{"id":232,"date":"2019-09-18T10:49:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T10:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/chefscluster\/?p=232"},"modified":"2019-09-18T10:49:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T10:49:43","slug":"wine-terroir-things-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/chefscluster\/2019\/09\/18\/wine-terroir-things-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"Wine, terroir and doing things differently"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elmar*<\/sup> is an organic winemaker. His winery is about an hour\u2019s drive from Cape Town in South Africa, at the end of a steep, rutted dirt track, which itself branches off from a small unpaved road. I feel as if I\u2019ve left the rest of the world behind as I drive to meet him for our interview. His vineyards\u20142 hectares of which are planted with cabernet sauvignon vines\u2014are incredibly verdant. He tells me that it\u2019s a radically different scene from when he first bought the farm twenty-five years. Then, the land was denuded, and the soil was \u201cdead;\u201d now, every square inch is teeming with life and the ground feels springy under our feet.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Elmar is a small-scale producer, making only about 8,000 bottles a year of his award-winning wine. Working in alignment with organic methods means he can \u201cfeel good\u201d about what he does. However, he tells me:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a flipside to every coin. Your crops go down, you don\u2019t get the same volumes, and I don\u2019t believe the premium that you get on your product balances the reduction in the crops. So, economically, it makes more sense to farm conventionally.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

For many of us, wine is simply a matter of consumption, leisure and pleasure. However, wine is also a livelihood. The costs and benefits that follow from Elmar\u2019s decisions about his production methods inform the daily realities of being able to feed and house his family and pay the bills. So, if conventional methods make \u201cmore sense,\u201d why work organically? He says:<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s sustainable. You can carry <\/em>on doing this. Whereas the other way\u2026the day of reckoning is going to come.<\/em><\/p>\n

And would he consider scaling up his production to meet the potential demand for his award-winning wines? He answers without hesitation:<\/p>\n

No. I am making a living, and there\u2019s absolutely no need to go bigger at all. [\u2026] The bigger you go, the more people you need to employ, the more marketing you need to do, the more managers you need. And you know, all of those come with their costs. And in the end, what\u2019s it that <\/em>you take home? <\/em><\/p>\n

On two fronts, therefore, Elmar is doing things differently. He uses organic rather than conventional farming practices, and his business orientation runs counter to the usual pursuit of profit, growth and market expansion. Nevertheless, his orientation to wine production is absolutely in line with the established culture of fine wine. As he says:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not making wine that is the same as everybody else\u2019s wine. We\u2019re trying to\u2026express place that\u2019s unique. And the wines that you taste <\/em>here will <\/em>not taste like anybody else\u2019s wine.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the terminology of the wine world, Elmar is talking about expressing the terroir <\/em>of his wines: the idea of a unique link between the place and culture of production (e.g. soil, climate, topography, heritage) and the resulting wine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the past ten years, I have interviewed a range of winemakers in South Africa, France and Australia. Some of them (like Elmar) identify as \u2018organic,\u2019 others as \u2018biodynamic\u2019 or \u2018natural.\u2019 Regardless of their chosen label, they share a focus on making wines with minimal or no chemical and mechanical interventions. This tends to mean making wine from grapes grown without synthetic chemical pesticides or fertilizers and harvested by hand, using wild yeasts and little or no added sulphur. Thus, although the term \u2018natural wine\u2019 may be contentious in the wine trade<\/a>, it nevertheless signals what these winemakers have in common: an attempt to work in concert with nature, in the vineyard and cellar. They also share a focus on making wines that express their place, or terroir<\/em>. For Elmar, this goes hand-in-hand with working in sustainable ways; for most, sustainability is a happy consequence of their desire to give the purest representation of their unique place through their wines.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I discussed what we might learn from \u2018natural\u2019 winemakers in a SHU public lecture on Taste, Place and Why They Matter<\/a><\/em>. In that lecture, I suggested how their shared commitment to expressing their terroir<\/em>\u2014what Amy Trubeck calls the \u2018taste of place<\/a>\u2019\u2014guided them in making wine, but also enabled them to do things differently<\/em>. In a myriad of ways\u2014including rejecting agro-chemicals, prioritizing lower yields, hand picking, and adapting earlier eras\u2019 (nearly extinct) agricultural techniques\u2014their practices differ sharply from the conventional methods of the global industrial agri-food regime. More so, their commitment to terroir <\/em>was expressed not just in their wine but also through a long-term commitment to, and collaboration with the land and the vines: an alternative to the conventional quest for dominion over natural resources. The \u2018normal\u2019 methods of agri-food production, and dominant view of nature as a resource to be exploited have led to crises of food insecurity, land degradation<\/a>, toxic agricultural working conditions<\/a>, and threats to biodiversity<\/a>. It is therefore critical that we understand how some producers come to adopt alternative methods, and how that might help to pave the way for today\u2019s alternatives to become the environmentally-sustainable conventions of the future.<\/p>\n