Once, on a road trip between Pennsylvania and Atlanta, we veered off truck-choked Route 81 and wandered back roads into a small southwestern Virginia hamlet for a bite to eat. We found a family-style restaurant where the locals drawled in a regional dialect we found charming. I’ve long forgotten what I ordered, but I’m sure it was local fare common to that corner of the world.
When I seek out local wine, I hunt for that sense of place, too. What’s the regional dialect? What does the wine say about its climate and geography? I also want to know what the weather was like in any given year and how the winemaker adjusted for this and other variables.
In wine parlance, this sense of place is called terroir (tear-WAHR), a French term that not only describes, but in France, also dictates the aromas and tastes of wine produced by a specific vineyard, village or region. It’s like saying, to produce authentic Southern-fried chicken, you must raise your chickens on locally grown grains and only fry the breaded pieces in lard. Then you will have Southern-fried chicken terroir. Pair with mashed potatoes and gravy, please.
Just imagine how winemakers outside the European Union (old world) react to these new-world regulations. Not so favorably. Sure, the wine industry is highly regulated wherever you go. But in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (new world), terroir is often considered to be a choice. We can feed and fry our chickens however we like. We can eat them with mashed potatoes and gravy, or with French fries and hot sauce.
A Finger Lakes terroir
On the East Coast, where I live, the climate is wet and cold, and the weather is unpredictable. Consequently, East Coast winemakers have to be some of the best in the business, says Peter Bell of Fox Run Vineyards on the west side of New York’s deeply gouged Seneca Lake. “There’s no such thing as same date, same recipe,” when producing wine in the variable conditions here.
Winemaking skill, in our part of the world, becomes more important than terroir. What even is terroir? A “vague” concept, Bell says. Light and heat matter, but soil? Not so much, he says, as we taste Tierce, a wine that “transcends” terroir. Tierce is a collaborative blend of dry, lean, mouth-tingling Riesling in equal parts from Fox Run and two other nearby producers, Anthony Road Wine Company and Red Newt Cellars.
Certainly, modern viticultural (farming) advances and winemaking in the skillful hands of Bell and his counterparts can offset harsh environmental conditions. But I also found a certain hard-won confidence among winemakers and proprietors about their ability to bring out the essence of Finger Lakes terroir, for lack of a better word.
So what’s this terroir they’re after?
A classic cold-weather grape profile: high-acid, low-alcohol aromatic whites and French-style reds. A terroir that is East Coast-nuanced, not West Coast-jammy. “We’ve figured out what a Finger Lakes red is,” says Jennie Scarbrough, general manager at Hector Wine Company on Seneca Lake’s east side. And, after 20 to 30 years of growing Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc and other grapes attuned to this crazy climate, “the fruit itself is better,” she says. What’s more, the wine-drinking public is beginning to accept this wine as a true expression of the region’s terroir.
If we’re talking about a sense of place, or what writer Matt Kramer of Wine Spectator famously calls “a somewhereness,” then the Finger Lakes region definitely has terroir. Serve this cold-climate wine, white or red, with crackers and New York State cheddar cheese. Or, if you’d prefer, a vinaigrette-dressed, warm spinach salad and fried chicken.