🌿 Terroir

Terroir is everything that makes a place special for wine. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) defines vitivinicultural terroir as an area where collective knowledge builds up about how the local physical and biological environment interacts with the growers' practices, and this gives the products of the area distinctive characteristics. According to the OIV, terroir includes the specific soil, topography, climate, landscape and biodiversity of a place.

So terroir is not only nature. Soil, climate, slope and altitude matter, but so do people: growers choose the varieties and methods that suit the place. That is why the same grape on different sites gives different wines.

The idea of terroir lies behind appellations of origin in Europe: under EU law, a wine with a protected designation of origin must owe its quality and characteristics essentially or exclusively to a particular geographical environment with its natural and human factors. The OIV notes that terroir is a descriptive term and should not be confused with the legal notion of a geographical indication.

A striking example is the Climats, terroirs of Burgundy, on the UNESCO World Heritage List: small, precisely delimited vineyard plots on the slopes of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune. According to UNESCO, they differ in geology and exposure, have been shaped by human cultivation and over time came to be recognised by the wine they produce.