A Taste of ‘Terroir’

[El Presidente]

 

The below article is largely about French tobacco producers (since 1637! ). While about Roll Your Own and Cig tobacco, I was impressed with the French RYO producers using "terroir" as a genuine marketing angle. 

https://tobaccoreporter.com/2023/11/01/a-taste-of-terroir/

Could this be part of a broader future for the Cuban Cigar Industry as it battles to retain an element of market ascendency?  

Curated finca/ identifiable region cigars? 

Legs? 

 

 

 

 

[MagicalBikeRide]

It’s become a controversial / emerging topic within whiskey in recent years. Spearheaded mostly by people coming from the wine world (eg company at link below).

 

Frankly, it’s hard to argue that the same principle doesn’t / wouldn’t apply to tobacco. We already use dates and factory codes to offer insight. That’s surely no different to a vintage and a vintage is guided by terroir..?

 

https://waterfordwhisky.com

[MrBirdman]

3 hours ago, MagicalBikeRide said:

It’s become a controversial / emerging topic within whiskey in recent years. Spearheaded mostly by people coming from the wine world (eg company at link below).

 

Frankly, it’s hard to argue that the same principle doesn’t / wouldn’t apply to tobacco. We already use dates and factory codes to offer insight. That’s surely no different to a vintage and a vintage is guided by terroir..?

 

https://waterfordwhisky.com

How is this controversial? Scotch has celebrated its different terroirs for as long as anyone can remember. They just didn’t call it that. 

[Lamboinee]

"The terroir of the vuelta abaja region is superior and totalmente hecho a mano.  only the finest premium tobacco from the region of the vuelta abajo con mucho terroir has the complex aroma and flavor needed to rise to the level of these cigars and the terroir that they posses, from the vuelta abajo regions."

COULD this be part of a broader future for the Cuban Cigar Industry?  Yes. Apparently it already is, as evidenced by the genius terroir marketing material quoted above. 

I'll go so far as to say that Terroir SHOULD be included as part of the market.  It makes total sense and will bilk tons of money.  Unfortunately, I don't think it COULD be part of the broader future of CCs.  You would "technically" need enough tobacco to roll enough cigars to meet regular production demands before expanding into specialized niche genres...right?  HSA should focus on the fundamentals before expanding any further.  Unless, they want to invent a cigar with 5 bands on it.  That would be ok if it had 5 bands, two-chains, and some terroir.

What bums me out is when a cigar is marketed based on express or implied implications of "terroir" or "growing region" and then it barely includes any tobacco from those specific locations or barely relates to the location.  One example is the new cigar from JR Cigars that I saw the other day called JR Cigars Pure Origen Terra de Andes.  I saw a press releases regarding the cigar and was very interested based on the cigar's name.  Tobacco from the Andes?  Sounds crazy interesting! Gosh, I hope they mean the tobacco is from the Andes mountains, and NOT the Andes chocolate dinner mints that they have at Ruth Chris's Off 5th Applebees. Oh....wait....FALSE ALARM.......the cigar only "contains" tobacco from the Andes....so, probably like a strip of Andes tobacco from some luggage left in the lost and found at a Viking River Boat cruise?  My homemade chicken noodle soup contains traces of prehistoric dino DNA, but that doesn't make it jurassic park soup.

 

[MagicalBikeRide]

7 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

How is this controversial? Scotch has celebrated its different terroirs for as long as anyone can remember. They just didn’t call it that. 

But it’s largely been controversial in Scottish whisky circles from what I’ve seen? I’m not giving a personal opinion here fyi. The debate is generally - exact grains, traced from exact fields on exact years will define a portion of the flavour profile vs the distillate is aged for so long in a cask that the type, quality, vintage, etc of grain has little impact of overall taste. 

[Ken Gargett]

leaving aside whisky (though hard to argue that brilliant peaty note from islay), all depends on how you define terroir and the wine industry still has not done that to everyone's satisfaction. how much is the contribution from humans? ditto for cigars. you think that the same tobacco - or at least tobacco from the same paddock - will give the same results if it is given to hamlet and one-armed wally, the wannabee roller? if cigars want to go that way, they are going to have to be very specific as to the source and limit blending. it might not work so well here. but be interesting to see. 

