Ugni Blanc - the French version of Trebbiano that’s mostly used to make Cognac - turns up occasionally in a modest white wine that can be worth a second look.

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We all learn lessons in life that can only be taught by painful interactions with others. Now I know not to start bashing any political candidate before knowing the political orientation of my dinner guests. I know never to talk about religion with clients, no matter how friendly we might get over drinks after the day is over. I also know that you can never, ever talk about terroir constructively unless you are doing so with like-minded individuals. The debate over whether terroir exists, or perhaps even just what it is can never be decided.

Of course, that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) stop anyone from having conversations about it, as food scientist Harold McGee and chef Daniel Patterson did in a recent article in the NY Times Style Magazine cleverly titled “Talk Dirt to Me.”

While this article is well written, it doesn’t offer much new in the way of thinking about the subject (though as it was published in the Style magazine, it’s clearly not aimed at sophisticated wine lover), and it doesn’t really escape the main lesson that I’ve learned about terroir: for the time being, it’s a question of faith.

It seems to me that all arguments (or civil discussions, for that matter) about terroir always come down to the same kind of faith that will never be bridged between the atheist and the believer. Just as in religion, when it comes to terroir there is no real proof that it exists, and no real consensus on what it is.

Narrow definitions of terroir suggest that it is the sense, character, and even flavor of the soil in which the vines grow that is expressed in a wine. Broader definitions include the microclimate and of the place that the grapes are grown and the cumulative weather of a given vintage in addition to the geology, and still broader definitions may include the native yeasts of the area, the pollens and other surrounding vegetation, while others even include a mystical and indefinable spiritual sense of place.

The problem is, of course, that there is no real rational (or should I say repeatable and testable and scientific) link between these things and the organoleptic qualities (taste and aromatics) of a wine. Of course every wine lover knows that the weather affects grapes, as does the drainage quality of the soil, the nature of the sun exposure of a particular vineyard block, and the pattern of weather over the course of the growing season. It is literally even possible to reliably taste some of these things, like whether the grapes just never got ripe enough, or whether they had too much water. But it is not yet possible to prove

Even for the most narrow of definitions, however, there is no real scientific evidence that links the flavors of a wine to a specific place. We know how the lack of sunlight affects grape ripeness and how that translates in to flavor, but no one can yet show how the lack of sunlight in one place and the same lack in another place translates into different flavors in wine. Likewise, we know intuitively that the geo-chemical composition of the soil must have some effect on grapes, and we have even seen conclusive evidence that levels of certain minerals in the soil affect the biochemistry of the grapes, but no one has yet been able to show how those changes translate into the flavors and aromas of wine. Yet it is pretty clear that when we are tasting a “mineral” aspect in a wine, that flavor does not necessarily come from a mineral-rich soil. As much as the French have made their fortunes based on it, there is no real evidence for the fact that a Nuits St. Georges tastes different than a Marsannay because of something specifically different about where they are grown.

Personally, I think it is only a matter of time before scientists can definitively make the link between soil geology and the flavors in wine. But of course, this is only one tiny piece of the overall picture of the growing conditions for the grape, and an even smaller piece of the complex maze of variables and possibilities that exist in the process of taking a grape and making it into wine. The proliferation of these variables is in fact one of the chief reasons that discussions about terroir are so elusive. Who’s to say that a particular flavor in a wine comes from the ground more than say, the yeast, or the oak, or the extra hour that the must stayed in contact with some stems, or the number of months the wine was on its lees, for instance. Then again, who’s to say those things aren’t just part of terroir, too?

See what I mean?

Terroir is at once both one of the most compelling reasons why I drink wine. Yes, my name is Alder Yarrow, and I’m a terroir believer. But it is also one of the most maddening, overused, and pejorative aspects of wine that I despise. This concept, which is the soul of wine, is used for great evil in the world, not the least of which is the perpetuation of the myth that some places/regions/countries have terroir, and others don’t.

These evils also include the Chicken-Little syndrome that unfortunately closes McGee’s and Patterson’s article, in which they lament the fact that terroir is somehow being obliterated by big wines crafted to please the “Parker Palate.”

