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Terroir was invented by feudal landlord wine makers to justify their price fixing schemes. It has little basis in science besides the fact that plants require c
by anon84873628 3y ago
Terroir was invented by feudal landlord wine makers to justify their price fixing schemes. It has little basis in science besides the fact that plants require certain inputs.
In the coffee world the term has the effect of disempowering producers by making it seem like their labor to increase quality is futile or not valuable; that at the end it was the soil not their hard work. Places with a reputation for low quality coffee can in fact grow excellent coffee that deserves high prices. And of course you can also get bad coffee from regions with a good reputation.
The term "provenance" is preferred by some folks instead.
- nerdponx 3y agoI've been wondering about this for a long time. Does the same grape grown under different conditions but processed identically produce different wine? Surely that's been studied before.
- anon84873628 3y agoAbsolutely. I mean, the reason different vintages taste differently is because of the climate that year. Temperature, rainfall, sunlight are all important variables. And in the case of coffee you are often relying on wild microbial communities as well, rather than cultivated inoculants. When wine brands link soil type to flavor it is complete BS. Plant roots don't absorb minerals, they absorb the water soluble molecular components like phosphate and calcium. (Moreover those nutrients primarily come from the humus layer rather than dirt). However those nutrients can be tasted by humans even at low concentrations, hence the conflation with soil quality and using "minerality" as an ambiguous flavor descriptor.