The Terroir of Whiskey, by Rob Arnold (introduction)

The

TERROIR of

A Distiller’s Journey Into the Flavor of Place

Rob Arnold

INTRODUCTION

T

H I S I S A book about whiskey, a distilled spirit made from grain and (almost always) aged in oak barrels. Whiskey is essentially distilled beer, just as brandy is distilled wine. But specifically this book is about how terroir— a somewhat controversial concept with an unsettled definition— can influence the flavor of whiskey.

Terroir is a French word that describes how the flavor and characteristics of a crop (or livestock) are influenced by its environment. That includes the soil that layers the farm, the topography that shapes and molds its contours, and the climate in which it resides. At least, this is terroir in its most basic sense. And that is how I first thought of terroir when I began this book. Terroir, I gathered, was simply a romantic synonym for environment and how it influences the expression of a plant’s genes.

All organisms have a genome, composed of thousands, millions, or billions of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) base pairs. DNA is the genetic code, the underlying blueprint for all traits, including the production of chemical compounds that we perceive as flavors. The environment can control how the genetic code is read, dictating whether certain traits are expressed. Grapes, grains, cheeses, dogs, or humans, we are all influenced by our environment—our terroir. If this sounds like science jargon, you may better recognize it as nothing more than the age-old debate of

INTRODUCTION

nature vs. nurture. Nature is what an organism is born with—its DNA. Nurture is how the reading and expression of the DNA is influenced by the environment.

The wine world is most famous for championing (and marketing) terroir. Napa Valley in California, Bordeaux in France, the Western Cape of South Africa: all of these regions possess their own terroirs— distinct soils, topographies, and climates—that influence the growth and flavor development of grapes. Because the concept of terroir is most firmly rooted in the wine industry, it’s hard to discuss how the phenomenon applies to anything else without considering the parallels with wine. So while this book is about whiskey, it is necessarily also a book about wine.

*** I come from Louisville, Kentucky, a third-generation member of the whiskey industry. My grandfather and nearly every one of my uncles and greatuncles on my mother’s side worked in bourbon. My grandfather was on the Brown-Forman company jet with the Brown family when they finalized the purchase of the Jack Daniel’s distillery from the Motlow family in 1956.

My great-great-grandfather was a brewmaster in Germany who brought his talents to Indiana at the end of the nineteenth century. Since 2011, I have been the master distiller at the Firestone & Robertson Distilling Co. in Fort Worth, Texas. Informally, we refer to our distillery as TX Whiskey. I joined the company as their first employee after opting out of a PhD program in biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Most parents would be distraught to hear their son was leaving medical research to make booze. But for me, it was a little different. When I called my mom to tell her I was leaving school to make bourbon in Texas she didn’t say, “You can’t leave school to make bourbon!” She said, “You can’t make bourbon in Texas. You don’t have the right water.”

But Mom, it turns out you can make bourbon in Texas, and in any state for that matter. Kentucky has prime water for making bourbon, but so do many other states, including Texas. And Texas—with plenty of high-quality

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corn crops, hot summers, and winters that fluctuate between 30 degrees and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (often within the same day)—is just as suited to making bourbon as Kentucky.

We distilled our first batch of bourbon at TX Whiskey in February 2012.

At the time, we were making about three barrels per batch, with a maximum capacity of three batches per day. At this scale, we were actually a relatively large craft distillery, but our output was a drop in the bucket compared to the big boys in Kentucky and Tennessee. I was personally just fine with making three to nine barrels of whiskey a day. But the distillery’s original proprietors, Leonard Firestone and Troy Robertson, were not. They wanted to take the big boys head on, in quality and volume.

So in 2014 they bought a declining golf course and on its hundred acres we built one of the largest whiskey distilleries west of the Mississippi River.

Our output is now forty barrels per batch, with a maximum capacity of three batches per day. In 2019, we sold TX Whiskey to Pernod Ricard, the second-largest wine and spirits group in the world. We are their largest whiskey distillery in the United States.

In 2016, I decided to combine whiskey and science into a second PhD attempt, this time at Texas A&M’s distance plant-breeding program (distance meaning that I conduct my research at TX Whiskey and maintain my full-time position with the company while completing the degree), studying under the quantitative geneticist and corn breeder Dr. Seth Murray. My dissertation explores how genetic and environmental forces influence corn-derived flavors in whiskey. My hope is that the data generated can be used to breed and select new corn varieties specifically suited for whiskey production. Much of our research and the stories that surround it are covered in this book.

