Randall Graham: "The Phenomenology of Terroir"

This is a link to speech delivered by Randall Grahm at UC Berkeley on 1/21/06. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

The Phenomenology of Terroir

Excerpt: Terroir is a composite of many physical factors – soil structure and composition, topography, exposition, microclimate as well as more intangible cultural factors. Matt Kramer once very poetically defined terroir as “somewhere-ness,” and this I think is the nub of the issue. I believe that “somewhereness” is absolutely linked to beauty, that beauty reposes in the particulars; we love and admire individuals in a way that we can never love classes of people or things. Beauty must relate to some sort of internal harmony; the harmony of a great terroir derives, I believe, from the exchange of information between the vine-plant and its milieu over generations. The plant and the soil have learned to speak each other’s language, and that is why a particularly great terroir wine seems to speak with so much elegance.

Excellent report. It is hard to believe there are so many non-believers out there!

It is hard to believe there are so many non-believers out there!

Au contraire. I suspect that 90% of the people who read the paragraph above would think "this guy is nuts". And Randall Graham is in fact further "out there" than many mere terroirists. It's not at all hard to believe so many are doubters--the biodynamic crowd is kinda kooky, despite the terrific wines that many of them produce.