“Terroir” is a funny word, isn’t it? Rolls off the tongue like the name of a breed of diminutive show dogs or a decadently rich dish at a posh Parisian restaurant, but for as highfalutin as it sounds, “terroir” is nothing more than dirt. Granted, fussier types in the wine world might scoff at such an unadorned definition of a key agricultural component, preferring trendier terminology such as soil, clay, loam or even earth. But all the fussing and scoffing in Napa and Bordeaux won’t change the fact that if you can pour water on it and grow stuff, it’s dirt. However, you are more than welcome to refer to it as terroir or grass dandruff or dried mud or whatever blows your hair back. Seems silly for civilized folks to get hung up on semantics when there’s wine to be drunk… er, drank. Or is it drinked? Whatever.
Winemakers like the incredibly talented Pierre Seillan of Vérité in Sonoma County spend little time mincing words and a whole lot of it thinking about (insert favorite word for dirt here) because it is absolutely essential for growing grape vines. Indeed, on a recent visit to the Vérité winery in scenic Healdsburg, California, Pierre confirmed my long-held suspicion that in the absence of dirt it would be damn near impossible to grow grape-producing vines at all. During an extensive tour of the property on a brilliantly sunny day in the midst of harvest, Pierre waxed philosophical about the “message of the soil” in each of his wines, though I’m sorry to say I was too caught up checking panicked messages on my Blackberry from my financial advisor to delve into what he meant by that. Perhaps now is an appropriate time to mention that Vérité wines retail for $200 a bottle. To be sure, that’s steep, even in flush financial times. And now that the economy is collapsing all around us and jobs are being lost and… on second thought, perhaps now isn’t the right time to talk retail price. Nevermind.