Former Classics professor Michel Bettane may be the most influential writer on wine in France today. With colleague Thierry Desseauve, he publishes Bettane & Desseauve’s Guide to the Wines of France. Bettane has emerged as a vocal critic of those who claim that organic certification is any guarantee of quality and has been particularly strident in his denunciation of “natural” wines. The following is my translation of an essay which appeared on February 1, 2013 at mybettanedesseauve.fr under the title Le vin, l’homme, la nature: Les vérités de Michel Bettane.
FEW SUBJECTS LINKED TO THE WORLD OF WINE inflame (and cumulatively befuddle) so many minds as the question of terroir. Many “terroiristes” make me think of talmudic scholars who incessantly try to rationalize things that have their true source in mystery, or in faith – things that can be useful in moral or philosophical realms, but which are in no way relevant for pleasure or taste – and still less for agriculture, despite the word ‘culture’ buried in it.
For more than 30 years now I have been attempting with the aid of winemakers from all over the world to understand the relation that exists between flavor and place – concepts our European tradition has linked from the beginning. I know that I still have far to go in this long inquiry (happily, still unfinished), but I am sure of at least one thing: that if the public is going to see this a bit more clearly it’s imperative that we avoid ideological dogmatism and crypto-religious thinking, and, above all, any pseudo-scientific jargon (the “pathetic fallacy” so dear to our English friends).
First principles are not in doubt. A wine carries with it a geographic name not as an attempt at commercial honesty but as a taste linked to a place — a taste that is reproducible more or less precisely over the course of time, is recognized by several generations of consumers, and is something we can communicate via language despite those genetically determined variations in taste that separate one individual from another.
The factors that determine variability in perception are indeed complicated, simultaneously involving a scientific understanding of taste and language in three stages, namely: (1) perception; (2( the brain giving form to the perception; and (3) the expression of the perception. I leave it to persons more qualified than I – doctors, neurologists, linguists — the task of resolving these difficulties. But the creation of flavor by nature — that is to say, by the vine, the soil, the climate, and human know-how (man being just one more natural factor), is nonetheless easy to explain, even if the piles of nonsense one reads everywhere on the subject often put wine enthusiasts off the track.
Wine is vine, soil, climate, fermentation, and some human input. No one element is more important than another. It’s only as an entire chain of activity (not forgetting the role of chance) that there is purpose and sense in it.
Let’s take these up one by one. First, the vine. It is a plant, a living being, with its genetic character (more genes than a human being, in fact), and a means of nourishing itself. We generally put too much emphasis on nourishment via roots when in fact this mainly involves nothing more than the uptake of water and the transmission to the grapes of certain trace-elements contained in the soil. The plant’s principal nourishment comes atmospherically: it’s photosynthesis in the leaves, light, cold, heat, rain, wind (as chance and the location dictate) that form the fruit with its riches of sugars and individual flavors. It’s this that fascinates the terroir fanatics, the geologists, all those hole diggers and map-makers, specialists, and historians whose role is in each case limited but nonetheless indispensable. Beyond the specific components of the blend and the quality of the grapes themselves one can’t lose sight of the importance of vintage — something the empirically-minded Burgundians have always emphasized in preferring the word climat to terroir.
Fruit, then, is the beginning of the story. The next is fermentation, which contributes to the flavor of wine but does not determine it. I know that I will shock many credulous minds when I say this, but the ideal fermentation is one which is as neutral as possible. By this I mean that yeasts have no other mission than to fulfill the fruit’s promise as faithfully as possible. And it is in fruit that this forceful expression of place resides. Terroir, in the largest sense, is in the fruit not in the yeasts. Even if the yeast is present in the terroir, this is not the same thing. This obliterates the Byzantine argument over the incompatibility of indigenous and non-indigenous yeasts, particularly if one rejects the commercial aromatic yeasts in favor of those selected for their neutrality and efficacy. Does an indigenous yeast work well? Fine, keep on using it. But if indigenous yeasts don’t do the job (it happens, you know) and end up killing the wine then out goes all sense of place, terroir, and climate. In all cases you have to take steps to prevent harm.
At a certain point man must step in and provide what civilization has to give: namely, craft — by means of which an individual’s observation and judgment play leading roles in bringing about a good effect. Most of the time, everything goes well, and this intervention takes the form of a well-meaning and gentle assist. Such is the philosophy of numerous makers of celebrated wines who very modestly put themselves at the service of their cru.
Frankly, this is mostly a pious lie.
In reality, winemaking requires so many decisions that the winemaker cannot help but step in. Someone must determine a date of harvest, whether or not to destem, the ideal ratio of must to tank size, length of maceration, how much tannin to extract (red wines) and how to balance oxydation and reduction (white wines), whether or not to use oak barrels and if so of what size, their place of origin, their preparation, how must aging is appropriate, bottling, etc.
Craft, intuition, spirit, discipline, precision, courage – all these are necessary to make a grand vin, not to mention the refined palate required to make the many decisions that issue from repeated tasting. One begins to understand why more and more producers feel isolated when they decide to engage the services of consultants. It may be fashionable to rail against the influence of the Guru-Enologist, but how many wines have they saved from a winemaker’s incompetence, his refusal to change or slavish devotion to routine? Conversely, it often happens that intelligent winemakers prevent their consultants from falling headlong into that dark abyss of an all-too-human narcissism.
And where are the journalists in all this? One hears a lot of nonsense about their forming public taste – but most are just trying in a modest way and in a press growing less idealistic and more combative by the day to popularize wine in some sort of reasonably intelligent way. And this not only to make known the great wines, those spoiled children of innumerable worshippers of the Golden Calf, but to bring to light and cheer on those wines which are sincerely crafted wherever in the world they may originate – and to do this without favoring one style or dogma over another and without feeling obliged to please everyone.
There’s plenty of work still to do.
– Michel Bettane
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