Terroir Is Not Stable and Fixed. Wine Does Not Express the Terroir; Rather, It Corresponds with It
Along with communication, professionalism, and competence, there is another overused and misleading term in the world of wine that reverberates both obliquely and strongly: terroir. Here are just a few examples taken from the usual selection of set phrases made for accordion and incense: “our wine is just the expression of the terroir”; “with this wine we only want to valorize the terroir”; and—two birds with one stone—“the problem is that we do not sufficiently communicate the potential of our terroir.” When we use expressions like “terroir,” what are we really talking about?
In the first part of this book, I avoided talking about zones and vineyards and wrote only a little about my favorite wines—those natural wines that are claimed to be, or so they say, the most powerful and faithful expressions of their terroir. This was not due to carelessness or haste. Neither was it due to a lack of interest in the subject, nor a lack of competence and culture that in fact I have never boasted of possessing. By now you may have realized why I remained silent on the subject: terroir is not a stable piece of space; terroir is made, always becoming something new.
Like taste, terroir is also a task that requires work. Let me then clarify why the more natural and therefore alive the wine is, the less it expresses the terroir it comes from but rather the terroir to which it corresponds. Provenance is likewise not an expression but a correspondence: derived from the Latin pro venire, it means to come forward, to come out, and even to grow. Provenance is not the passive imposition of a past that arrives in the present as a recognition that passively ratifies. It is rather the unfolding of the what-has-been into the present, an active overflowing of lines of connection. To avoid any possible misunderstanding: a revised past has nothing to do with it, nor does any post-truth. The present is, conversely, the time that flourishes from previous knots that we create instant by instant and that is available for the tasks that prepare the future. Therefore this correspondence between wine and “its” terroir is completely reciprocal in the sense that I have proposed in this work, a correspondence of questions and answers, agreements and disagreements, looser and tighter knots. Wine calls and responds or, in other words, corresponds, with the terroir, just as the terroir responds and asks, or corresponds, with that wine.
Replacing “expression” with “correspondence” is strategically crucial because it allows us to open up to a way of feeling where everything flows and is tending toward, and where barriers and boundaries appear for what they are—wire cages, possibly hard and metallic, but still full of holes and a very large mesh. They are nothing more than fragile conventions. Above all, those who make and drink wine should sense this. A terroir is neither a cage nor a fenced farm; it is a hive as big as the whole planet. I know, epistenology now becomes even more annoying, stealing the king and queen’s very last asset, their most precious one, the so-called expression of origin. However, believe me, my companions in this haptic approach, this is a strategy of respect and value, not of annihilation and spite. When I say that a terroir does not exist but is made, it is not in the sense understood by the great wine industry and the advocates of an exclusive and solitary truth about genetic variety. On the contrary, it is in the sense that the terroir is not an abstract space to be rejected or exhibited, brandished like a banner or a trophy. It is rather a place to be built and flowed into, to be created continuously with care and attention. Professor Ann Noble, the inventor of the aroma wheel, during a dinner once answered a question relating to the fact that her device was indifferent to locations when cataloging aromas—the wheel contains Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, etc., as if they were universal categories. She told us: “Terroir does not exist,” and we all jumped up in indignation. At the time, epistenology had a long way to go, and now I would no longer be shocked but indignant anyway, even doubly so, owing to her implication that varieties of wines are fixed ontological elements. The phrase “terroir does not exist, terroir is made,” revealed by epistenology, therefore has a meaning that is the opposite of that suggested by the inventor of the aromatic wheel. If terroir does not exist, even less so do wine varietals that reside as icons in catalogs.
The need to localize and catalog wine-growing regions within rigid and predefined boundaries arises from the gross error of considering terroir only in relation to the soil and the private ownership of the fields where grapes are grown. Yet is not the vine precisely the verticality that connects the subsoil with the sky, gifting us the fruits of these connections? Therefore who can say what the boundaries of the sky might be? Who owns the subsoil, the wind, the rain, and the sun, which are equally essential to the making of wine? Terroir is not only horizontal but also vertical. This expansion in dimensionality, where the air and the land reference each other and therefore correspond, prevents any hypostasis. “Expressing the characteristics of a terroir” is both a senseless and a banal cliché. We cannot know what these characteristics will be because they are always created anew and depend on the correspondence of many different elements. Knots of lines made of the air, the light, water, the rain, soils, small and large animals, objects and humans that come and go and that day by day, night by night, move and produce life without any defined and precise boundaries. Try to create boundaries and fences around the clouds and the sky, around the birds in the fields, around the water in the seas and rivers, around the sun and the moon! However, are these not all essential in the making of the wine of this terroir that you praise so much? Therefore the terroir is not a field and even less a park. The experiences we have with the world cannot be the experiences of a closed and limited nature, like a park to be preserved.
