c "That raises an interesting subject - the question of
typicity..."
ST "Oh, God!"
c "...in wine. Am I turning you loose here??"
ST "Well, you are. The whole theory of terroir is a hard one
for a
winemaker. But anyway, you were going to ask a question."
c "No, no, go right ahead."
ST "Well, the problem is..."
c "The 'T' word?"
ST "That's right, and it isn't even that I don't like it.
That's what makes
it complex to discuss. It's very true that fruit grown in different
places
tastes different. Of course it does; it's so obvious that nobody
questions
it. In fact, it's a banality, so, why, exactly, all this excess
insistence? Personally, I think vineyard differences are astonishing,
and
can be taken down to the differences between one vine and the next, and
then
to the one side of each vine compared to the other; but it is a perfect
example of how something that actually is fascinating gets warped by
the
propaganda of avarice. I mean, "terroir" is essentially is
how upper-end
wine is now sold, with all these minutely subdivided appellations
with
their idiotic attempts to attribute the quality of finished bottles of
wine to the real estate the grapes come from. I mean, give me a *******
break!!!
Particularly because nobody ever seems to want to talk about the most
obvious fact here, which is, that agricultural property is only valued
in
one way, and that is according to the value of what it produces. The
value
of vineyard land is determined ultimately by the value of the wine
produced
from its grapes. If what is thought to determine the greatness of the
wines
of Château La Bêtise is not the brilliant wine-making of
Henri, nor
the
inspired viticulture of Jacques, but the real estate itself, suddenly,
what
determines the value of Château La Bêtise as property is what its
owners
actually own, namely, real estate. Even if the owners are in fact
Jacques
and Henri themselves, this is an intensely desirable and bankable
proposition, because their property can then be sold, transferred, and
inherited with the full value of the wine produced from its grapes
attributed to the property itself, without Jacques or Henri needing to
be
there at all; and if they're selling it, they don't want to have to be
there. If this is true for winemaking families in traditional peasant
communities, one need hardly mention how true it is for venture
capitalists,
real estate trusts, limited partnerships, and multinational
corporations.
And so on down through the long line of "prestige" wine sellers to "prestige"
wine lists to trophy-oriented wine buyers and collectors. In short,
billions
of dollars depend on acceptance of the concept of terroir, whose most
important mineral component is therefore a very large grain of salt.
Beyond this primordial economic truth, which, curiously, I repeat, no
one
ever seems to mention when discussing terroir, as though it's all
nature
poetry, subtle comprehensions of natural relationship far beyond the
capability of the Unbeliever, there is an endless labyrinth of other
Large
Issues; sympathetic fallacy, patriotic identity, blood & soil,
which I'm not about to try to discuss in a minute or two. But I think it's fair
to say
that translating "terroir" as "turf" would give
most Americans the essential
orientation, as well as an insight into the passion involved, which
goes far
beyond even avarice. This isn't just wine; this isn't even anything in
the
bottle. This is What We Are, particularly if what we are, is
Republicans.
So if my point is anti-Republican, which certainly it is, it certainly
isn't
anti-French; Roger Dion himself, incontestably the greatest French
historian of wine, wondered consistently throughout his writings why
the
French preferred to agree that the qualities of their wines were the
effect
of natural privilege, or as he said, "of a particular grace
accorded to the
soil of France, as though our country would derive greater honor by
receiving from Heaven, rather than from the painstaking labors of man,
this
fame for the wines of France," and he was far more tactful than
I am about
the economics involved. Personally. I believe that the quality of
French
wine is due to a French genius for viticulture and winemaking, just as
I believe the quality of French cuisine is due to a French genius for
gastronomy, not to the subsoil of their lettuce patches.
Or again, do you seriously go into a cabinetmaker's shop, and
attribute the
value of the cabinets to the subsoil of the forest where the trees were
grown?? It's so ridiculously blatant, especially if you coincidentally
just
happen to own the forest. And yet, in wine, you get all this posing, as
though no one notices the pose: "Oh no, we're just simple servants
of the
soil, we're just trying to let the terroir reveal itself." You
get all of
this, sort of, self-serving piety. After a while it gets pretty thick,
in my
opinion.
My point is that any area will have distinct, that there will be some
sort
of geographic thread that runs through the grapes from almost any
region.
For example, one year in Lodi we harvested some things I was going to
use
for Pleiades, some Grenache, some Carignane, some "Petite Sirah",
and
Zinfandel, anyway, four different varieties, from two different
vineyards,
ten miles from each other. And the resemblance between all of the wines
that
resulted was startling. I mean startling. That year they all had this
really
pretty sort of peach-pit quality; other varietal riffs on top of
that, of
course, but all of them just like fresh peaches, but with a little
tannic
thing to it, just lovely. Talk about the "typicity" of the
Lodi
Appellation! Scenic, historic Lodi, and real terroir!! The point is,
fine,
terroir; now, do something with it. Nice piece of salmon; so, cook.
Lodi,
Rutherford Bench, Romanée-Conti. Grapes are made in the vineyard. Wine
isn't.
That's where the whole question of terroir and typicity gets
interesting, because in the French system, it's all based on the idea, in fact,
it's
only motive is to promote the idea, that there's not just a difference
(how can you make money on that?) but a rigid qualitative hierarchy, a
sort
of viticultural racism, based solely on fruit and determined solely by
geology, which is meant to be universally accepted and should be
rigidly
enforced. There's a Grand Cru, and then there's a Premier Cru, and they
shouldn't ever be confused with each other, and that's because
everybody
agrees about what the best is, and then everybody agrees about what's
just a
hair off what the best is, and then they agree about what's just a
little
bit "lower" than that is, and it's immutable because it's
geological, and
that's how the whole system works. The "Garagistes" in
Bordeaux are only the
latest proof of how little all this actually has to do with
connoisseurship,
as opposed to power, prestige, and self-aggrandizement, if anyone needs
any
more proof. And you can see why people would rather call me, or anyone
else, eccentric than actually deal with these questions: billions of
dollars
depend on not asking them."
c "I'd like to get back to something you said earlier."
ST "Sure."
c "There is no word in the French language for winemaker."
ST "That's right. Not in Italian or Spanish either. A dozen
words for
farmer, no word for chef."
c "I'm curious how you consider winemaking do you think it
is art? Do
you think it is craft? Do you think it is alchemy?"
ST "Really, all of the above. I really do think you can at
least start to
understand or discuss almost anything to do with winemaking simply by
looking first at the rest of gastronomy; meaning, I consider that a
winemaker occupies exactly the same position in the chain of producing
a
bottle of wine that a chef occupies in the chain of producing a
meal."
c "So, wine is food?"
ST "Well, food can be art. It can be alchemy. It certainly has
all of
those characteristics to it. Where some of the differences do come in between food and wine, the position of the winemaker in relation to
the
process is still the same as that of the chef, but the two processes
themselves do differ in some serious respects, and evolution over time
is
certainly one of them, that's where the alchemy part of it gets to
be
particularly mysterious. It is so complex, and it is so mysterious;
what
happens to it as it evolves over time is just an unending source of
wonder."
We took a break from our questions and answers, and strolled outside to
taste a few things from barrel. I did not take any notes; it somehow
felt
inappropriate. I sampled components from the '99 and '00 Orion, and all
were
clean, intense, and beautifully focused. Sean is also dabbling in other
varietals, and his experiments with Sangiovese were quite promising.