[BrightonCorgi]

In the "olde days" (pre-Cuban revolution) some amateur's could name the fincas when smoking a cigar.  Post revolution Cuban cigar industry has moved far away from associating the finca to a marca or blend. 

A true shame as bringing the consumer closer to the product is only a win for Habanos and tourism.

[Lamboinee]

13 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

very specific as to the source and limit blending.

Yes!!!! All of this turns to garbage if it's just marketing fluff. But I think there's genuine interest in products that let consumers "test" the claims of manufacturers.  Kudos to those manufacturers (wine, whiskey, cigars, etc.) that are not skeered to put their product, and their claims, to the test. 

Are san marzano tomatoes really the best for making gravy? I happen to think so. I think I KNOW so. But I couldn't be certain unless I could buy tomatoes that are definitely from San Marzano and taste them, blindly, next to "San marzano style"  tomatoes from California. And I could never have truly tested them if someone didn't manufacture a DOP Sam Marzano product with product specifications and representations that actually means something. 

Stuff that allows for me to educate myself and possibly make some comparisons=good

Stuff that says stuff just to say stuff that makes me buy stuff = bad. 

[MrBirdman]

I guess I’m just confused as to how this is controversial. Terroir isn’t debated much in France, where the concept originated, at least with any of the winemakers I’ve heard discuss it. It’s a product of the land, the weather, and how they’re utilized. So obviously the knowledge, tradition, and choices of the people in a given region play a role. Maybe American producers could produce virtual facsimiles of Scotch and maybe the cant. The point is the vast majority choose not to.

And yes terroir obviously has tremendous value as a “marketing term” in the same way any description distinguishing a product has. But who cares? Ultimately we judge wine or whiskey or cigars on how they taste. Period. Terroir is just how we *talk* about what makes products from a given region unique. 

 

17 hours ago, MagicalBikeRide said:

The debate is generally - exact grains, traced from exact fields on exact years will define a portion of the flavour profile vs the distillate is aged for so long in a cask that the type, quality, vintage, etc of grain has little impact of overall taste. 

Ok, that occurred to me as a possible explanation but I figured people wouldn’t be that ridiculous as to argue about this. First, every whiskey I’ve ever tried, or seen, has been a blend. Single malt scotches are blends, certainly at the grain origin level. Are distilleries there marking barrels based on where the grain came in from? I highly doubt it, and they’re the people who would know best. I’m sure some people have released “single field” whiskeys; but unless there is a strong market I’m unaware of I don’t understand how any consumers are coming to conclusions about the importance of grain from field A vs B.  

The closest analogue to their beliefs can be found in vintage cognac and Armagnac (also multi field blends but from a single year). It’s made from grapes too. Can I tell very slight differences between, say, Frapin’s 1988 and 1991? Sure. But they’re extremely minor, and probably are mostly a result of aging for slightly different times in slightly different conditions.

 

[Ken Gargett]

22 minutes ago, MrBirdman said:

I guess I’m just confused as to how this is controversial. Terroir isn’t debated much in France, where the concept originated, at least with any of the winemakers I’ve heard discuss it. It’s a product of the land, the weather, and how they’re utilized. So obviously the knowledge, tradition, and choices of the people in a given region play a role. Maybe American producers could produce virtual facsimiles of Scotch and maybe the cant. The point is the vast majority choose not to.

And yes terroir obviously has tremendous value a “marketing term” in the same way any description distinguishing a product has. But who cares? Ultimately we judge wine or whiskey or cigars on how they taste. Period. Terroir is just how we *talk* about what makes products from a given region unique. 

fully agree with some of this. land, weather, and the knowledge, tradition and choices. very much so. 

my experience with winemakers, French and otherwise, is very different. they never shut up about terroir (which is fine as i find it an endlessly fascinating subject). lunch yesterday with a champagne producer. half the time was on terroir and that is far from uncommon. 

i would agree that ultimately we SHOULD judge a wine etc on how they taste, but the reality is very different for most people. i put a glass of grand cru burgundy and a glass of riverland pinot down in front of 100 winelovers, 99 have a predisposed bias. shouldn't, but we all do. what would 99% of them expect to pay for those bottles, even if they had not tasted them? probably about 50 times as much for the burg. that means they are making decisions on far more than just how it tastes. i think it is just human nature. in cigar terms, cohiba and cuaba both release the same sized cigar. the vast majority of us would expect to pay more for the cohiba even if we have not tasted them. we make a judgement that is certainly not based on taste or certainly not solely on taste. not saying it is right, just what it is. 

