There’s plenty of mystery about what’s mainly responsible for the expression of individual character in wine, but lend an ear to wine’s chattering classes right now, and you would think the matter has been settled once and for all in favor of . . . soils.
In the soil-as-primary-determinant-of-wine-character theory, it’s the mineral content and condition of dirt and rock in a vineyard that firmly sets the tone for the fruit — and thus the wine — it gives. And while science hasn’t yet blessed the hypothesis, the notion that geology is destiny seems to have a powerful hold on us.
But just what is so enthralling about soils anyway, and why are we so ready to find in them a simple answer to what is by all accounts a very complicated problem?
A big part of it is surely their brute tangibility. Land has a physical solidity that makes other factors (latitude, exposition, rainfall, day/night temperature differentials) seem ephemeral by contrast. When the time comes to identify the source of the character of the wine in your glass, it helps for there to be some physical thing to point to. Ground gives you that.
Terrain also conveys an impression of primordial permanence. Geological changes don’t normally occur on a time scale commensurate with a human life. If, by some magic, a Burgundian monk-vintner from the 15th century were to return to his abbey cellars, would he still be able to distinguish a Chambolle-Musigny from a Gevrey-Chambertin? And if so, what more plausible justification could we find for this remarkable feat than the underlying, patchwork geology of the Côte de Nuits itself, essentially unchanged in 600 years?
Soils monopolize our attention for another, less obvious reason: the rough consonance that exists between the number of distinguishable types of wine and the number of discrete geologies that are purported to nurture them. There’s no way to count them of course, but it seems to me that the number of existing soil profiles and the multiplicity of identities wine seems able to assume are at least roughly in alignment — if only on an order of magnitude level. But this is very far from saying that one-to-one correspondences between solid and wine types exist or are even possible.
Finally, soils are compelling because we frequently discover earthy flavors and aromas in our wine. And while it has been demonstrated that those aspects of wine that are conventionally described as slatey or flinty actually have their source in either sulfur compounds generated during fermentation or plant compounds attributable to vine biology, it doesn’t change the fact that, for us, these tastes and smells are more reminiscent of soils and stones than anything else.
One day we may know just how much of a contribution soils make in determining wine character and understand better how they interact with those other durable environmental factors — climate, altitude, latitude, etc — that we have reason to think also have a role to play.
Meanwhile, and until some more compelling theory comes along to displace it, dirt, rocks, soils, and stones seem destined for a good long run as explainers-in-chief — even if the confidence we place them is largely derived from appeals to our own imaginations.