Terroir Matters -- Part 1

Today, we're headed to the place where I first experienced the magical mysteries of terroir in wine. But, before I get you there, what is terroir?

Roughly speaking, terroir is the environment in which the grapes grow. It's soil, it's climate, it's water flow, it's elevation, it's undulations in the ground, it's the direction in which sunlight hits the grapes. It's everything.

Silverado Trail and its very close surroundings are home to some of the finest wines in Napa and one could argue in the world. As many roads did, it started out as s dirt road for wagons, largely out of necessity. At the time, what is now Highway 29 (the other major north-south wine road in Napa Valley) was flooded. Needing a way to traverse north and south during those 1852 floods, the early settlers who had come west for the Gold Rush made themselves a road essentially to get from St Helena to San Pablo Bay and with that the Silverado Trail was born. It wasn't until about 20 years later that the local wine industry had its stark beginnings.

In the interim, the settlers had discovered silver on Mt. St. Helena. Needing a way ultimately to get that silver into San Francisco where it could be sold for quite princely sums, the trail, then christened with the name Silverado, served as the main route to get to the north end of San Francisco Bay. There was a little hitch though. An enterprising young man known locally as Black Bart decided that there were easier ways to get one's hands on silver than mining it. Armed with a few associates and his pair of firearms, Black Bart did everything he could to interrupt that silver trade. Today, however, there are no such problems.

We start at San Pablo Bay and head north, through the city of Napa, and the American Viticulturarl Areas (AVA) of Oak Knoll, Stags Leap, Yountville, and Oakville, before arriving in Rutherford. We make a slight left turn off the Trail and pull up into a beautiful property. There is a not overly large, yet fairly ornate building, rows and rows of vines out back, and just a few rows of vines off to the north side of the building. They seem odd and out of place.

As we are greeted by our hostess, she directs us off to that north side of the building. She gives us each a glass and carries with her 3 undersized wine bottles with only hand markings on them. We stop at a relatively flat area near two rows of vines, facing mostly southwesterly and with heavy exposure to the afternoon sun. She opens one bottle and pours us each a generous taste. The wine, distinctively Cabernet Sauvignon in nature, has aromas of loose, fine dirt. We learn that this is the fabled Ritherford Dust, characteristic of all fine wines from the area. The fruit is deeply concentrated. We learn that the grapes that made that wine were from those two rows of vines and harvested two years earlier.

We walk down a slight grade, perhaps 50 feet, but maybe less to the edge of a small stream running thought the prperty. Our hostess opens a second bottle and gives us another generous taste. We note that the soil here is somewhat of a gravelly loam and just a bit damp, despite no rain having fallen for more than a month. We're informed that these vines are planted on the same rootstock, from the same clone gathered from the same cuttings as the ones at the first location. The growing, harvesting and winemaking techniques are identical, yet the wine is noticeably different. Gone is much of the dust and is replaced with minerally notes and a lighter texture. The wine is less bold and perhaps in a more European style.

From there, we move slightly uphill, maybe another 20 steps away to a sharply graded area, just a bit shaded by the local trees. Here the soil is a bit more barren and is bone dry. There is no hint that this area has ever seen water. We're told that in search of water to grow that these vines dig deep into the land. The grapes are quite stressed. Upon receiving our third and final pour of this walking tour, we notice that this wine is a bit tight (tightness in a wine means it is not yet ready to drink, that the wine has not yet fully evolved, and that the flavors have not come fully through). Unlike the other two, it's not overly fruity, but for a young wine, noticeably earthy in nature. The tannins are much rougher and the bite at the end is sharp. 

They are all the same grape and each bottling is produced the same way. We had traveled less than 100 feet in total yet experienced three massively different wines. And therein lies part of the beauty of terroir.