[MrBirdman]

12 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

my experience with winemakers, French and otherwise, is very different. they never shut up about terroir (which is fine as i find it an endlessly fascinating subject). lunch yesterday with a champagne producer. half the time was on terroir and that is far from uncommon. 

I would never say otherwise - my point is that its general constituents aren’t debated so much as some of the fine points. But honestly I see most of the “debate” over it as navel gazing. 

As for evaluating wine on how it tastes, I didn’t mean to suggest that regions don’t play a huge role in determining value and influencing perception. That’s self-evident. It’s why blind tasting is often so revealing (and humbling!). But are 99% people reaching for terroir or a brand based on perceptions of luxury, exclusivity, and reputation? I’d suggest it’s the latter. 

What I was also trying to get at is that wine drinkers actually don’t put much value on tasting terroir as they do enjoy talking or thinking about it. 

[PuroDiario]

9 hours ago, Lamboinee said:

Yes!!!! All of this turns to garbage if it's just marketing fluff. But I think there's genuine interest in products that let consumers "test" the claims of manufacturers.  Kudos to those manufacturers (wine, whiskey, cigars, etc.) that are not skeered to put their product, and their claims, to the test. 

Are san marzano tomatoes really the best for making gravy? I happen to think so. I think I KNOW so. But I couldn't be certain unless I could buy tomatoes that are definitely from San Marzano and taste them, blindly, next to "San marzano style"  tomatoes from California. And I could never have truly tested them if someone didn't manufacture a DOP Sam Marzano product with product specifications and representations that actually means something. 

Stuff that allows for me to educate myself and possibly make some comparisons=good

Stuff that says stuff just to say stuff that makes me buy stuff = bad. 

Change “best for” for “most widely know as good for” and I would be able to agree with. 
Denominaciones de origen is both a protectionist measure, for example you can buy Mexican “Manchego” in America which is kind of impossible because Manchego means from Castilla La Mancha in Spain, as well as Marketing power law type benefit for products originating in a region that get to global acclaim which does not always mean “best for” but many times does and everyone benefits. 
 

If you ever go to Northern Spain let me know and I'll gift you a box of Tomates de Somio, a community in Gijón, Asturias and we will sit down and have some tomato sauce made there while we puff a nice one and my long comment will exemplify my point. I’m sure there are other many regions and product examples, but my home tomatoes (a declining craft unfortunately), and completely subjective opinion here, are absolutely beautiful and delicious for them tasting to home made sauce to cook bonito in it among many other things, but also because its variety is old (specifically called Tomate Antiguo de Somio) and a direct descendant of the first Tomatoes that Hernan Cortes brought back after finding the new world. ☺️

 

6 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

fully agree with some of this. land, weather, and the knowledge, tradition and choices. very much so. 

my experience with winemakers, French and otherwise, is very different. they never shut up about terroir (which is fine as i find it an endlessly fascinating subject). lunch yesterday with a champagne producer. half the time was on terroir and that is far from uncommon. 

i would agree that ultimately we SHOULD judge a wine etc on how they taste, but the reality is very different for most people. i put a glass of grand cru burgundy and a glass of riverland pinot down in front of 100 winelovers, 99 have a predisposed bias. shouldn't, but we all do. what would 99% of them expect to pay for those bottles, even if they had not tasted them? probably about 50 times as much for the burg. that means they are making decisions on far more than just how it tastes. i think it is just human nature. in cigar terms, cohiba and cuaba both release the same sized cigar. the vast majority of us would expect to pay more for the cohiba even if we have not tasted them. we make a judgement that is certainly not based on taste or certainly not solely on taste. not saying it is right, just what it is. 

