There’s a saying that great wine is made in the vineyards, meaning that the conditions under which vines grow determine a wine’s quality much more than what occurs in the cellar.
While the phrase has become a cliché, its core principle remains true: you can’t make good wine from bad grapes. And great wine also comes from healthy soil. Grapes receive a big part of their sustenance from the soil, which helps determine the wine’s characteristics and quality.
A Vineyard in Bourgogne, France. All photos by Lisa Denning.
Industrial Age Woes
Unfortunately, modern farming methods, which use synthetic chemicals, have disrupted the natural character and vitality of soils worldwide, threatening the health of our global ecosystem. Vines that grow in chemically treated soils lose their ability to express terroir, leaving us with cookie-cutter wines without a sense of place.
Many factors contribute to terroir: soil, sunlight, slope, rainfall, elevation, wind, temperature, and the people working the land and making the wine. In Bourgogne,* winemaking has long been driven by this sense of place, dating back to the Middle Ages when Cistercian monks recognized that the wine’s character would vary depending on the precise location of the vines. This discovery set the framework for the modern-day appellation system.
It Starts With The Soil
Bourgogne’s marine marl, clay, and limestone soils, dating back to the Jurassic era, have created ideal conditions for growing high-quality wine grapes, particularly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Bourgogne wine producers often attribute their wines’ finesse and aromatic
This Article was originally published on The Wine Chef
