Glossary
Terroir
The combination of soil, climate, aspect, and human practice that gives wines from a specific place their distinctive character.
Terroir is the French wine world’s shorthand for everything about a place that ends up in the glass — the geology (in Champagne, Campanian chalk and Kimmeridgian marl), the microclimate, the slope and exposure, and the accumulated traditions of farming and winemaking.
In Champagne the terroir case is made vineyard by vineyard — why Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Chardonnay is taut and mineral, why Aÿ Pinot Noir is structured and fleshy, why Côte des Bar Pinot tastes rounder and riper than its northern cousins. The échelle des crus was an attempt to rank these differences; single-vineyard cuvées like Clos des Goisses, Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay express them in their purest form.
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