(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team)
Every few months, an article inevitably pops up somewhere claiming that terroir can be neither smelled nor tasted. Then the usual cheerleaders cheer, those who would love nothing more than to reduce wine culture to two categories: silly posturing about distinction and delusion. The only thing left is for them to realise that wine in South Africa and Namibia is the legacy of the colonialists – which, incidentally, is true for the whole of Latin America as well. The fact that these studies on terroir and taste are almost always misquoted only bothers those who take a closer interest in wine. The main thing is that someone can once again claim that wine enthusiasts have been peddling a colossal fairy tale for decades. ‘Schist on the nose? Limestone on the palate? Volcanic rock, or even flint on the finish? It’s all humbug!
That’s how scientists with an agenda – and they do exist – sound when they believe they have to defend the natural sciences. And there, it seems clear that the soils have little or no influence on the grapes and the wines.
Or so it seems!
Because what is almost always missing from these reports is the part after the full stop: yes, rock itself does not impart any flavour. But without the soil organisms, the water balance, the physical properties and the stress dynamics of the soil, every vine would be as aromatic as the inside of a fridge. That’s precisely what tends to be left out these days. Not because nobody knows it, but because nobody can explain it in a 30-second clip.
And of course: the wine industry is not without blame. For decades, people have talked about terroir as if the vines were nibbling on little limestone chocolates at night or smoking flint during the day like teenagers in their bedrooms. But this distortion is at least poetic – in contrast to the scientific oversimplification that turns complexity into a headline. Some demonise terroir as superstition, others peddle it as esotericism. And both are spectacularly wrong.
The scientist Alex Maltman, who has been trying for years to take the edge off this nonsense, is right: stone has no taste. Full stop.
But to conclude from this that terroir is irrelevant is about as scientifically sound as inferring from the statement ‘sugar has no colour’ that chocolate is invisible. The soil does not impart any flavour to the grape. But it determines how the grape develops, how it ripens, the precision of its aromas, which acids remain and which disappear. And anyone who thinks that’s unimportant is welcome to try a blind tasting of Syrah grown on granite versus Syrah grown on loess. Spoiler: you’ll be able to tell the difference. Even if it doesn’t taste ‘of stone’.
Yes, rock is tasteless. But rock shapes the soil’s ecology. And ecology shapes oenology. And grapes shape wine. If you cannot distinguish between these three elements, you should stay out of the debate.
Yet nobody would have a problem if the wine world and science were on the same page. But that’s not happening. Science demands precision; the wine world demands imagery. Science says: ‘Rock influences water and temperature.’ The wine world hears: ‘So it is mineral after all!’
Marketing says: “Volcanic soils bring out the fire.” Science says: “Unlikely.” Customers shout: “Sounds brilliant, I’ll take two.”
And the truth? It lies somewhere in the middle and bores everyone because it’s complicated.
You can’t taste rock
. But you can taste how vines react to rock.
You can’t drink ‘minerality’. But you can drink precision, tension, austerity, thermal behaviour, stress and water dynamics. You can’t smell stone in wine. But you can smell (and taste) a plant’s reaction to its environment.
It’s just that this sounds less sexy than ‘limestone’.
The wine industry should finally learn to communicate honestly without losing its poetry. And some in the scientific community need to stop stumbling through the media with trite half-truths – and salivating over click counts. It does nobody any good to strip people of their romantic notions about wine, simply because headlines sell better than explanations.
Perhaps that is the real crux of the matter: the romance of terroir isn’t wrong; it’s just based on the wrong premises. Humans are, after all, storytelling creatures. They want to know why something tastes the way it does. And if that ‘why’ has so far been called ‘limestone’, then that’s not a lie, but simply an imprecise shorthand. An imprecise shorthand, however, that everyone who drinks wine often and with pleasure understands.