Terroir Whisperers

What does terroir really mean? One French couple set out to find the answer and in the process revolutionised modern viticulture

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What does terroir really mean? One French couple set out to find the answer and in the process revolutionised modern viticulture

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TERROIR WHISPERERS BY

JEFFREY T IVERSON

BY T H O R S T E N G R E V E

P H OT O GR A PHY

C

hampagne grower Anselme Selosse returned from his viticulture studies in Beaune in the 1970s having mastered malolactic fermentations and pruning technique, but one lesson still vexed him – the mysterious Burgundian notion of climats or terroir, this idea that a wine’s characteristics are derived from its place of origin. His obsession with defining and tasting the complexities of his vineyard soils propelled Selosse to become – as the great bubbly expert Peter Liem says – the world’s most renowned, most influential champagne grower. But Selosse didn’t crack the mysteries of the terroir champenois alone. For that, he credits a pair of plucky soil scientists named Claude and Lydia Bourguignon. Says Selosse: “Without them, I would not be where I am today.”

Over the past 25 years, the Bourguignons have earned international renown for helping winemakers decipher the secrets of their soils, improve the health of their vines and create wines that capture a sense of place. Their client portfolio stretches from the United States to New Zealand, including Vega Sicilia in Spain, Harlan Estate in California and Romanée-Conti in Burgundy. And like the monks who empirically divided Burgundy over centuries into myriad vineyards with distinct profiles, the Bourguignons have become modern terroir whisperers, wielding science to discover where the next grand cru will be grown.

The couple met in 1977 at Dijon’s Institut Nationale de Recherche Agronomique (INRA). He was an agronomist who specialised in soil microbiology, she analysed food quality in the laboratory. Over time, they became convinced that the intensive agriculture INRA was rubber-stamping – based on hybridised

seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides – wasn’t sustainable.

“When I started trying to show my research revealing that biological activity in our soils was collapsing,” recalls Claude, “I was summoned by the director of INRA and asked to shut my mouth.” In 1990, the Bourguignons resigned to found their own soil science lab – Laboratoire Analyses Microbiologiques Sols.

Initially, the couple worked primarily with farmers, rejuvenating fields ravaged by chemical treatments with littleknown techniques like cover crops and organic agriculture.

Then in 1991, a conference tour for Claude’s book, Le sol, la terre et les champs, brought them to Chalon-sur-Saône, just south of Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune. With winemakers from some of France’s greatest estates in attendance, Claude made a shocking statement: “In the soil of some Burgundian vineyards there is less biological activity than in that of the Sahara.” He wasn’t exaggerating. “At certain wine estates, we couldn’t even break the ground with a shovel,” recalls Lydia. “We needed to use a miner’s pick, so compact and lifeless the soils had become.”

For Monty Waldin, the UK-born wine writer and leading expert on organic and biodynamic winemaking, the aftershocks from Claude’s revelation are still felt today. “It’s no coincidence that organic and biodynamic wine-growing in France only started to take off after Claude gave that speech.“ Until then, no one had given wine growers – France’s biggest pesticide users – compelling reason to abandon their chemical arsenals. “The Bourguignons provided the missing link,” says Waldin, “evidence of the microbiological motor by which soil minerals can be taken up by plants like vines.” They showed not only how herbicides damage soils and dramatically reduce vine root depth, but how organic and biodynamic agriculture boosts microbial soil life, particularly the symbiotic, mycorrhizal fungi that permit vines to uptake minerals – thus transmitting the nuances of a terroir. “What Claude and Lydia grasped,” says Waldin, “is that terroir expression, that ‘somewhereness’ good CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

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Lydia and Claude Bourguignon at a Burgundy vineyard and at work in their nearby laboratory

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“You can taste the two layers that the roots traverse, the clay-rich soil, and the limestone beneath”

wines have, is not just about soil but about soil life.”

That understanding earned the Bourguignons a clientele composed of France’s most famous producers.

In the 1990s, Claude and Lydia were hired to replant Romanée-Conti and to convert Domaine Leflaive of Pouligny-Montrachet to biodynamic viticulture. And it was Anne-Claude Leflaive who introduced the Burguignons to Anselme Selosse.

Traditionally, champagne is made by assemblage (blending wines for a uniform style) but Selosse had another vision: single-vineyard champagne. In 1996, the Bourguignons began profiling the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of vineyard parcels throughout the Selosse estate.

“Claude and Lydia put me on the path to understanding the link between a [wine’s] identity and its place of birth,” he says. Their research led to the creation of Selosse’s Lieux-dits collection, six single-vineyard wines from vineyard parcels in six different Champagne villages.

Vinified and aged under identical conditions, the six wines are startlingly different. Les Carelles is all refinement and citrus freshness. Le Bout du Clos boasts both unctuousness and chalky minerality. “You can taste the two layers that the roots traverse,” says Selosse, “the clay-rich soil, and the limestone beneath.”

The image is poetic, but can one literally taste terroir? “Flavours are synthesised by enzymes,” explains Claude. “All proteins in plants are derived from enzymatic processes. Enzymes are proteins with metallic co-factors – zinc, selenium etc. These metals are assimilated by the vine thanks to microorganisms in the soil which can chelate, or convert, metals.” Morgon is distinguishable from other beaujolais crus because of manganese-rich soils. The elegant bitterness in many Italian wines comes from magnesium-rich earth.

Having performed more than 12,000 soil analyses, measuring everything from the mineral composition to the internal surface

area of clay layers in vineyards around the world, Claude and Lydia have compiled compelling data into what makes a terroir great. The greatest white wines, they’ve realised, are grown on soils containing small internal clay surfaces, as seen at the ancient Loire valley estate, Coulée de Serrant; great red wines are invariably planted on soils containing large internal clay surfaces, exemplified at Pétrus in Pomerol. “We’ve worked to understand why our ancestors in Burgundy defined the notion of terroir to such an extent,” says Lydia. “We’re trying to condense something that originally was done over the course of thousands of years.”

Today, the Bourguignons are called on wherever earth is being turned to vine, New World and Old. Since 2008, they’ve been helping one of America’s most mythic wineries, Harlan Estate in California’s Napa Valley, to develop a new vineyard named Promontory.

Harlan Estate winemaker Cory Empting hails Claude and Lydia as the “father and mother” of the scientific approach to evaluating terroir. “Basically, over their lifetime they’ve developed the metrics to define what a great terroir or great wine-growing site is,” he says. And Promontory, assures Lydia, ranks among them. A rare convergence of volcanic, metamorphic, and sedimentary soils, “it really proves that the great terroirs aren’t just in Europe; they’re throughout the world.” After seven years of collaboration, says Empting, you can taste Claude and Lydia in their wine now. “Terroir is made up of a lot of components, and some of those are human, and the Bourguignons have definitely made an impression on the people here: the guys who prune the vineyards, those who work the soil, the winemaker and the owner – they’ve influenced all of us. And I have to believe that has a result on the wine we produce.” Perhaps that’s one factor the Bourguignons never considered – that a key constituent of the world’s greatest terroirs could be themselves.

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