael and Donna M. Senese, “Competitiveness and Sustainability in Wine Tourism Regions” in Dougherty, Geography of Wine, p. 160.11 Carmichael and Senese, p. 170.12 Christian Moueix, Wine Spectator, 15 Nov. 2011 p.96.