I agree generally, I believe in DOP concept and I think is important to incentivize sustainability, best practices and entrepreneurialism and job creation in the primary sector in many cases. However it also becomes a huge marketing tool that as in many other instances signals price, etc. 

Right now in Spain for example Ribera Sacra or Bierzo are putting out incredibly interesting wines, many times 100% Mencía, kind of your ugly cousin grape for a long time, and you can buy those for Pennies on the dollar compared to some many times mediocre Rioja, Priorat or Ribera. No free lunch in life, neither on this. 
 

But cigars if there was actually true traceability to finca, region, roller, etc. it would be absolutely fantastic, and I personally would find easier to justify paying premium dollars for certain cigars based on that.

[RDB]

I’d love to be able to smoke and compare different ‘vintages’ of tobacco grown in the same place by the same maker, or different maker’s interpretations of the same micro-local area. In all fine wine regions this is possible, but it relies on domaines being able to control and market their own product…

[MagicalBikeRide]

10 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

Are distilleries there marking barrels based on where the grain came in from? I highly doubt it, and they’re the people who would know best. I’m sure some people have released “single field” whiskeys; but unless there is a strong market I’m unaware of I don’t understand how any consumers are coming to conclusions about the importance of grain from field A vs B.  

 

This is the main point of discussion in whiskey tbh. Certain distilleries, driven mostly by Mark Reynier and Waterford, are producing a line of whsikies that align with traditional French wine producing styles and nomenclature. 
 

They have single farm releases, which are grains from a specific year and grown at a specific farm. They’re named after farm and with a sequence marker - eg Bannow Island 1.1 is the first release, then Bannow Island 1.2 is same year but second bottling and from different field. Bannow Island 2.2 would be the following year. And so forth. 
 

They then have a cuvee release, which is a blended single malt that includes distillate from across all of the farms in their supply chain. 
 

https://shop.waterfordwhisky.com

[MrBirdman]

On 11/4/2023 at 8:16 AM, MagicalBikeRide said:

This is the main point of discussion in whiskey tbh. Certain distilleries, driven mostly by Mark Reynier and Waterford, are producing a line of whsikies that align with traditional French wine producing styles and nomenclature. 
 

They have single farm releases, which are grains from a specific year and grown at a specific farm. They’re named after farm and with a sequence marker - eg Bannow Island 1.1 is the first release, then Bannow Island 1.2 is same year but second bottling and from different field. Bannow Island 2.2 would be the following year. And so forth. 
 

They then have a cuvee release, which is a blended single malt that includes distillate from across all of the farms in their supply chain. 
 

https://shop.waterfordwhisky.com

Ok. I guess this was inevitable. But I just don’t see it taking off for the same reason single vineyard champagnes will never have a significant market share - blending works wonders and typically makes the better product. 

[RDB]

7 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

Ok. I guess this was inevitable. But I just don’t see it taking off for the same reason single vineyard champagnes will never have a significant market share - blending works wonders and typically makes a better product. 

The large Champagne houses like making non-vintage wines because they get to blend weaker years into a standard product, and charge consistent premium prices for a high volume product. They don’t want us being fussy about the year.

With a tiny number of exceptions (maybe just Krug) the single vintage wines are intended to be better, and almost always are - but of course you get more vintage variation. The problem in some wine regions now is a big market premium for the ‘best’ vintages as rated by key critics, and consumers avoiding the ‘off’ vintages, causing stockpiles.

You can imagine a similar logic working with cigar tobacco: Habanos would rather we just keep buying Monte 2s rather than being picky about which farm and which crop the leaves are from. Of course, it would be a complete change of approach to allow independent manufacture and export.

[MrBirdman]

2 hours ago, RDB said:

With a tiny number of exceptions (maybe just Krug) the single vintage wines are intended to be better, and almost always are - but of course you get more vintage variation.

Yes, but the point is that only exceptional plots can be bottled as single vineyard wines - hence the higher quality and higher price (which is also just driven by rarity). The vast majority of plots in champagne would make relatively poor wine if bottled individually. It’s not entirely about vintage variation. Otherwise why do the Champenois also blend their vintage wines?

