What is actually "terroir" and what's just marketing?
This issue was published on April 12, 2023.
Happy Wine Wednesday!
We’re here to level up your wine game and celebrate the women who work in wine, all while having a grape time.
Today, we’re digging into what exactly terroir is (and isn’t), then learning about trailblazer and all around badass Isabelle Simi, the first female winemaker in the United States. So pour yourself a glass and let’s get our wine nerd on!
Terroir
Bacteria, Clones, and Marketing
Terroir is a French term that’s often thrown around to make both the wine and speaker sound fancy (cough snobby cough). If you Google it, you’ll get a bunch of different, long-winded definitions – although most agree that it means “a sense of place.”
So…what actually is terroir and why is it so confusing?
“Sense of place” is actually a pretty good (albeit vague) descriptor for terroir. It’s saying, how does this wine represent where it came from? A cabernet sauvignon from warm Napa, California may be much jammier than one from the cooler Willamette Valley. A Chablis from Burgundy, France – a chardonnay which is not oak-aged – will taste crisper than buttery chardonnays from California which go through malolactic fermentation and are oak-aged (you can learn more about that here).
Think about oranges from Florida, Swiss chocolate, or Kobe wagyu beef. These products all exhibit some characteristics of their origins – a sense of the place they were produced. Just like how people are affected by their environment, wine can be affected by their environment as well. People. We’re just like wine! Feel free to use that in your next therapy appointment (as long as you let me know how it goes…)
Now that we know what terroir is supposed to mean, what actually is included in terroir itself? What creates this “sense of place” for the wine?
Many people say it’s the climate, soil, and geology. Let’s break those down:
Climate: This includes things like temperature and humidity. An example is a cactus which thrives in hot, arid Arizona but would freeze in cold, rainy Washington. A grape growing in year-round sunny California is going to be pretty different from one growing with all four seasons in Germany!
Soil: I don’t want to dig into soil too much right now (ha), but let’s think about our cactus example again. If you go to Home Depot’s plant section, there’s a bunch of different types of soil, right? You wouldn’t want to pot your succulent with soil that holds onto moisture too much because it might cause root rot. You’d pick the cactus blend that will help your cactus stay dry and healthy. On the other hand, your moisture-loving leafy plants will get too thirsty in that same soil.
Geology: A grape that’s growing on the sunny side of a hill will taste differently than one that’s growing on the shaded side of the hill, or the one growing in a valley that traps in fog. Using our cactus example again, a succulent that’s soaking up the sun by a window is going to be very different from one in someone’s dark, sad basement.
Cactus examples not doing it for you?
Imagine yourself on vacation at the beach. It’s sunny but there’s a cool breeze so it’s not too hot. The hotel server swings by with your aperol spritz to make sure you don’t get too thirsty. Very different from how you’d feel getting caught by a sudden thunderstorm in the middle of an autumn camping trip, leaving you soaking wet with not enough blankets (and no server with wine!). See? People. We’re just like wine!
What else is included in terroir?
Grape clone: This is when a cutting of an existing grape vine is used to grow other vines. It’s kind of like baking bread with the same mother yeast, or propagating your succulent. Maybe the grape grower likes that a particular vine is more disease resistant, so wants to recreate those vines elsewhere. They’d take part of that grape vine and graft it onto –
Rootstock
Viticultural Practice: aka the practice of winegrowing. How are the grapes themselves grown and harvested?
Water availability
And lastly, the most important part of terroir: Fungi and bacteria!
Scientists at UC Davis studying microbes at vineyard sites and in wines found a clear existence of a unique, biogeographic fingerprint in wine. Repeat after me: People, we’re just like wine!
This fingerprint is based on both the type and amount of fungi and bacteria that is present in grape must (mushed up grapes). Not only does this fingerprint serve as a biological indicator of where the wine is from, it’s even an indicator of what year it was made! The fungi and bacteria that make up these unique fingerprints are the largest contributor to a wine’s terroir.
Take a look at this example from their study of all of the different types of bacteria and fungi found on chardonnay grapes in different parts of California:
The bacteria and fungi found on chardonnay grapes in Sonoma, Napa, and California's Central Coast
They’re still not sure how exactly these differences are linked to the actual sensory properties of wine (like aroma or taste), but I’m excited to see what they learn as they continue their experiment!
There’s one more important thing I want to talk about: what terroir is not.
Local plants: Growing your basil plant next to your lemon tree isn’t going to make it more citrusy. Similarly, a Grenache that’s grown and produced near lavender fields in Provence isn’t going to have a lavender aroma because of those fields. I’m not saying it can't have a lavender aroma. It just won’t be because they’re neighbors.
The mineral content of the soil: We cannot taste the mineral composition of the soil in wine. The mineral compounds are too small, it’s typically the rootstock that interacts with the soil and not the grapevine itself, and *insert other science*. So why is “minerality” used to describe wine? Again, I’m not saying that wine doesn’t taste minerally. Maybe you get a flinty aroma or an iodine taste. It’s just important to remember that the mineral content itself is not what we are tasting. In fact in one experiment, wine drinkers in France and Switzerland used minerality to describe different things. The next time someone’s droning on about how you can taste the lava from Mount Etna’s volcanic eruptions in their Etna Rosso, you can (quietly) tell your friends that they’re full of shit.
