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TERROIR STRUCK It's all about the land of course, terra (or should that be terroir) firma, and its relationship with and influence upon those things produced on it and from it. And, as with so many things-epicurean, the French have come up with a suitable mot juste. In his latest article, malt-meister, Chris Goodrum from Gauntleys, looks into the intimate symbiosis between the spirit and the soil, as he attempts to pin down the elusive distillery character of Scottish whiskies. So, buckle up and brace yourself for…The Terroir!
Here's a question for you. What does the whisky in your glass smell/ taste of? Is it rich and fruity? Maybe it's barley-dominated, possibly very citric or minerally, or perhaps it's quite earthy or heavily influenced by peat. It's possible that there's some oak character, whether that's vanillery American oak or fruitcakey sherry, either way it will more often than not be a magical amalgamation of characteristics that we tend to call 'distillery character'. For years both I and many other whisky reviewers have gone on about this concept to the point in which it has become the buzzword of the whisky industry. It is for me, one of the most intriguing aspects of whisky - a magical combination of aromas and flavours that are derived firstly from the barley and augmented by the fermentation and distilling techniques used by each individual distillery. In essence it's what makes the spirit produced at Laphroaig, for example, very different to the spirit produced at Balblair and so on. However, these days there's a new buzzword doing the rounds, and that is terroir. For most wine drinkers this terroir concept is nothing new - in fact, major regional classifications of European vineyards have been largely based on this concept. So, what exactly is terroir? There isn't an exact English equivalent for this quintessential French term and concept; however, simply put it is a holistic combination of the soil in which the vines are grown, along with the local topography and the influence of both meso and microclimates. The way that each of these elements interact with each other gives rise to this concept and underlies the reason why wines made from grapes grown in adjacent vineyards can taste dramatically different to each other. Without getting overly technical, certain grape
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varieties, such as Pinot Noir and Riesling are extremely adept at channelling terroir, but what has this all got to do with whisky? One man was responsible for this new buzzword - Mark Reynier. Many of you will know Mark from his days at Bruichladdich and some will know him for his forthright and outspoken views on social media. Mark's first obsession was to finish pretty much all Bruichladdich's spirit in ex-wine casks, (I'm not going to get into that here as that discussion would take up an entire article on its own!), but once he had got that out of his system, his next preoccupation was soil, or terroir, to be exact. Mark was convinced that barley grown in different parts of Scotland, on different soils and affected by different climactic conditions would have a distinct effect on the character of the finished whisky, and he set out to prove that theory. To be honest I was somewhat sceptical about this claim. Obviously, I was a believer in the concept of terroir as far as wine production went, but I believed that any trace elements of terroir would be lost in the intensive production methods of making whisky. This scepticism was challenged by Bruichladdich's head distiller Adam Hannet in 2016, when he kindly sent me three new-make samples from the distillery's regional barley trials. The first sample was of Concerto barley from farms located in Turniff (East Aberdeenshire), the second was made from the same variety of barley grown on farms in Rainsfield (South Lothian) and the final sample was, again the same barley, but harvested from farms in the Black Isle, near to Inverness.