A terroir is a question that provokes experience rather than a predetermined answer; it is not the cause, it is a process. Once we have appreciated this relationship, our drinking glasses will be tinkling with joy. In fact, every time we breathe the question arises: What is the terroir continuously becoming, here and now? When we inhale and exhale oxygen and breath, we contribute to making the place and the time in which we live. Wind and breath, inside and out, produce life by corresponding: “Inhalation is wind becoming breath, exhalation is breath becoming wind,” as Tim Ingold describes it. Terroir as a closed and abstract space answers to the objectivist model according to which it is perceived and eventually measured at ground level, as if there were no air, no sky, and no light. It is a complex experience to feel and live the air, oxygen, the sun, and the moon, and therefore we forget them, as if they were not necessary for life and wine, preferring an illusory, solid, horizontal terroir. This prejudice insinuates itself everywhere and is transversal. I once heard someone wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and tasting “naturally” say “Hasta el territorio siempre!” (At that moment I realized that the age of wine fairs of any shape and kind was coming to a spiritual end.) There are also market- and brand-related reasons that the terroir is exhibited as a static and objective postcard, since a representation of wine zones in spatial terms, concealing the real hive in favor of a fake fence, promotes a model of private, fragmented, and divided domains. In this way it can be ranked and sold at very different prices. This process removes the correspondence between living elements and their endless flow under the green carpet of a fenced, protected vineyard or inside some kind of container in a wine cellar. On the other hand, in order to challenge such a misleading model, it is enough to cite history well known to us all: Bordeaux and Champagne wines were created to please the English palate, and we will drink them in the future thanks to China. In general terms, when a bottle is opened and drunk, the importance of its relationship with the air is immediately manifest. However, as soon as the wine has been oxygenated, boundaries disappear. Is there a need for any more proof that the terroir is made through endless correspondence?
Our strategy lies in reclaiming places, their air, sun, and water, and giving them back to the wine in the world, to life with wine. This is because the terroir, as a horizontally limited, objective space, is allied with objective science and paradoxically also with the technology that the champions of wine’s territorial expression see as the enemy. Indeed, if the aspiration is for this expression to adhere to a predefined and pre-established reality—the wine, the characteristic flavors and aromas we expect—then Italian oenologist Luigi Moio is totally right. He says, “We are convinced that these native yeasts, mostly belonging to the non-Saccharomyces genus, tend to make wines uniform, covering the distinctive characteristics of both grape and terroir. What the advocates of ‘natural fermentation’ call ‘the taste of terroir’ is indeed reduced to a mélange of higher alcohols, acetates, and phenolic flavors produced by these non-Saccharomyces yeasts. Wines produced in such a way are all similar, whatever the terroir.” The fixed idea of the terroir as an object, a defined and precise element like the “distinctive characteristics” of the grape, is clearly echoed in these words. If we accept this vision, then debates around whether I am more terroir-driven than you will abound, the usual competition with rules and standards followed to get the highest marks. To have the most precise terroir, the more sharply focused postcard, and to avoid surprises, the competent oenologist informs us that yeasts must be trained and instructed to perform the right tasks, which are those we expect to see. From here on, the path leading to Ramon Persello’s way of reasoning is all downhill. However, the underlying model of knowledge is the same. If you do not know Ramon Persello, dear reader who is not an expert on diatribes about wines, let me refer you to a debate you can easily find out about on your own. He is a strange and iconic contemporary Italian oenologist who elaborated some chemical formulas to “improve” and enhance wine aromas, particularly for Sauvignon Blanc generating the indignant reaction of many and treading a subtle and ambiguous line. What is of interest here, however, is improving in what sense? In the sense of making wines richer and more aromatic. The more always beats the less, an aesthetics of amplified cleanliness that takes as its model a visible as well as a predictable olfactory goodness. For this reason, in some epistenology exercises I suggest that noses should not be put in the wine glasses, so, for example, we drink directly from the bottle or from containers that prevent smelling the wine directly. (When I do this, I often tell the participants to consider Ramon Persello’s aesthetics.)
