International Terroirists

September 24, 2023 4:01 AM

For centuries grape growers in different communities passed down lore about where their grapes came from. Some governments, particularly in Europe, designated appellations—strictly circumscribed regions with rules on how and where a varietal such as burgundy, rioja or barolo was legally allowed to grow and be produced. But genetic studies to discover where vines originated thousands of years ago began in earnest only 10 or 15 years ago. from Wine’s True Origins Are Finally Revealed
posted by chavenet (25 comments total)

I was expecting some discussion about where the American varietals branched off, but the article focuses on mainstream wine and table grapes. Fair enough, but thanks to grape phylloxera, a bunch of the older varieties in the article will be grafted to and growing on hybrid rootstocks derived from American vines like Vitis berlandieri and Vitis rupestris.
posted by zamboni at 6:47 AM on September 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

Interesting read, thanks,
posted by Miko at 7:30 AM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Terroirist was a blog that aggregated the best wine writing on the web 2010-2023. It is sorely missed.
posted by lalochezia at 8:35 AM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

varietal such as burgundy, rioja or barolo was legally allowed to grow

erm, none of those are varietals, they are production regions.

Useful context: the whole reduction of wine to its constituent grape varietals is a strategy devised by American growers to beat Europe on its own, erm, terroir, so to speak (given that they could not compete on historical clout/narrative). I’m not saying that grape varieties don’t make a difference, but it’s always been a commercially driven choice to focus just on those; almost all traditional European appellations / local wines were made of varying blends, decided year per year.

That said, it’s nice that DNA data can give some historical perspective on the origin myths that every region clouded itself in, but I do always wonder what the monetizable aim of such research is…
posted by progosk at 9:09 AM on September 24, 2023 [11 favorites]

It's funny that just yesterday I was diving into this rabbit hole, exploring Blaufränkisch, a much-grown grape in my new home in New York's Finger Lakes.
Which led me to look up the history of my home state's Zinfandel.
The history I "knew" is being rewritten through genetic testing. I was interested to find Zinfandel and Primitivo are the same grapes, as are Crljenak Kaštelanski and Tribidrag, from Croatia.
posted by cccorlew at 10:02 AM on September 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

yes, that Croatian origin story is one of the more unexpected ones. Also peculiar is that that same (or very similar) grape has had such wildly different histories in terms of the wine that folks chose to make from it. Try explaining the rainbow of American Zin’s to any traditional ink-dark/high-alcohol Primitivo producer in Puglia (and then tell him the secret ingredient is actually an import from across the Adriatic), he’d send you running, with such heterodox blasphemies…
posted by progosk at 10:15 AM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love Italian primativo, it always seems "less fucked with" than California zins. Although I also love California zins.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:33 PM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love Italian primativo

Apulian primitivo used not to be sold bottled, but either locally, from vineyard-to-table as it were, or else by the nighttime truckload, headed to Tuscany or Piedmont in the rainier/colder years… The playmakers of the wine world kept it that way, convincing local producers their wine was “too rich” to be marketable. In time, the younger generations figured out they were being played. If you’re into the genre, have a look out for the ones that were/are being made in inner Campania…
posted by progosk at 1:22 PM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

"Experts in a specific locale can name the hillside—even how far up the hill—where a wine's grapes were grown because of the terroir, the combination of soil, topography and microclimate that imparts a characteristic taste." [citation needed]
posted by blue shadows at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Unfortunate that the SciAm article didn't link to the Dong et al. Science paper (beyond mentioning it in the figure caption) but also unfortunate that it's paywalled. Still, worth a read if you've got an AAAS membership or institutional access.
posted by multics at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Experts in a specific locale can name the hillside—even how far up the hill—where a wine's grapes were grown because of the terroir, the combination of soil, topography and microclimate that imparts a characteristic taste." [citation needed]

Well, it's not a main interest of mine today, but 30+ years ago, I could pretty much do this and won competitions. It's all about practice. The same as some coffee enthusiasts can determine the exact composition of a blend. You probably need to be a bit of a super-taster, but practice is the main factor, and obviously wine tasting is expensive and not very healthy, so I stopped. But if you can make it your job, it's a good one.
posted by mumimor at 3:03 PM on September 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

I was thinking about all the studies where if wrong labels are put on a bottle or the wine dyed a wrong color experts aren't able to tell the difference. If good taste testers can consistently identify wines, etc. that would restore a bit of my faith in actual human ability vs. suggestibility.
posted by blue shadows at 3:25 PM on September 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

as mumimor said, it’s all about practice (and partly about ritual).

But again: the fetishising of “terroir”, especially when extending its influence into the near-esoteric, is again a strategical narrative device to distract from all the significant alchemy that goes on in the winery once the grapes have been harvested. Basically what tasters can school themselves into recognizing is a winemaking style, much more than some mineralogically mystical grape growth-aura shining through ;-)
posted by progosk at 3:34 PM on September 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

The competitions I participated in had the bottles wrapped in foil. There was no way you could guess where a wine was from, except from tasting.

