More "Facts" on Terroir

Back in KansasCity to babysit the GrandSons, I spent time catching up on reading articles from the WineTerroirist blog:
WineTerroiristBlog
by DavidWhite....one of my daily reads to scout out interesting wine articles around the Web.

From this reading there in KansasCity, I discover that:

1. In Styria/Austria, the steepness of the vnyds (to which I can testify, there are some seriously steep vnyds in this region that should be much better known) uniquely allows the SauvBlanc grape to express the Styrian terroir. Hmmm...too bad the folks in Bdx and the Loire don't have this advantage so their SauvBlancs can express their unique terroirs.

2. The use of whole-cluster ferments allows the grapes, particularly PinotNoir, to better express the terroir of the site upon which they were grown. Bet there's a lot of winemakers out there who struggle to express terroir in their wines who didn't know that fact.

3. That the Norton grape is ideally suited to express the unique terroir of OsageCnty/MO. Since terroir is the be-all/end-all in greatness for any wine, those OsageCnty farmers should quit messing around w/ Vignoles and MissouriRiesling ( MissouriRiesling) ) and get on the Norton bandwagon.
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A wee BloodyPulpit:
1. With the grandson in tow, any culinary adventures in KansasCity were pretty much not agonna happen. Did have two very good lunches (whilst Caleb was in school) at TanninWineBar (highly recommended). We did have two very good pizzas at PizzeriaLocale ("PapawHill...the crust is burnt" as he noticed some black spots on the crust..he being a big PapaJohn's Pizza fan). The PizzeriaLocale in Boulder, of BobbyStuckey and Lachlan, is one of the really great pizza joints in the US (as good as Rosso or Pizzeria DiAvola) and the wine list is incredible. With the efforts of the guy who owns Chipotle, they are expanding/franchising PizzeriaLocale. It doesn't hold a candle to the original Boulder PizzeriaLocale. The oven is not wood-fired, but gas-fired. The pizzaiola guy said they run the oven at 1,000 deg F. Find that a bit hard to believe. The "feel" is strictly out of Chipotle, the lines to order you pizza and whatever. Rush/rush to get you thru. Only a BobbyStuckey Bianco & Rosso, which were pretty quotidian, if that good. But the ingredients and the crust was good and it sure beats heck out of PapaJohn's and PizzaHut. The three PizzeriaLocales in KC are worth doing take-out, and then drinking good wine at home on your own.
Tom

The only one I saw was the Punch article on Styria, which I thought was welldone. And certainly didn't claim that only in Styria could SB express terroir, as for one thing author said " channeling the kind of site-sensitivity revealed in only the finest expressions of the grape" (with the "finest expression" being a hyperlink to a page on Pascal Cotat).
The blog is a good source for other reading

In Styria/Austria, the steepness of the vnyds (to which I can testify, there are some seriously steep vnyds in this region that should be much better known) uniquely allows the SauvBlanc grape to express the Styrian terroir.

To be honest I find it difficult to follow this argument Tom. The terroir might be the same at the bottom of the slope and what does the steepness have to do with it?

In Styria/Austria, the steepness of the vnyds (to which I can testify, there are some seriously steep vnyds in this region that should be much better known) uniquely allows the SauvBlanc grape to express the Styrian terroir.

To be honest I find it difficult to follow this argument Tom. The terroir might be the same at the bottom of the slope and what does the steepness have to do with it?

Really? Not hard to follow. Steepness (and it's direct correlation to drainage, and indirect correlation to composition , sun exposure , etc)_ is a pretty accepted factor in any look at terroir. Does anyone think flatter parts of Clos de Vougeot are equivalent to sloped parts? How many top GCs are on the valley floor by RN74>

I thought this comment quite valid on one of the other forums...quote A certain geography may make better wines (steep vs. flat). But that does not mean that a flat terroir - or "lesser" terroir - cannot make wines which speak to its terroir just as clearly as a wine made from a steep or great terroir. It's just that certain grapes may express better in different terroirs.

I am a true believer in the merits of terroir and have posted various links here in the past. Thanks for all you do here Tom.

In Styria/Austria, the steepness of the vnyds (to which I can testify, there are some seriously steep vnyds in this region that should be much better known) uniquely allows the SauvBlanc grape to express the Styrian terroir.

To be honest I find it difficult to follow this argument Tom. The terroir might be the same at the bottom of the slope and what does the steepness have to do with it?

Really? Not hard to follow. Steepness (and it's direct correlation to drainage, and indirect correlation to composition , sun exposure , etc)_ is a pretty accepted factor in any look at terroir. Does anyone think flatter parts of Clos de Vougeot are equivalent to sloped parts? How many top GCs are on the valley floor by RN74>

And so, Dale.....think how great the GC's would be if they were on slopes like in the Mosel or Valtelline or Styria. They are
only a shadow of what they potentially could be I would guess.
Tom

I Like Bob’s way of thinking. The bottom of the slope or valley floor vineyards most likely posses a different terroir than the lower slope, mid slope and upper slope. I think looking at vineyards where the geographic features or aspects are not well defined is a lot more interesting. Its what is happening below ground and above ground and the features that surround them. While standing at the end of a vineyard block on the East End of Long Island on the North Fork and looking towards the west your line of sight would be approximately the center or the Throgs Neck Bridge. The westerly winds that dominate during harvest time coming off the continent now has to “blow over” the Long Island Sound before “hitting” land again.

Salute

The best discussion of the concept of terroir that I have seen comes from an older book written by Hugh Johnson and James Holiday called “The Vintner’s Art- How great Wines Are Made”. Where a Frenchman looks at the foundation of wine as a three-legged stool. The legs representing terroir, the winemaker, and weather during harvest. Terror more or less is responsible for the “character” of a wine, the winemaker more or less responsible for the “quality” of the wine, and weather at harvest time more or less responsible for the “personality” of a wine.
I find his choice of words “character” and “personality” very interesting. Character being certain traits that one possess not necessarily visible on the outside but deeply in bedded within. Over time however these character traits might become more visible. Personality could be thought of as an ever-changing “false front”. Does the winemaker “sit-back” and let the wines character traits and personality traits play it out? Seeking whether or not a wine expresses a given terroir could be very tricky indeed. How far do we have to take it to determine if a wine is expressive of its terroir?

Salute