However, a postcard as an abstract transfiguration of the terroir does not tell us much. Think, for example, about spending some time in Paris—not as a tourist; you are there for work or to take care of a sick relative. You are living in the suburbs. This too is a terroir, if admittedly marginal and minor. No Louvre nor Eiffel Tower, although you might be unaware that they exist and thus not miss them. (There are many people who have never heard of the Louvre, Pinot Noir, and many other things essential to some.) You live near a square and a street like many others in the world. You will meet people doing the same things you do in Berlin, Bra, or Barcelona. These too are terroirs. The life of people on the streets, the traffic, bicycles, public parks, cafes, and kebab shops, and of course the sun, the rain, the soil, the air, and the clouds: the terroir grows and evolves within this entanglement of traits. In what sense are they “characteristic”? What makes something a characteristic? Epistenology lives elsewhere, between verticality and the horizon. Slipping away from worn-out arguments and displacing itself elsewhere, epistenology suggests a different move: the more recognizable a wine is, the less it interests me. The better it completes its tasks, the less it helps me to feel the tasting of it and the less it contributes to the atmosphere where the substances dance and correspond with each other—the process that I feel with the haptic approach and that candlelight can illuminate. Opening up wine to the attention of the world does not need new methods. It needs communication with wine, not with methods or instructions but with stories, communities, bonds, and images through the wine itself. In this way, to give value to places, things, and people, we need to turn our heads, placing all back in their flow.
What is a terroir’s “vocation”? In what sense should it be good or bad for something? What does it mean when we say that the Sangiovese doesn’t “come out well” here? It should now be clear that this adaptation to what is “good” corresponds with the flow of lines that continuously entangle for the purposes of making commitments and fully legitimate decisions relating to the market, the economy, and aesthetics. These decisions are the outcomes of the society we live in and that we continuously create. Why only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Burgundy? How did the idea come about that these varieties were the best? One could say that this is because over time they have satisfied expectations, that they have been appreciated, hence they won. OK, but who liked them? Some important consumers, experts, and the market in general. It is the criteria of the majority that have won because other wines, usually considered “inferior,” can be and actually are produced, even in Burgundy. The terroir is a dynamic area, a land of struggle and power relations where the winner reduces the spaces, casts aside the losers, and then, naturally, tells a story. Now, since epistenology is in tune with inverse and minor canons, it loves first and foremost encountering those wines that have nothing to prove, that do not need to express anything or perform the tasks expected of them. Epistenology is anarchic not only in relation to drinking but also in relation to making. For example, I believe that making cultures richer through unexpected varieties that are “inappropriate,” “unsuitable,” out of place, and lopsided is a pleasurable task. In this way, we displace the evolution and origin of life with new correspondences with the place in which we live and make, in our continuous moving about.
Then there is the category of the vintage. The rhetoric around the vintage, the best and worst vintages, represents the objective and classifying hypostasis of its paroxysm. An excellent year, a bad one, in relation to what? If it relates to the quantity of grapes ripened and the resultant wine produced, it is both understandable and honest. We see the value of wine as a currency required for living, which, nonetheless, is legitimate these days. This expression, however, usually refers to the “quality” of the product in relation to a standard that is in turn the elaboration of a statistical average. So here we have a twofold, illusory abstraction: the mummifying of wine making, activities performed by the bureaucrats of qualitative, objective, and inert standards; and the removal of results and processes that differ one from the other, created by statistics and marketing experts. The goal is communicating data—not as work to be done in common but as the transmission of information—according to criteria of convenience. (You will have noted that the terms goal, appropriate, and product are all part of the thematic model of the optic, of judgment, of professionalism, of method, and of instructions.)
With regard to vintages, the only real stars are those in the sky, under which grapes grow and bear fruit every year. There are no good or bad years. Consistent with the approach I’ve proposed, if a year corresponds to the meteorology occurring at the time, to the entanglements that were produced, and therefore to all the work involved to make that wine, it always constitutes a renewed and constant miracle. Every year is perfect, perfectum, complete, lacking nothing. When we realize a lack, it is because of a retrospective look, a hindsight perspective to which, again, we would like to correspond. The wine corresponds with the terroir and the year rather than expressing it. The year is a period of time, a segment cut out from the meshwork, a ring composed of lines that in turn are tied to others, and so on, without end, back to the beginning.
Anarchy in wine making, however, does not signify individualism and a celebration of the label. An interpretation of natural wines as wines that express the styles of the people who make them has been recently suggested to counter the idea of terroir as a productive designated standard of predictive, channeled, and instructed typicality. Again, we need to move away from the doldrums of the idea of expression and suggest an alternative path. The earth and the sky, the wind and the rain, plants and soils, animals and birds, and many other things, including human beings, of course, make wines, particularly alive and vital ones. However, this does not mean replacing terrain and vineyards with labels and authors. It is not necessary to consider wine as a “style” related to production philosophies and objectives. The idea of the author of a wine, with her cometlike moments of adulation, with the masters and protagonists following in her wake, needs to be dismissed. Epistenology supports the minor key and, in contrast to the master on the podium explaining and teaching, proposes a mastery both shared and constructed together with the pupils. The wine of a terroir is a process of growth—where birthplaces, things, and people continuously combine—that corresponds with the world. Authors and styles fall within this process wherein there are no pre-established and distinct elements but where everything evolves and tends toward. They can be recognized as “this” or “that” rather than something else because the lines, which have already passed through, arrive and combine with our present flow, permitting us to recognize and feel the stability and common traits within a continuous variation. Consequently, epistenology does not believe in authorship rights. In effect, a reverse authorship would be both beautiful and advantageous, in which every endorsed wine would be drunk and lived as a collective property, from bacteria to human beings to the divine mind and celestial forces. What I try to bring to the foreground when I invite participants to drink wine without considering its origin and without telling them what the wine is or who produces it, or when I try to distract them from the label and signatures, is that wine does not have a single author but many creators.
