Consultant Alberto Antonini on what are “the enemies of terroir-driven wines”, listing five common approaches to wine production that mask site-derived characters:
1. “The first enemy [to a terroir-expression in wine] is to pick overripe grapes, which will give you more concentration, but see you lose a bit of character, so your harvest dates should not be based on getting power, colour and concentration.”
2. “A big enemy can be the extraction process, because if you are too aggressive, with a lot of punching down and rack and return, then you will get more structure in the wine, but you will lose the character you want to deliver.”
3. “The third enemy is the oak, and while the flavours of oak are not bad, they are away from what we want to deliver, because chocolate, vanilla and coffee are not bad at all but are not what want to experience with our wines – so we are very careful with oak.”
4. “The fourth enemy is the winemaker, if they want to show themselves in wine – winemakers wines are pretty boring if they come with recipe, but the person making the wine is important because they have to manage the whole process to deliver the purity of the place.”
5. “The last big enemy is the market, which can be heaven or hell: heaven when there is an understanding of the natural biodiversity, and hell if it is the place telling the producer what to do – you should always be convinced of what you want to do, rather than do something different for the market.”
-The Drinks Business, Patrick Schmitt, August 16, 2024