The point is, terroir has become marketing shorthand to give the wine a story (a sense of place, if you will) so that you'll be more likely to buy it.
Even if you don’t remember everything that contributes to terroir, I hope you remember the big takeaway of this issue which is that…
People. We’re just like wine.
Isabelle Simi
America's First Female Winemaker
“Luckily, making wine is thirsty work.”
A picture of Isabelle Simi at Simi Winery's tasting room. Courtesy of Simi Winery
Today, we’re talking about a legend in the wine industry: Isabelle Simi (pronounced like “see me”). She was the first woman winemaker in the United States, running Sonoma’s Simi Winery through a huge earthquake and Prohibition.
Her story begins when her father, Giuseppe Simi, and his brother Pietro immigrated to San Francisco from Montepulciano, Italy in the 1840s hoping to find gold. When that didn’t work out, they began growing produce until they eventually pivoted to making wine (which is basically gold), starting off in Alexander Valley before relocating to Healdsburg in Sonoma County.
By the time Isabelle was 18, the brothers were becoming one of the largest independent winegrowers in the state and she was crowned Queen of the 1904 Healdsburg Flower Festival. Sadly, her father and uncle died of the Spanish flu within weeks of each other that same year and Isabelle had to take over management of the winery at a young age. This was a time when many women weren’t in business and were denied access to credit, but Isabelle didn’t let that stop her.
Isabelle moved onward with gusto and immediately began working on the expansion of the winery. She also had steel bars installed in the cellars to withstand earthquakes, an extremely smart decision which paid off a couple years later. When the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake sent shocks through Sonoma County, Simi Winery became one of the few buildings that didn’t sustain significant damage. Isabelle also worked quickly to stay ahead of competitors by traveling across the country to visit wine distributors at just age 22.
Then came Prohibition in 1920, a massive blow that resulted in many local wineries literally dumping their wines into local rivers and creeks (legend has it people in town showed up with buckets to scoop up the now slightly diluted wine). Instead of doing the same, Isabelle took advantage of a loophole that allowed for the production and sale of sacramental wine to churches. While she did have to sell some of the winery’s property, she managed to keep Simi operating through the Prohibition years by selling “medicinal” and “sacramental” wine to religious organizations around the country (that must have been some very good church wine…). When Prohibition was finally repealed in December of 1933, Simi was not only one of the few wineries that survived Prohibition, but had 500,000 gallons of wine ready to sell to a very thirsty public!
The next year, Isabelle took another radical step and decided to sell wine not only to wine distributors, but directly to customers. This prompted the opening of Simi’s first tasting room, created from a 25,000 gallon Champagne cask installed in front of the winery’s cellar. Just in case the wine itself wasn’t enough to draw people in, she also had a payphone (a novelty at the time) placed outside the tasting room. Customers came from far and wide to visit the tasting room, drinking wine that Isabelle sold to them while waiting to use the payphone. The ultimate customer service!
Even in the depths of the Great Depression, Isabelle stewarded Simi Winery towards success. Simi wines gained a national reputation, won gold medals at the California state fair in 1941, and became the house wine at the famous Hotel del Monte resort in Monterey. When her husband passed away in 1954, she continued to run retail sales out of the tasting room with their daughter, Vivien, where she wore aprons covered with political buttons and utilized an innovative and sophisticated security system: a pet turkey that was extremely protective of the cash register and only let Isabelle open it.
Shortly after Viven’s death in 1970, Isabelle retired at the age of 84 and sold the winery to a local grape grower who was a former oil executive. However, she continued to work in the tasting room, wearing her “Love wine not war” apron while regaleing guests with stories of how red wine flowed through the rivers and streets of Healdsburg during Prohibition.
(Side note: Mary Ann Graf, the first woman to graduate with a degree in viticulture and enology from UC Davis, joined Simi Winery as their winemaker in 1973).
While Isabelle finally passed away in 1981 at the age of 95, the winery continues to live on today as one of the oldest continuously operating wineries in California. In addition, Simi is still run by female winemakers and even did a collaboration with Reese’s Book Club, founded by Reese Witherspoon to celebrate women’s stories, in 2021.
Fun fact: While she ran the winery, Isabelle planted a rose bush for every sitting president except for one. Out of spite, Isabelle refused to plant one for Prohibition-era President Herbert Hoover. Apparently, he heard about the garden and, not wanting to be left out, personally sent a rose bush to Isabelle to be planted. Of course, Isabelle sent it right back. I think the lesson here is that flowers don’t fix everything and also – Don’t mess with our money!
Get a wine-related movie or book pairing for your weekend.
Today’s pairing is Blind Ambition, winner of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award.
Described as Cool Runnings for the wine world, this documentary follows four friends who become some of South Africa’s top sommeliers after escaping from the tyranny and starvation in Zimbabwe. After forming Zimbabwe’s first nation wine tasting team, they’re on a journey to get the title of “World Wine Tasting Champions.”
Share the wine wisdom with your friends!
If you enjoyed what you read, please consider forwarding it on to your fellow wine-loving friends! After all, sharing wine & wine wisdom is the best kind of caring…
Next week, we’re getting funky with natural wine and chatting with wine grower and maker, Margot Mazur.
Have a wine-derful week and see you next Wednesday!
Cheers,
Megumi