My year of wine: Striking 'terroir' into hearts of those who drink wine

09 September 2014 - 02:01 By Jackie May
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Spring having broken, our wine farmers have finished their pruning duties.

While taking to the cellar for tasting, blending and bottling, they are keeping an eye out for nasty creatures to spray. Looking after their vineyards is crucial to the business of winemaking. This is all very hard work, but is it enough? Does all the vineyard work matter?

The economist and fine wine lover Adam Smith wrote that terroir (climate, aspect and soil) "determines more than management can equal" and that "wine is affected more by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree".

Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, the philosopher Tim Crane explains that terroir is "the specific combination of geology, topography and climate that makes the wines of certain historic regions possible, and contributes to the their distinctive character".

And, of course the price of wines is affected by what is considered to be good terroir, so much so that there is a cult of terroir.

At the recent Cape Winemakers Guild auction tasting, winemakers insisted that the sense of place adds a je ne sais quoi to their wines. Is it just a marketing tool?

On a local tourist site there is a mention of the village Elim, which has unique geographical extremes and "a unique terroir that has led to its producing some fascinating and one-of-a-kind flavours". Does the chalkiness, or the salt and mineral content, of the soil affect the flavour of the wines? Surely, it must.

But there are some who believe that terroir is nonsense. The Economist has reported a marketer calling terroir a Scam (an acronym of Soil + Climate + Aspect = Mystique).

Crane writes that making a direct link between terroir and flavour is tempting until "we start to think about what we mean when we call a wine 'metallic' or 'minerally', and at what stage in the complex winemaking process these flavours are created".

When do the blending, the oak barrels and the new technologies affect the flavour more than the terroir?

Who is boss? The soil or the winemaker? I would like to think a good winemaker preserves the terroir.

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