Wine is not autopoietic; it cannot make itself on its own. Along and within the flow of the river, however, there are many different ways of swimming and acting. It is possible to distinguish between ways of caring and ways of choosing. The first relates to an awareness of attention and correspondence, the second to the desire to control with intentions and expressions. Within the logic of choice, individual freedom, design, and goals come first: I choose the way that will take me there. Within the logic of care, I follow the flow, to which I adapt. Action is not designed; it proceeds as I go along, it lets things take their course and allows me to be, intervening only in the junctures in order to leave what is transpersonal—the sky, the earth, the clouds, and the air—free to flow and grow without a goal. For epistenology, a natural wine is a wine of care and not of choice. A wine of care is a wine from a place that corresponds with the world as infinite knots of unpredictable and uncontrollable lines. The logic of choice is the opposite: I intervene and adjust in order to put things back in their correct place, to perform the right tasks—and for this reason the wine I make is less vital, because life is self-producing movement.
In Daoism, wu wei describes the excellence achieved when the artist sets acquired techniques aside and does as little as possible to create the work. For any activity—whether it be butchery, swimming, working in gold, music, agriculture, oenology, philosophy—it is necessary to acquire the ability to appreciate and work with empty spaces. These are what dialectically define and give sense to the whole—in other words, the spaces, junctures, and interstices. Thus what is produced is not a transformation due to the intervention of an executor; rather, the transformation appears to come about on its own, working precisely in the empty spaces. The artist Ding thus responded to Prince Wen Hui, who was astounded by his proficiency in butchering: “At the beginning of my career, I could only see the ox. After three years of practice, I no longer saw the ox. Now it is my spirit that works, rather than my eyes. I know the conformation of the ox and only attack the interstices.”
Therefore the greatest skill in butchery occurs when the butcher’s intervention is minimal. The same goes for wine. We have had enough of the wine of nations and parochialism, enough of themes, methods, intentions, sensorial trainings, and judgments; we have even had enough of the mythology surrounding grape varieties. So, what is left? All the wine is left. Within a desert of burning scrubland? On the contrary: a huge and florid field unfolds, where it is possible to think, imagine, and dream again. So let us restore the place of “origin,” running over the Earth’s crust without enclosing ourselves within artificial boundaries, because we now know that this “origin” is always part of the flow. It will not be a great loss. We are no longer in eighteenth-century Europe, we do not live among the nobility, and neither do we live blinded by the sun of industrial progress: those lines no longer speak, nor do they produce florid images. We should rather bring wine to the world, making it a universal drink, with its terroir the place where we all live together. The terroir of wine is not a geographical space nor a piece of soil regulated by norms and rules. Neither is it just a historical time (Zeit). It is not just aromas, techniques, and traditions. All these contribute but only within the wider process of the movement that constantly makes the world and at the same time creates its inhabitants. Just like taste and life, terroir is not a noun but a verb. It is an active volcano, erupting and knitting different lines together. The lines of human and other-than-human beings. Thus the strategy overturns itself, not to diminish the value of wine but on the contrary to keep it safe from the nefarious influences of commodity markets and the criteria of the majority so it can be the drink of us all. Challenging paradoxes that are only apparent, we can “valorize the terroir” only by knowing nothing about it, by making it a new experience every time or, in other words, by starting anew every time, ignorant and without knowing the language.
Therefore when you, our wine grower, tell me: “My wine is the expression of my terroir,” what you are saying is that you and the wine correspond with the terroir that you made and the world in which it is inscribed. If you are satisfied with the result, this does not mean that the terroir has expressed itself in the best way according to what it was yesterday. It means, rather, that this is how you—and the community and society you belong to—want your wine to correspond tomorrow. So thank you, wine grower, nurturer, and even “producer” of wine, for the wine you make. However, this is not formally speaking your wine, it’s everyone’s wine insomuch as we all live in the same place, the only society and the only world we have—the terroir of Planet Earth. And you, dear friend who drinks, do not stop saying that you feel the “taste of the terroir” in that wine—it is entirely legitimate. What you are effectively doing, however, is not recognizing an established fact by applying your skills; you are rather promising, saying “yes” to a gamble or an appointment, a fact that is still to come.