And it’s not just the big houses blending - growers do it too. It offers a ton of benefits beyond just “covering up inferior wine” which is to some extent a myth. As Peter Liem points out, if you have an orchestra fully of crappy players you’ll never get a decent sound out of them, no matter how good the conductor. 

In any case, the point isn’t the economics or finer points of champagne - it’s that blending offers significant advantages - to consistency AND quality.

 

[Ken Gargett]

On 11/4/2023 at 11:50 AM, MrBirdman said:

I would never say otherwise - my point is that its general constituents aren’t debated so much as some of the fine points. But honestly I see most of the “debate” over it as navel gazing. 

As for evaluating wine on how it tastes, I didn’t mean to suggest that regions don’t play a huge role in determining value and influencing perception. That’s self-evident. It’s why blind tasting is often so revealing (and humbling!). But are 99% people reaching for terroir or a brand based on perceptions of luxury, exclusivity, and reputation? I’d suggest it’s the latter. 

What I was also trying to get at is that wine drinkers actually don’t put much value on tasting terroir as they do enjoy talking or thinking about it. 

agree with all this with the possible exception of burgundy lovers. 

 

10 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

Yes, but the point is that only exceptional plots can be bottled as single vineyard wines - hence the higher quality and higher price (which is also just driven by rarity). The vast majority of plots in champagne would make relatively poor wine if bottled individually. It’s not entirely about vintage variation. Otherwise why do the Champenois also blend their vintage wines?

And it’s not just the big houses blending - growers do it too. It offers a ton of benefits beyond just “covering up inferior wine” which is to some extent a myth. As Peter Liem points out, if you have an orchestra fully of crappy players you’ll never get a decent sound out of them, no matter how good the conductor. 

In any case, the point isn’t the economics or finer points of champagne - it’s that blending offers significant advantages - to consistency AND quality.

 

also agree with this. it is the reason that the vast majority of grower champagnes are nowhere near as good as the big houses. they simply don't have the same resources - vineyards and dosh. 

[MagicalBikeRide]

18 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

Ok. I guess this was inevitable. But I just don’t see it taking off for the same reason single vineyard champagnes will never have a significant market share - blending works wonders and typically makes a better product. 

Yup, agree. It’s a nice marketing angle and I the traceability is really cool. But a lot of their single farm origins are pretty terrible (albeit they’ve been released very young). Time will tell as to whether their cask management program can produce something worth the price. 

[MrBirdman]

On 11/2/2023 at 4:34 PM, El Presidente said:

Could this be part of a broader future for the Cuban Cigar Industry as it battles to retain an element of market ascendency?  

Curated finca/ identifiable region cigars? 

For the reasons discussed above, this could very well be a good marketing angle, BUT .... will it actually produce better cigars? One thing serving on the panel has shown me is that blending is an art, and how small changes to blends can produce dramatically different results (to a degree I'd never have expected). A bigger palette presumably will make it easier to craft a superior product, even when the base materials are all of good quality. Nevertheless if HSA were to do a Cohiba "Single Origin" release I'm sure it could sell for a premium. My question is why they would bother when any Cohiba special edition can be sold for a ridiculous premium.

If you were to brand the cigars according to the finca, would that have much cache with high-end buyers? As with wine, branding is king with 99% of consumers. And I suspect HSA would be loathe to heighten the profiles of their farmers, if only because the incentive to divert more tobacco to custom rolls would grow tremendously.

[rabidraccoon]

We do see this trend somewhat in NC's with Illusione Singulare or Tatuaje La Verite type of releases. The difficulty of doing specific farm terroir products with tobacco is that it is an annually harvested crop. Similar to San Marzano Tomatoes or Vidalia onions etc, the same field or farm will not have great harvests consistently but the region as a whole maintains its harvest quality. It's a bit easier to have single-farm terroir crops with perennial harvesting like Gaziantep pistachios, vineyards, tea plantations etc where the plant has a multi-decade lifespan on the same plot. With a large enough region like Jalapa Valley or Vuelta Abajo (which we already have although it's not heavily marketed) you can keep the terroir designation but it's definitely not the exact same field or even the same farm putting out that product every season.