So through and through, I am a student, maker, and advocate of whiskey. Aside from when I am fortunate enough to tour a winery or vineyard— or when I steal a sip from my wife’s wineglass—wine doesn’t intrude on my mental or gustatory faculties. But over the years as I scoured the scientific literature on alcohol, visited wineries, and developed friendships with winemakers, I realized they pursued certain techniques that whiskey distillers were ignoring. Many of these pursuits are rooted in the concept

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of terroir and how the provenance of a place can translate to distinct flavors. These pursuits start not at the winery but in the vineyard. They start with the land and the grapes cultivated on it.

Imagine a trip to your local liquor store. If you’re like me, you’re taken aback by the sheer volume of wine bottles on the shelves. Hundreds or thousands of different wines from all over the world, labeled by region, grape variety, or both. How do you choose?

Maybe you select by grape variety, such as a merlot or a pinot grigio.

Or perhaps you go by region, such as the terroirs of Sonoma Valley or Bordeaux. Or maybe you consider both, like a Napa Valley chardonnay.

Your choices are immense, even though every bottle of wine starts with the same species of grape—Vitis vinifera. But this one species has thousands of expressions in the combination of varietal, terroir, and vintage (that is, the year on a wine bottle, which dictates the year the grapes were harvested).

On the shelf, there will be red wine made with the cabernet sauvignon grape variety grown in Napa Valley and the merlot grape variety grown in Tuscany. There will be white wine made with the sauvignon blanc grape variety grown in the Loire Valley of New Zealand and the chardonnay grape variety grown in the Adelaide Hills of Australia. There will be blended wines that contain grapes of different varieties and terroirs. And some wines— such as those from Bordeaux and Chablis in France—will be branded solely by the terroir, making the assumption that you will either know the grape varieties grown in that region, are curious enough to turn the bottle around and read the back-label description, or simply trust that these terroirs will provide enjoyable flavors regardless of which grape varieties were used. And even if you are just the average wine shopper and don’t select wine based on a firm understanding of how flavor is dictated by particular varieties and terroirs, you will know enough—be it from experience, recommendation, or the bottle description—to decide whether you want a fruity and full-bodied cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley, a chilled and fruity Italian moscato, or a spicy and floral French Bordeaux.

The wine industry offers a seemingly innumerable number of choices based on varying combinations of grape varieties, terroirs, and vintages.

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After choosing your wine, you then head to the whiskey aisle. You will see a few nationally recognized styles: Scottish, Canadian, Japanese, Irish, and American whiskies/whiskeys,1 among others. And there are even distinct regional styles within some of these countries—Islay and Speyside whiskies from Scotland, Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey from the United States.

Some whiskeys are labeled by the type of grain species—barley for single malts, corn for bourbon—but you will find no mention of the grain variety. You might find some whiskeys labeled by where they come from, but almost without exception this has no bearing on where the grains were grown. When a wine is labeled Napa Valley, that is where the grapes were grown. When a whiskey is labeled Kentucky, the grains may have been grown as far away as Europe.

The truth is that historically, or at least in the last hundred years or so, whiskey distillers have not placed the same importance on the variety and terroir of their grains as winemakers have for their grapes. I don’t mean to imply that whiskey distillers do not consider the quality of their grain. They do, but here “quality” means meeting certain specifications that align with the commodity grain trade: kernel density, percentage of damaged kernels, and percentage of foreign material (like dust and cobs). The consideration of flavor does not usually go beyond avoiding the bad ones— sour and must—and rarely to pursuing desirable and unique ones. So whiskey distillers typically grade their grain according to the quality metrics that the commodity grain trade follows. And this is because since the rise of the commodity grain trade in the early twentieth century, whiskey distillers have primarily sourced from it. The silos of the commodity grain trade hold an anonymous blend of varieties and terroirs from multiple farms, from dozens to hundreds to thousands. The distinctions of variety and terroir cannot survive the commodity grain silo.

*** At the inception of this book, I had a working definition of terroir. I treated it as this romanticized synonym for the environment (the soil, climate, and

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topography) in which something grew. And while the concept of terroir is rooted in wine, what does— or could—it mean for whiskey? But first I needed to answer a more direct question. Where did the word terroir come from?

Back when I was an undergraduate majoring in microbiology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, I would often visit my uncle and my grandfather in Bristol, a small city on the border of northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, best known as the home of the Bristol Motor Speedway. My uncle is a medical doctor, a student of Latin, an avid reader, and an amateur etymologist. I would bring along my homework, and he would help me navigate the etymology of the Latin names of microbes.

