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Practical Terroir
  Jim Law, Linden Vineyards, Virginia

Terroir=Typicity of place

I. Macro-terroir (AOC or AVA) example: Chablis in 1961
II. Micro-terroir (knowing your place)
A. Soil and site variability within a site
1. Soil water holding capacity
2. Slope aspect
3. Steepness of slope
4. Cool soil vs. warm soil
5. Linden example: Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1985
6. Matching variety to site
B. Climate
1. The cool 30 nights before harvest. “Barely ripe”.
2. Rain and terroir: makes soil more important (see water holding
capacity)
3. Terroir vintages vs. fruit vintages
“…I would suggest that the absence of precipitation in the summer months
in California may well make the expression of terroir problematic.” Randall
Graham Bonny Doon; see appellationamerica.com
C. Management
1. Vine balance and vine age
2. Cropping levels
a. To express terroir
b. Appropriate to wine style goal
3. Fine–tuning sunlight on clusters
4. Picking by soil or slope
5. Harvest criteria to express terroir (fruit vs. terroir vintage)
a. Crunchy red fruit ripe
b. High, but balanced acidity in whites
6. The courage to remove vineyard blocks
“There’s no scientific proof for typicity; you can’t describe it in molecular
terms. But you can see it at work in an appellation like St. Emillion. Some
soils are limestone, some are gravel, and some are clay. The wines from
all three can be good, but the typicity is quite different in each case.” Kees
van Leeuwen, Bordeaux