[Ken Gargett]

just on terroir and whisky, this is an article by Andrew Jefford who is a highly respected wine and spirits writer. 

Does terroir exist in Scotch whisky?

The concept of terroir in wine is well known, but can Scotch whisky share a sense of place, too? Andrew Jefford delves into mist, myth and meaning

WORDS BY ANDREW JEFFORD

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARTIN SCOTT POWELL

Previous Story

Next Story

How shall we define terroir? In June 2010, the grandees of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine met in Tbilisi, Georgia, to attempt to pin the celebrated butterfly. Their definition of ‘vitivinicultural terroir’ so reeks of committee chloroform that I won’t quote it in full, though you’ll easily find it online.

It calls terroir ‘a concept’. ‘[D]istinctive characteristics’ for products coming from a particular place (ie aroma and flavour), it says, are provided by an area in which ‘collective knowledge…develops’ concerning the interactions between a physical and biological growing milieu and winegrowing and winemaking practices.

This is cautious and hesitant. The experts don’t say that terroir exists; they don’t say that it derives from the physical and biological milieu. If the concept is valid, they say, then it holds that the ‘distinctive characteristics’ of a product are based on human activities in a place, combined with the knowledge that develops about those activities and that place. Happy with this definition? Then it can indeed be applied to the creation of malt whisky.

This is not, though, what the wine community means by terroir. When wine producers, wine writers and sommeliers use the term, they mean that the aromas and flavours of a wine are principally derived from its physical milieu rather than its grape variety or winemaking techniques. Chablis tastes as it does not because it is made from Chardonnay or cool-fermented in steel on fine lees with malolactic, but because it grows on slopes of Kimmeridgian limestone at 47.815°N in a semi-continental location in the Seine basin, and may have been fermented with indigenous yeasts. Is this your favoured definition? Then malt whisky fails to qualify.

I write this with some sadness, since I spent a lot of time between 1990 and 2005 trying to make malt whisky fit the wine world’s very physical definition of terroir. That period culminated in two years of intense activity on Islay as I prepared the book which appeared in 2004 as Peat Smoke and Spirit (now rechristened Whisky Island). I wrote the book because I had fallen in love with the place. It is a celebration of place. Naturally, I wanted Islay’s whiskies to reflect the place; the book is, in part, a kind of terroir test, as I examined just what matters and what doesn’t matter in the creation of malt whisky aroma and flavour.

I finished the book by leaving the question open. Now, though, I think it is better to sink the Chablis definition (though this does indeed have some validity for Chablis) of ‘place before work’. Much better for the malt-whisky community to concentrate on a different definition of terroir: ‘work before place’.

Many Scotch whisky distillers use Scottish barley, but some source it from England and other parts of Europe

Let’s briskly explore the specificities of whisky and wine in turn. All that promotional footage of tumbling, peat-stained loch water is irresistible and makes a strong emotional appeal on the viewer, but no whisky scientist thinks that water counts for more than one or two per cent of the final sensorial profile of a dram. Why should we doubt them? Distilling, after all, is a process of water exclusion.

Next: a barley grain and a grape are profoundly dissimilar. One is a grass seed; the other a fruit. The fruit contains sugar-rich juice, which will simply be pressed and fermented, often with wild yeasts (grape seeds are discarded); the Chablis drinker drinks fermented juice.

Chablis grapes, moreover, are grown in Chablis. When they’re gone, they’re gone: quantities are limited. Seasonal phenomena and micro-locational differences are inscribed like watermarks in the constitution of the juice. A barley grain, by contrast, is juiceless. It contains starch, which in turn is useless for fermentation until malted, while the green malt is impractical to use unless dried. That’s a double transformation of raw materials, even prior to fermentation.

Appropriate malting barley is sourced globally by most malt distillers; proprietary yeasts are used to brew the base beer. The malt whisky drinker doesn’t drink fermented juice, but beer fermented from sprouted, dried, milled grass seeds (from multiple sources) mixed with hot water; that beer then has its alcohol simmered out of it by evaporation – twice, in the case of malt.