My question for them is: can they prove it?

And there, my dear readers is the whole point of this little rant. At this point, it’s all just about faith, and just like religion, if you want to have good conversations instead of arguments, for now you gotta stick to your own. The problem is, I don’t know where the church of terroir loving, Mondovino skeptics meets.

Any ideas?

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This hearty, balanced Mercurey premier cru offers strong competition to the Côte d’Or without Côte d’Or pricing.

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We scope out another Cote Chalonnaise region in our continuing quest for relative value in the pricey realms of Burgundy.

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We’re still joyously dealing with an onslaught of fresh spinach. Here’s a main course with an Indian accent.

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Last weekend was the 15th Annual Hospice du Rhone festival, an event that every year draws a couple of thousand people to Paso Robles to learn, drink, and to celebrate wines of (or in the style of) the Rhone Valley. This was my first year attending the event (it’s usually not held at a good time of year for me, but this year I got lucky), and I was excited at the opportunity to attend an event that incorporated Rhone wines from outside of California. As regular attendees know, the French and the Australians show up loaded for bear, and it is extremely interesting to taste their wines side-by-side with some of the best California Rhone-style producers.

Of course, one of the other benefits of the international presence at the festival are the opportunities to have in-depth conversations with winemakers and producers about the wines they make and how they make them. For those who haven’t attended the event before, like many large wine festivals of its kind, Hospice du Rhone is a weekend long event that consists of tutorials and seminars as well as one or more grand tastings.

I’ll get to my scores and notes from the grand tasting later in the week, but certainly the highlight of this year’s tutorials was a seminar on the white wines of the Rhone, which I have long trumpeted as some of the best food matching and most underappreciated wines in the world. It was a great pleasure, then to get the opportunity to both taste and discuss a series of white Chateauneuf-du-Papes, Condrieus, and Roussannes with Yves Cuileron of Domaine Yves Cuileron, Yves Gangloff of Domaine Yves et Mathilde Gangloff, Marc Perrin of Chateau Beaucastel, Claire Michel of Le Vieux Donjon, and Francois Villard of Domaine Francois Villard.

John Alban kicked off the session with enthusiasm and with the little known fact that 15 years ago Hospice du Rhone actually had its origins in a group of winemakers he assembled to celebrate Viognier of all things, which at that time was virtually unknown in California. That little gathering grew into the organization and festival whose dominant varietal is certainly Syrah, but that morning’s session was a nice return to its beginnings, and a treat for those of us who have a soft spot for Viognier, as well as Roussanne, Marsanne, and the other white varietals of France’s Rhone Valley.

It’s hard to know how best to present my notes from this session, so I’ll just wing it and present you with some tasting notes that are intermixed with the various notes I took on the producers and their methods.

TASTING NOTES:

2005 Domaine Francois Villard “Mailant,” Saint Joseph, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of white flowers, peaches, and hint of orange blossom and freshly baked bread. In the mouth it is round and well textured, with good acidity that delivers a bit of ginger flavor mixed in with white stone fruits that linger to a long finish. From a long and narrow appellation in the Northern Rhone just south of Cornas, this wine is 50% Marsanne and 50% Roussanne fermented on natural yeast and matured in 35% new oak for 11 months. 9.

2006 Le Vieux Donjon Blanc, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has an almost savory nose of butter and lemon curd. In the mouth, through a nice level of acid and a pleasant texture, it offers lemon curd, orange zest, and a slightly sea salt aspect on the palate. Unique and lovely. This wine is made from 50% Roussanne and 50% Clairette, making it a somewhat unusual blend for the appellation. It is fermented and aged in stainless steel and goes through no malolactic fermentation. 9

2004 Chateau Beaucastel Blanc, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of nut skin, burned sweet rice, cafe latte. Yes, call me crazy, but that’s what it smelled like. In the mouth it is gorgeously silky, with a cascade white flowers and poached pear flavor riddled with a refreshing stony quality that lingers into a long finish with a hint of butter. 9/9.5. Where to Buy?