These Latin names hold clues about the function of organisms. Consider the most common yeast used in the fermenting of wine, ale, and whiskey: Saccharomyces cerevisiae. “Saccaro” means sugar, “myces” means fungus, and “cerevisiae” means beer. String that together and you get “sugar fungus of beer.” (You might also recognize a cognate in there for the Spanish word cerveza, which means “beer.”)

I knew terroir was a French word and that French was a Romance language, a child of Latin. So, keeping in mind my uncle’s lessons, I went to the dictionary. Now, if you are familiar with Latin, you may assume that terroir comes from the Latin word for land—terra. But it’s not quite that simple. The French derivative of terra is in fact terre. In Spanish, it’s tierra, and in Italian it is terra. So, terroir—while obviously related to the Latin word for land—is a bit more complex. It turns out that terroir stems from the Latin word territorium, which can roughly be translated as territory or an area of land with defined boundaries. While this was straightforward enough, it didn’t really provide insight into how the word is regarded in the context of wine or any other food or beverage for that matter.

So I dug deeper, perusing English translations of French dictionaries and academic articles published by wine scientists and wine-marketing researchers. What I learned is that the word is contested—there is no satisfactory single-word translation or definition for it. It is uniquely French and seemingly impossible to translate into one English word. Even the French don’t agree on what it means.

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In French dictionaries you’ll find multiple different definitions of terroir. As early as the seventeenth century, it did indeed simply refer to a territory or a region. But by the nineteenth century, its meaning grew, referring to a “small area of land being considered for its qualities or agricultural properties.”2 In his 1884 collection of essays Les grotesques, the French poet and dramatist Théophile Gautier described a hill with thin and rocky soil that produced excellent claret, a type of French rosé wine. He used the word terroir as a catchall for the entire set of characteristics of that hill.

The European Union established a legal definition in 2012. They claimed that products possessing terroir are those “whose quality or characteristics are essentially or exclusively due to a particular geographic environment with its inherent natural and human factors.”3 This evolved definition—for me—was more confusing than clarifying. So the word still described a physical piece of land and its soil, climate, and topography, but it also included “human factors.” What did that even mean? It seemed so ambiguous, so amorphous, one of those words that makes sense to people who have used it all of their lives but could never explain it to someone who hasn’t.

I decided terroir was not something I could learn solely from research papers or dictionaries. If I wanted to understand it, I would have to experience it, and I would have to taste it. I hope that—through this book—you are able do the same.

So here is what I propose. In this book, I will show how science can—to an extent—unravel the meaning and influences of terroir. You will join me on the journeys that I took—from the United States to Ireland and finally to Scotland—as I visited those farmers, winemakers, and distillers who are actively pursuing terroir. But ultimately you will only understand terroir— which is more than just flavor—by experiencing it. So I hope that my journey in this book can act as a guide— a blueprint—for how to design and embark on your own. I do hope that some of your journeys will take you on fantastic adventures around the globe, allowing you to meet the people who make the whiskey and then enjoy their art in the places that molded it. But a journey can also happen in the comfort of your own home. You can experience terroir simply by enjoying a dram of whiskey whose distillers

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have sought to capture terroir in some way. Or perhaps even multiple drams, as sampling a flight of whiskeys with diverging terroirs can be as enlightening as it is enjoyable. Regardless, I think you will find—as I did—that when a whiskey truly harbors a sense of place, then the experience it provides goes beyond just flavor. How exactly? Grab a glass of whiskey, and let’s go find out.

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PRAISE FOR

The TERROIR

WHISKEY

“This book is an educational journey through the fascinating worlds of whiskey and flavor. Rob Arnold is well versed in the art and science of whiskey making and shares his wealth of wisdom with the reader in this brilliant book. He helps us understand the connection between the land and the spirit in our glass, shining his inquisitive spotlight on the distillers, grain farmers, and cultivators who are changing the way whiskey is made. If you want to delve beyond the glass into the mind-blowing worlds of flavor and terroir, this book is a must.”

— ROB ALLANSON, EDITOR AT LARGE, WHISKY MAGAZINE

“For years, we’ve argued as to whether terroir exists in whiskey.

Rob Arnold makes the best argument yet, and this book is a must-read for every whiskey geek in the world.”

— FRED MINNICK, AUTHOR OF BOURBON: THE RISE, FALL, AND REBIRTH OF AN AMERICAN WHISKEY

ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY $27.95

COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS / NEW YORK cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A.