But I have seen those reports about people not being able to tell a cheap red from a cheap white, and I might not be able to tell that difference either. I can enjoy a bottle of local wine at a café, and not have a clue about where it is from or what year it was made (though generally it will be young). And that is fine. Let's drink and be merry, and I'm not ironic about it.

The tasting part is when the wines are more mature and more distinct, though not necessarily very old. My biggest triumph was pin-pointing a five-year old Barolo, which to be honest we shouldn't even have opened. And if you think about it, you'd have to have tasted a lot of Barolos at all ages to catch that particular one. So again not a healthy hobby.

When you do get to taste the big vintages, those are amazing. You won't confuse them with anything else. What really surprised me was how drinkable they were. Younger, cheaper wines are all a bit challenging, each in their own way. But a big wine is like a blackcurrant cordial, just much, much better.
posted by mumimor at 3:49 PM on September 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

As I Californian I think I can tell the difference between an Amador County Zin (my favorite) and a central coast zin, but I would have to try it blind to be sure. As a home brewer (beer) I do have my doubts about being able to tell a specific hill vs the fermentation temperature or yeast population differences between two wines
posted by CostcoCultist at 4:57 PM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd mock people who go on about "terroir", but then remember how many of my fellow guitar-heads believe in "tone woods" or chase some specific diode produced in Mongolia for three weeks in 1967.
posted by signal at 5:32 PM on September 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've personally debunked the red/white dichotomy. Regardless of the lightest Beaujolais being tasted blind (as in blindfolded) with super rich white burgundy the difference is obvious and clearly apparent to even non wine drinkers. It's a trope that people can't tell the difference. A trope based in complete bullshit.
posted by Keith Talent at 10:17 PM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I guess you mean you've debunked the urban(e) legend about the indistinguishability between reds and whites (under certain circumstances). I'd only add that you might be missing the point of what that was originally getting at: setting up red and white as paradigm absolutes (with the whole côterie of rules about which goes with what) is again one of those fundamentally artificial "rules" born of the market. To help you see through this dichotomic chromatic one without any clever experiments, consider either the (currently culturally ascendent) rosés, or obviously the whole phenomenon of "orange" wines. Which is just to say: the more wine clings to fake dogmas, the shakier its future prospects will be in the face of other moderately alcoholic drinks. Storytelling is a wonderful addition to the drinking experience, but when it's bullshit, sooner or later that shows.
posted by progosk at 1:52 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

mumimor you had *bottles* inside the foil? Down here we just put the wine directly into the foil.
posted by MarchHare at 3:57 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

> The tasting part is when the wines are more mature and more distinct

Yeah, a lot of time the terroir just isn't there to detect. I used to be able to tell you a fair amount about where single origin chocolate came from in the world from taste..if the beans weren't over roasted and over conched. Half the time when people handed me what they thought was a fancy bar of chocolate I wouldn't have a clue because all I tasted was bitter from over roasting, or if it was only borderline over roasted, the maker might conch it within an inch of its life and which reduces the bitterness, but takes everything else with it.
posted by madhadron at 9:32 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I maybe need to find a friend with academic access because the summary in Scientific American says that the Caucasus didn't really influence cultivation in Western Europe, but then in the charts at the bottom they show grapevine ancestry from the Caucasus in three of the four European red wine varietals. Was the study that muddled, or is it just that the breeding of those grapes happened later and thus incorporated vines that previously hadn't followed human migration and trade patterns?
posted by fedward at 2:21 PM on September 25, 2023

fedward, I caught that too. My favorite wine right now are Georgian, and it boggles my mind how many people who claim to be wine enthusiasts don't know a thing about one of the world's oldest winemaking cultures.
posted by 1adam12 at 5:40 PM on September 25, 2023

Unfortunate that the SciAm article didn't link to the Dong et al. Science paper (beyond mentioning it in the figure caption) but also unfortunate that it's paywalled.

A cached version they published of the full issue that's currently freely accessible here (link goes straight to the article in question).

EDIT: still looking for an accessible version of the original paper...
posted by progosk at 2:30 AM on September 26, 2023

still looking for an accessible version of the original paper...

here's one (courtesy of JKIT, Karlsruhe).
posted by progosk at 2:46 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oooo, thanks! I'm not really good at understanding the genetic portion of this analysis, but the discussion at the end does kind of address my question:

The Mesolithic and Neolithic periods also saw the early dispersal and diversification of grapevines such that unique ancestries emerged in the Balkans, Iberia, and Western Europe with the help of V. sylvestris [native wild grapes] introgression into CG1 [domesticated table grapes from Western Asia]. This event mirrors early farmer migration in Europe, consolidating the role of viticulture in forming sedentary societies. A higher level of cultural exchange characterizes the last stage since the Bronze Age and the trading of superior grapevine cultivars along trade routes. This is especially evident in the plethora of Italian cultivars with three or more genetic ancestries, but unfortunately poses a challenge to disentangle the genealogical history of each grapevine cultivar.

By my reading (which could be inaccurate) that last sentence seems to be the scientific equivalent of a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as to when and how the Caucasian genes ended up in Western European wine grapes.
posted by fedward at 7:43 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]