2002 Chateau Beaucastel Roussanne Vielles Vignes, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France
Medium yellow gold in the glass, this wine offers a nose of cold cream and wet chalkboard aromas, tinged with the tropical funkiness of ripe papaya. In the mouth it has considerable length and a nice weighty body. Nice acidity supports flavors of peach pie, hints of minerality, and a lingering note of dried leaves on the finish. Made from vines with an average age of 75 years, this wine is aged half in cement vats, half in old oak barrels. 9/9.5. Where to Buy?

1986 Chateau Beaucastel Roussanne Vielles Vignes, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of candied nuts and slight hints of petrol that might make a blind taster guess that it was an aged Riesling. In the mouth it possesses great acidity and a distinct chalky mineral aspect on the palate. The flavors eventually resolve to what I can best describe as juniper berry and candied lemon peel, which last through a very nice finish. 9.5

This wine needs some further explanation. Firstly, it was quite a treat to have Marc Perrin bring this wine with him to the tasting, as one rarely gets the chance to taste a 20 year-old white from the southern Rhone. He brought it to illustrate the amazing aging potential of the Roussanne variety, which he described as having some of Riesling’s longevity. Perhaps more interestingly, he describes his family’s experience aging Roussanne, in which quite consistently the wines completely shut down after about 4 or 5 years into a state of oxidized, flabby funk. But quite consistently, apparently, after 10 years, the wines emerge into a Riesling-like maturity with great acidity and minerality.

My tasting notes certainly bear that out, and now I’m of half a mind to go searching through the internet for forgotten stores of old-vine Roussanne, though I’ve little hope of finding any.

2005 Yves et Mathilde Gangloff Condrieu, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of peach, peach, peach, and more peach. In the mouth it has the body of an Olympic swimmer crossed with a Victoria’s Secret model. Supple and beautifully textured with an underlying strength, it offers lovely white peach and lemon flavors that fade into what tastes distinctly like warm buttered cornbread in its long finish. Fermented and then aged in 35% new oak for a year, this wine is 100% Viognier from vines grown in typical Condrieu terraced, granitic hillsides. 9.5. Where to Buy?

2005 Domaine Yves Cuilleron “Les Chaillets” Condrieu
Bright yellow-gold in the glass, this wine has a fantastic nose of peaches and apricots. In the mouth it takes flight with an ethereal quality that is hard to describe. Strong mineral flavors and floral, peach, and pear notes mingle amidst a perfect balance of acidity and silky body that makes it hard to swallow this wine, and even harder to spit it out. Made from grapes grown at a staggering density of 4000 vines per acre that yield an equally staggering 140 cases of wine per acre, this 100% Viognier wine ferments slowly over three months with natural yeasts in 30% new oak. It ages on its lees and is never racked before bottling. 9.5/10. Where to Buy?

2004 Yves Cuilleron “Ayguets” Late Harvest Condrieu, France
Light amber in color, this wine has a nose of honey and candied apricot. In the mouth it offers candied apricots, honey, and candied orange peel flavors buoyed by good acidity, and encased in a lovely textured body. The finish is lingering and pleasant. Made from botrytized grapes harvested carefully over the course of 2 months. Grapes from ach pass through the vineyard are vinified separately. 9/9.5. Where to Buy?

And I’ll cheat a bit and throw in this last wine, which was actually not from this session, but showed up in the next session of the day.

2006 Domaine De Marcoux Blanc, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France
Light gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of cut grass and warm hay. In the mouth it offers bright acidity, and fresh fruit flavors of lemon juice mixed with a bracing minerality that lasts through a moderate finish. Made from equal parts of Roussanne and Bourboulenc, the wine matures on its lees with generally no malolactic fermentation. 8.5/9. Where to Buy?

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Can’t afford high-end wine? Our advice: For the most interesting way to get an occasional taste of the fancy stuff, watch for visiting winery representatives. Today’s tasting: Spottswoode.

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Austria’s signature wine grape variety is made for lovers of sharp-edged, minerally white wines like the three featured today. Learn more about “GV” in this month’s online Wine Focus.

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