Peat origin might be considered a place-related terroir factor when peat is used, but the influence of this seems to be negligible

You can make as much whisky as your distillery equipment can support: just buy more ingredients. The major flavour decision regarding that beer is whether peat is used in the malt-drying process, something that ceased being a necessity long ago, and is thus a recipe choice. Peat origin might be considered a place-related terroir factor when peat is used, but the influence of this seems to be negligible, assuming that the peat is won from comparable biotopes.

Wine’s fermentative transformation is quickly over, which is why winemakers can call themselves midwives. Not so distillers. For them, fermentation is simply the prelude to the much more radical transformation of distillation, and if I learned anything during 15 years of visiting distilleries, it was that the exact nature of the distilling equipment and the way it is run has a significant effect on the final spirit. Condensers are likely to be more important for aroma and flavour than water source, for example, though they are much less photogenic. This is industrial plant, and distilling is an industrial process, albeit one of great finesse, like precision engineering or photonic design, and one for which human sensory apparatus is the final arbiter of quality.

The type of cask in which a whisky is aged has a greater effect on its aromas and flavours than the source of the raw materials

The other great imprinter of aroma and flavour on a malt whisky, alongside distillation, is its years spent oxidatively ageing in second-hand casks (most Chablis, by contrast, never sees a cask, and is in bottle in a matter of months). These casks are hugely significant for aroma and flavour, though rebuilt American white-oak recipients are not in themselves a place-related factor of terroir.

Their storage location, by contrast, is significant; this is, truly, a place-related factor of terroir. An Islay malt aged in Kentucky or Jarnac would differ significantly from one aged on Islay. Distilling companies claim, though, that there are no detectable differences between an Islay malt aged on Islay and one aged nearer to the motorways and bottling plants of central Scotland. I harbour some doubts here, but have never had the chance to make the comparison (though nothing would be easier for Islay’s large distillery owners to arrange). I agree that the differences are unlikely to be dramatic: Scottish storage is what counts for Scotch. And that the island of Islay is more beautiful without industrial parks mazed with warehousing invading to its farmland.

Tentative experimental steps can be made towards imbuing malt whisky with place-related terroir via the use of locally grown barley, as Mark Reynier did with his colleagues at Bruichladdich, and as he continues to do at Waterford in Ireland. Why not? Bravo; run the experiments. But not even the doughty Reynier can make raw barley starch or a porridge of milled malt resemble grape juice; leap over the multi-stage processing of malt whisky, and occlude the radical transformation of distilling; or roll up the years of oxidative oak ageing into a brief stint in steel.

In any case, fellow drinkers, it’s not necessary. There’s no need for whisky to be wine.

Whisky from Islay is renowned for the influence of peat on its smoky flavour

Place, for drinkers, is still there in the dram, not as ‘place before work’, but as ‘work before place’. In this sense, all those promotional videos don’t lie. I often think, as I’m lying awake in the small hours, of the spectacularly sited Caol Ila stillhouse on Islay. It’s closed just now for building works, but for most of the years since I wrote my book it has been lit, warm and operational through those same small hours as the rest of Europe sleeps, while outside in the darkness the waters of the Sound of Islay race past outside at 7 knots and chill rain, as often as not, flails the windows. Across the dark, curling water a few metres from those stills lies Jura, with its Paps and its 6,000 hardy deer; the Corryvreckan whirlpool churns unseen to the north.

At the end of the nightshift, the stillhouse workers will make their way up the steep hill and off and away across the island to homes and lives utterly different from mine, with a different set of fears and joys, constraints and liberations; while the spirit they have helped bring into being in that place will rest in all its newborn lividness before beginning its long life, most of its elsewhere.

That’s all there in every sip of Caol Ila. It doesn’t mean any the less to me if I can’t swear that the taste of peat comes from Loch Nam Ban’s brown water or from bricks of smoking Finlaggan moss, or the spirit’s warm glow from a field of Ballygrant barley. That is to be overly literal about the question. It is craft in nature, as wine is, and both matter – but here in this beautiful, hostile and unpropitious environment, it’s the craft, the endeavour, that matters more.

Andrew Jefford is a wine writer and the author of Whisky Island  (pic by John Jefford)

[RDB]

Thanks Ken, that’s an instructive and thoughtful article.