The truth behind the taste? (Image: Itani/Millennium Images)
IN THE dimly lit cellar below a London wine shop, a man gives his glass a good sniff. His nose plunges too deep and, for a moment, resembles an inverted iceberg, bobbing in a Chardonnay sea. Then he snorts, and his laughter destroys the illusion. “That,” says the woman leading the tasting, “is not how to nose your wine.”
As people start to get the hang of it, she asks us to shout out the flavours we detect. Everyone thinks they smell fruit. One woman says eucalyptus. Another tastes flint. Our oenological guide agrees, telling us that the mineral, flinty characteristic is a distinctive taste of this Chablis. “It comes from the limestone in the soil of the vineyard,” she says.
This story of how the Chablis got its taste is an alluring one – and it’s meant to be. For many winemakers, the key to keeping their share of the $200 billion wine market comes down to the idea that local geography, geology, climate and winemaking practices, together known as the terroir, give a unique flavour to their wine. Thus their land is the only place you can make it. This idea forms the basis of wine laws around the world – it’s why champagne can come only from the Champagne region of France, for example.
But does the idea of terroir stand up to scrutiny? We have recently unearthed the roles of soil, water, temperature, microorganisms and human practices in a wine’s taste, and the emerging picture sends a question bubbling to the surface. If…
