Taste of Terroir

Among the many things I LOVE about wine?

How much complexity and magnificence it can contain.

Each finely crafted wine tells the story of a time and a place, a region and its soil, vines and their age, grape varietals and their characteristics, of a growing season’s worth of weather, of how the maker shaped these elements of nature into art, of how the wine aged -- in what types of steel or wood and for how long, of whether or not the wine will improve with age, and of how the whole hangs together...always more than the sum of its parts.

And that's just where the beauty of wine starts!

It is within us that the story of wine unfolds, its personality is revealed, and its fullest potential is realized.

But before I get ahead of myself and into the full raisons d'etre (reasons for being) of The Senses Bureau and The Wine Workout, let me get quite literally down to earth...and a little below it.

This year, I came to experience more deeply than ever what terroir -- the French term that literally means "soil" or "earth" and that largely encompasses all that that factors into "sense of place" -- can mean to and for a wine.

First, an International Sauvignon Blanc Tasting held by St. Superygenerously drove home how uniquely S.B. can express itself when grown in the alternately steely, stony, gravelly, shaley, flinty soils of areas ranging from California's Napa Valley to the Alto Adige region of Italy, the Martinborough region of New Zealand, the Casa Blanca Valley of Chile and the Stellenbosch appellation of South Africa. From St. Supery's 2004 Dollarhide Ranch wonder -- balancing the lushness of lychee, guava, lime and pineapple with a minerality that the winemaker's notes call "a million polished pebbles" -- to the bracing acidity and elegant austerity of Didier Dagueneau's 2004 Blanc Fume de Pouilly from France's Loire Valley, the world tour drove home the power and importance of place.

Then, aWines of Germany tasting, Raimond Prum gave me an education about slate, and elucidated how different types of slate can affect a Riesling's taste -- from the red slate that is rich with iron to the blue slate that is colored and flavored by copper to the grey slate, which, containing tin, confers the most elegant minerality of all.

Soon, I was not only tasting terroir as never before, but was also noticing how many winemakers carry their earth and stones with them to tastings, as exemplified by Lockwood Vineyard's Shale Ridge, shown above.

Now, in addition to drinking wines I love, I am collecting rocks...and reveling in the first-hand experience of new knowledge, which is what I live for.

For every good reason, I hope you'll join me!

Warmly and looking forward,
Wendy Dubit and The Senses Bureau