Tim Patterson - Wine and Place: A Terroir Reader

For me, the construct of terroir has always been the big pumping heartbeat of wine. Unhinged from it, wine would be deada hollow shell emotionally and intellectually. And yet do any of us spend enough time thinking about terroir , the very lifeblood of what we love? With Wine and Place , Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein have given us a great gifta fantastic book that explains why wine moves us and reminds us why wine has meaning. I could not put this book down.

KAREN MACNEIL , author of The Wine Bible and editor of WineSpeed

Wines magic appears to be closely tied to its place of birth. In this tasty volume, the subject inspires passionate writing from some of the best of our wine writers.

KERMIT LYNCH , author of Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyers Tour of France

Patterson and Buechsensteins book presents a detailed compilation of some of the finest writing on terroir , the concept thats at the heart of fine wine. As such, its a vital distillation of thinking on this important topic, thoughtfully arranged and interestingly presented. Its an important contribution to the wine literature.

JAMIE GOODE , author of I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine

What a bonus to find a book about the taste of place compiled by two actual winemakersBuechsenstein, an accomplished professional, and Patterson, a passionate amateurwho made wines from scores of different terroirs in their careers. This scholarly and often witty compilation of viewpoints is the best there is.

JIM GORDON , editor of Wines & Vines

Where something comes from is always intriguing. With wine, all the more so. Finding words to describe all that goes into that elusive bugaboo, terroir , is tough. Patterson and Buechenstein have worked every angle to help us understandand hey, any book that includes magma is worth ones time. Site matters.

VIRGINIE BOONE , contributing editor for Wine Enthusiast

I am so sad that I did not have hours and days and years to spend with Tim Patterson, talking about the subject dearest to us both, the mysterious, vexatious question of terroir. Thankfully, healong with coauthor John Buechsensteinhas left us Wine and Place . This is a must-have volume for both terroirists and counter-terroirists alike, curious to understand how a wine might most profoundly express itself.

RANDALL GRAHM , author of Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

In their chosen roles as compilers and contrarians, the experts behind Wine and Place have initiated a crucial dialogue about terroir . They have assembled, with erudition and wit, the perspectives of scholars, journalists, and winemakers, and they have created fruitful and engaging juxtapositions as to the definition, the construction, the meaning, the analysis, and the power of terroir . Everyone will learn something new, from wine aficionados to scientists to students of wine history and culture.

AMY TRUBEK , author of The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir

THE PUBLISHER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS FOUNDATION GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE AHMANSON FOUNDATION ENDOWMENT FUND IN HUMANITIES.

Wine and Place

A Terroir Reader

Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2018 by Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Patterson, Tim, author. | Buechsenstein, John, 1949- author.

Title: Wine and place : a terroir reader / Tim Patterson and John Buechsenstein.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017014298 (print) | LCCN 2017016708 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520968226 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520277007 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : Terroir.

Classification: LCC SB 387.7 (ebook) | LCC SB 387.7 . P 385 2018 (print) | DDC 634.8dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014298

Manufactured in the United States of America

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To Nancy Freeman and Nancy Buechsenstein

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Patrick J. Comiskey

This book begins, like so many do, with an epiphany, of the sort that thousands of wine lovers experience to one degree or another. You are moved by a wine, in precisely the same way that you are moved by a painting, a poem, a passage in a novel, a sunset, a mountain vista. Just taking a sip of this wine is transporting, humbling, it fills you with wonder. Like a great meal, great sex, a great musical performance, the feeling will be powerful but fleeting, rousing but ephemeral, grounded in the senses and yet cosmic all the same.

Inevitably, you start to wonder why. What makes this wine much more graceful, powerful, unique? What about this wine takes it out of the combinatory matrix of fruit, tannin, acid, and alcohol and into another, more interpretive realm? You wonder about that subtle spice, that consistently warm core of fruit, the grace and balance found here and here alone, distinct from vineyards just a few meters away. You marvel at the consistencies of texture, the tension, the power, the finesse, that seem to inhabit this wine no matter when you taste it and whereits constancy is uncanny, confounding, thrilling. Suddenly the experience of tasting this wine is (if I may coin a word) extra-vitreous: it takes you out of the glass, and into a speculative place.

For wine lovers, the discovery of terroir is a breakthrough that cannot be unbroken. Whether its the somewhereness of a region like Chablis or the particulars of its prized Grand Cru vineyards, it is an irrevocable event in your wine consciousness: once youve found it youll seek it in all wines for the rest of your life. Terroir will take over your understanding of wine, it will leave you gobsmacked by discoveries, and straining to grasp at things that arent there.

Tim Patterson sought a practical explanation for that incredulity. As a wine writer he came up against the concept of terroir all the time, he became its student whenever he tasted and evaluated wines, when he walked vineyards with grapegrowers and winemakers, when he sniffed at the dirt and pocketed rocks from between vine rows, mementoes from hallowed ground.

But in addition to being a writer, Patterson was a home winemaker, using purchased fruit to make his own wine. This fact is critical: since he didnt grow the grapes, didnt live on the land, that sense of place wasnt something inherent in his interpretation of that fruit; its signature was something he had to discover, to isolate and express. He wondered constantly, as he sniffed his vats of bubbling grapes, just what did he have to do, or not do, to tease out a sites uniquenesswas there a skeleton key, a secret procedure, that would bring out the wines terroir ? Or conversely was there something that would inadvertently mask that character, and what could he do to avoid that fate? When did he need to step in, and when did he need to get out of the way?