Global terroirism

When grapes taste like places

by Thor Iverson

LET'S BREAK WITH tradition and start the column with a few tasting notes. Trust me.

1997 Brancott Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough Reserve ($21.99). A powerful grassy nose with hints of grapefruit and a powerful core of red cherries; a tingly mouthful of asparagus crowns this New Zealand classic. It gets a little tart on the finish, but it's a fantastically balanced wine to serve with fried clams or vegetables.

1996 Grove Mill Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough ($12.99). Grassy aromas -- laced with basil, mint, apple cider, and cauliflower -- turn into a chewy lime wave of acidity with heavy asparagus flavors and a green-bean finish. A perfect wine for bitter-leaf salads in vinaigrette dressings.

1996 Yarra Ridge Sauvignon Blanc Victoria ($11.99). An Australian wine with an intriguing nose of salty pear and banana cut through with light minerals, followed by peach, pear, and hay flavors and a tart citrus finish. The moderately low acidity creates a smooth, creamy feel without an intrusive overlay of oak.

1996 Domaine Henri Bourgeois Sancerre Les Bonnes Bouches ($15.99). Classic Sancerre, with piercing citrus and clay acidity, stony mushroom and moss on the palate, a tight knot of red fruit flavors that suggests aging potential, and a chalky apple-peach finish. Drink with high-acid food or raw shellfish.

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So that's four sauvignon blancs: two from New Zealand, one from Australia, and one from France's Loire Valley. Reading through the notes, you'll notice that even though they're made from the same grape, they have only some very general citrus flavors in common. You might also notice that the two wines from New Zealand's Marlborough region possess remarkably similar grass and asparagus flavors.

Why does sauvignon blanc from New Zealand tend to taste one way and the same grape from Sancerre taste almost completely different? There are two possible answers. Either the winemakers from each region have an unspoken agreement to produce a specific style of wine, or there's something about those places that brings out an essential and unique character in the grapes.

Some wine experts do believe the former. To them, winemaking methods are the crucial factor in determining a wine's taste. The argument runs like this: regional consumer preference for a particular style leads winemakers to pursue that style. Tasters are suggestible, and if they expect a grassy taste in wine from New Zealand, they'll find a grassy taste.

However, this doesn't account for blind tastings, where experienced tasters, identifying wines by aroma and flavor alone, have a remarkable success rate at pinpointing a wine's place of origin. Nor does it address the difficulty winemakers in one region have in perfectly imitating the wines of another. Despite the best efforts of some vintners, sauvignon blanc grown in California or Australia just does not taste anything like that from Sancerre.

This brings us back to the idea of terroir, which I mentioned in a previous column: the idea that grapes, and the wine they produce, reflect the place where they're grown. Terroir is a sort of all-encompassing environmental buzzword; it suggests that the soil, weather, climate, atmosphere, location, and other intangibles of Place X produce a certain set of qualities that distinguish its agricultural products, including wine.

It goes without saying that specific areas of New Zealand, Australia, and France have different climates. The soil is different, too: the two Marlborough wines come from grapes grown in glacial gravel, silt, sand, and rocks. The Yarra Ridge is grown in alluvial loam. The Bourgeois comes from the clay-and-chalk hillsides of Sancerre.

Different climates, different soils, very different tastes. Grass and asparagus are the classic descriptors for New Zealand sauvignon blanc (the British prefer to label those flavors gooseberry and cat's pee -- also accurate, but kind of unappetizing). Likewise, the sauvignon blanc-based whites of Sancerre (and Pouilly-Fumé next door) are known for lemon-lime flavors dominated by an unmistakable minerality.

Does this all sound like wine-critic doublespeak? Well, the people with the most intimate connection to wine -- the winemakers themselves -- don't think so. All but the most industrial of operations regularly pick and vinify grapes from different soils and hillsides separately but with identical techniques, to determine the character of the juice that results. A visit to almost any winery will demonstrate this; casks, tanks, and barrels will be labeled according to their location, soil type, climate, drainage, even which direction the vines face on a hillside. Sometimes this is no more than a winemaker's private experiment. Other times, single-location juices are blended, based on what the individual components can bring to a single wine. And sometimes the wines are bottled and labeled separately. Why would any winemaker go to all this trouble if there wasn't something to this terroir idea?

In an upcoming column, we'll take the concept down to the most basic level and give you a chance to find out -- same producer, same grape, same vintage, but different vineyards -- in a side-by-side tasting that anyone can replicate at home.
Thor Iverson can be reached at wine[a]phx.com.