This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
It's All in the Ground?
Is "geography" actually flavor?
In the wine world, the idea that different wine growing areas, even those close to each other, yield distinguishable flavors has generally been accepted as fact. Those who question terroir the are labeled "skeptics." Sommeliers arrange blind taste tests to prove that the taste of volcanic ash can signal which hectare of the Italian country side the grapes were grown in. However, insights from outside the industry call the concept into question.
In "Wine Appellation as Territory," Warren Moran shows that descriptions of the environmental qualities of the same wine regions can be wildly different, as these qualities are often based on casual perception. He writes, "In all wine regions, the physical environmental attributes of the defined territory of the appellation have been liberally and uncritically transferred to the wine made there. They are a convenient means of enhancing the regional identity" (701). While certainly there are factors of the physical environment that contribute to way agricultural products grow, it is worth noting that terroir is far from the only way to understand these commodities (how often do apple juice companies advertise precisely where their apples are grown, for example?). In fact, in the early days of the wine trade, wines were not identified by area, but rather by port. According to Lukacs, “During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, French wines surpassed German wines in popularity in most northern markets. But they too were identified in terms of where they were shipped” (58), as opposed to where grown.
There is a similar story in Washington state. Prior to cultivating European varietals, Washington state did make wine -- out of Concord grapes, according to WSU's College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences ("A Brief History"). This wine predated American appellations and was simply the locally available wine. This system shifted with the influence of California wine companies:
In the 1960s, California dominated the domestic fine-wine market, due in large part to marketing efforts by wine giant E. & J. Gallo, of Modesto, California. Gallo’s marketing campaign, centered on the message that Gallo would “Sell no wine before its time,” reeducated the American drinking public. Americans, unlike Europeans, had long been drinkers of sweet and fortified wines made from Concord grapes. Gallo’s efforts changed not only American wine-drinking habits, but attitudes toward wine. Consuming varietal wines became a sign of sophistication and prestige. ("A Brief History")
Soon after European style wine became a signifier for high-class tastes in the U.S., the country adopted the American Viticultural Area system. This timeline is telling: it is clear that terroir and power are inexorably linked. If terroir were a universal way of understanding land and agriculture, it would be applied to more products. Further, terroir does not exist without trade; early both in Europe and US wine industries, the understanding of was significantly different. Terroir was not invoked until competing economic interests emerged. In short, terroir functions to describe economic and cultural capital just as much -- if not more -- than it describes relative mineral and sugar notes.
