A few weeks ago, my husband sent me a link to Meg Houston Maker's article Four Kingdoms And A Place: Committing To Wine Of Terroir. First of all, it is such an intriguing title and I think that "Four Kingdoms and a Place" sounds like a great brand name. So Meg had me with the title!
Many people have tried to define the French concept of terroir. I think Meg defines terroir in a truly holistic manner and dispels the concept of "natural wine".
I loved the article so much, I left a comment on her site asking if I could quote passages from her article and she graciously gave me her okay! The entire article is wonderful to read, so I encourage you to click on the link above, but here is what I especially liked in Meg's words:
Winemaking requires human intervention. This is why I find the term “natural wine” so misguided and misleading. Wine isn’t “natural.” Wine demands physical and mental human labor.
What do you plant, and where do you plant it? How do you farm it — organically, biodynamically, according to la lutte raisonnée? Or do you spray it to within an inch of its life? How do you decide when to pick, how to vinify, how to age and bottle your precious harvest? How do you decide what will be in bounds, and what will be out of bounds, during the infinitude of decisions along the way?
What would a farmstead wine look like? A wine made from grapes grown in the producer’s own vineyard, with no purchased fruit. A wine made following old-school winemaking, with little tinkering in the cantina, no monkey business to modulate acidity and sweetness, no designer yeast. While we’re at it, let’s not mask the wine with heavy-handed élevage. When the winemaker overthinks or overworks the wine, her voice and her ideas start to drown out the land’s.
Balance is key: A person grows and makes the wine, but vines and microbes, rocks and sunlight, should also have something to say. Wine, like cheese, relies on the neighborly cooperation of animals, plants, microbes, and site.
This is why I like to say that a wine of terroir requires Four Kingdoms and a Place: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Bacteria — and, of course, the vineyard.
It is a hero’s journey, the stuff of true drama. When it works, the wine is wonderful. In fact, the wine has to be wonderful. It has to be delicious if the winery is to succeed. But the winemaker is a critical part of the wine’s story; without her there would be no wine, and certainly no wine of terroir.
Credits:
Meg Houston Maker: Four Kingdoms And A Place: Committing To Wine Of Terroir.
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