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In the interest of furthering my knowledge, I set out on a wine study
tour of Germany and France in May 2008. My boss and I were treated to
barrel tastings, vineyard tours and the odd lunch at some of the best
producers. While the people were generous, the wines great, the food
amazing and the cheese utterly addictive, the best experience for me
was visiting the vineyards and being able to see what makes the final
product so special. The wine world uses the French term terroir to
explain all the effects the local environment has in the manufacture of
the final product, wine. For me, the Mosel region of Germany and
Burgundy (Bourgogne) in France were the most impressive for seeing
terroir at work.
Our tour started in the Mosel and it turned out to be one of
the most
beautiful areas I have ever visited. When we saw the region for the
first time I was struck by just how steep the vineyards were. We were
taken on a tour of some and were able to witness first hand the
seemingly impossible growing conditions. The region's great wines are
grown on steep, predominantly south/south-west facing slopes of up to
60% gradient. It's so steep that almost everything has to be done by
hand.
The famous vineyards of Wehlen have little top soil so the
vines grow
in blue slate that seems wholly incapable of fostering any life, let
alone of being the nursery of the world's greatest sweet wines. Yet the
vines thrive there. The wines offer ripe tropical fruit, slate/mineral,
with lively acidity that keep the sugar in balance and in great years
are suitable for aging for several decades.
Interestingly, the next villages along, Graach and Bernkastel, look
similar in soil composition and vineyard gradient, and even produce
wines with similar characteristics, but when tasted next to those of
Wehlen are markedly different. If you travel only a few kilometres to
the opposite bank of the Moselle River, the vineyards of Erden are
drastically different in appearance. High iron content means the soil
is a bright orange red and the wines are quite different in style.
Despite this, they still taste like they are grown in the Mosel.
My experience in Burgundy was similarly impressive, but for
different
reasons. The slope of the Côte d'Or (the escarpment where the
best wines are grown) looks like one long vineyard stretching from
Dijon down to the town of Santenay, unbroken except by the occasional
road. Hundreds of years ago it was classified into many small vineyards
with each one ranked according to the quality of the wines made. Here
the vineyards are not as immediately awe-inspiring as in the Mosel, and
some of these great vineyards look quite unimpressive from a tourist's
point of view.
However, there are so many invisible factors that affect each
of the
tiny vineyards, such that even those that are situated side by side and
seem so similar on the surface can produce wines that may be vastly
different. For this reason Burgundy is where terroir was really
verified in my mind. While the quality wasn't always immediately
obvious I could still spot a few very special plots. The Grand Cru
vineyard 'Chambertin' is a classic example: intensely red soil, big
white stones and a gentle slope half way up the hill. It just looked
like it should make great wines (and, of course, it does).
Of the regions we visited on our study tour that gave me a
'sense of
place' I will always remember standing at the top of Wehlener Sonnenuhr
in the Mosel region and the sight of Chambertin in Burgundy. There
certainly seems to be an aura that emanates from the great vineyards.
It could just be something like celebrity worship, but I would have
loved to spend more time there (though I would never volunteer
to pick the steep vineyards of Mosel for all the Auslese in
Germany!).
LINKS
The Burgundy
Report, good maps, some reviews, a lot of info and mostly
free.
Phil's
blog: Rathdowne Cellars
Maps
of wine regions in Germany
(c) Phil Smith.
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