Taste is a learned
response. It is a product of society, and changes according to time, place and
cultural traditions. Thus our perception of terroir when we drink wine is also
tied to traditions that continue to evolve. There is a culture behind terroir that
follows the winemaker into the field when he ties his vines to staves; it is
there when he decides his fruit is ready for harvest; and most pronounced when
he enters the winery—his studio, his church, his laboratory, his home. Perhaps
the most direct role the vintner plays in making wine is deciding how to store
it and for how long. Oak barrels came into prominence during the Roman Empire,
and today they are the most common vessels in which wine is aged.
Before the use of
oak casks, wine was typically stored in clay amphorae sealed with pine resin.
In his book Uncorking the Past: The Quest
for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, Patrick McGovern writes,
“Tree resins have a long and noble history of use by humans, extending back
into Paleolithic times. […] Early humans appear to have recognized that a tree
helps to heal itself by oozing resin after its bark has been cut, thus
preventing infection. They made the mental leap to apply resins to human
wounds. By the same reasoning, drinking a wine laced with a tree resin should
help to treat internal maladies.” For Paleolithic winemakers, adding tree
resin to wine was a way to absorb the power of the trees, and, as it happened,
helped to preserve the wine. The technique of adding resin to wine is analogous
to ageing wine in oak barrels. The porous nature of the wood allows the wine to
oxidize, smoothing tannins and concentrating the wine’s flavor and aroma. The
resin in the wood also imparts its own flavors onto the wine.
At the 2012
Cabrillo Music Festival event Music in the Mountains, I was fortunate enough to
speak with Randall Grahm, the winemaker for Bonny Doon Vineyards. I asked him
about the effects of barrels on wine, and in particular that I was interested
in gaining a better understanding of the difference between French and American
oak. Randall explained that there are several hundred phenolic compounds in
wine, and that some, such as tannins and vanillin, are also found in oak
barrels. Newer oak barrels impart a stronger imprint on the wine, with American
oak tending to lend stronger sweet and vanilla overtones than French barrels,
which tend to oxidize slower, and that supply notes of spice and toasted almonds to
the wine.
The choice between
French or American oak barrels raises a philosophical question about the nature
of terroir. The milder French casks are said to promote the characteristics the
soil imparts to the grapes, though the flavors of American oak can become
nuanced after barrels are used for a few years. French oak is traditionally used
for wine making, but there are no French oaks trees in America, and terroir is
supposed to express a specific place. For American vintners, the decision
whether or not to use native wood is as perplexing as deciding how much of
terroir is geological and how much is cultural. Some critics have claimed that
the New World has no terroir, but this view overlooks the many American winemakers who are inspired by the traditions of the Old World. The concept of
terroir, like that of taste, has evolved, and will continue to change.
Any writer will
tell you there is always something lost when a work is translated, but there is
also the potential for something to be gained, for a sentiment or belief or
tradition to be revived or reinvented in a new fashion. Culture changes as we
construct new traditions. Inspired by a novel understanding of
vini/viticulture, geology and soil sience, winemakers all over the world have
the opportunity to express their own terroir, to bring out in their wines the
flavor of the land and the traditions that govern it. Of all the wines I tasted
at the Music in the Mountains event, my favorite was a Pinot Noir from Windy
Oaks, which offered up strong notes of strawberry, the wonderful Pinot-funk
characteristic of barnyard and damp earth, which I find is a strong expression
of the terroir of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
This was not the
first time I had tried that Pinot. A month earlier at a wine tasting event
sponsored by the Monterey Bay Wine Co, I was able to taste the wine and talk
with Jim Shultze, the winemaker for Windy Oaks. When I asked him what he
thought about terroir he told me he felt it was “an expression of extreme
mineral intervention”—found in wine that has has high malolactic acid levels
for a wonderfully textured, round mouth feel. Jim told me he might have the
longest growing season in California; his harvest ends as late as November 1.
He uses all neutral French oak, but added that he’s experimenting with barrel
stave thickness, grain tightness, and large volume neutral cement barrels.
From the clay
amaphorae of Egypt and Greece to modern stainless steel and cement tanks, the
traditions of winemaking continue to change, and so too does the wine. But
while the winemaker imparts his cultural prejudices on the wine through his choice
of container, Jim reminded me that the grape belongs to a longer tradition. The
grape vine, vitis vinifera, was
domesticated around 6,000 years ago, and we can trace its ancestry back to ampelopsis, a climbing vine of the vitaceae family, which originated 500
thousand years ago. Nature has its own customs. Jim told me that last year he
picked his fruit at 22.5-23 brix, a measurement of the sugar levels in the
grapes, but that he picks his fruit based on flavors, not brix. He wants to
harvest flavors, not alcohol, he explained. “Let the wine decide when it should
be pressed.” The grapes know when they are ready to ferment. Their tradition is
to ripen on the vine and lead us, eagerly, into the fields for harvest.
