EDITOR’S NOTE—Rock's Face
 Scientists can trace the DNA of a vine, giving a factual
basis to buying and selling wine by variety. But there
are nowidely accepted scientific tools tomeasure terroir
expression in wine, somany consider the discussion
of such matters bogus. And to the degree that
much of the discussion of terroir is based on supposition
rather than fact, theymay well be correct.
Curiosity, however, leads us to believe that some
of these suppositions might have an assay, a protocol
to prove them true... or false. My own curiosity
on this front stems from my experience in tasting
and drinking wine.
Consider this long–term experiment in pattern
recognition: Taste 5,000 to 6,000 wines blind each
year for a series of 25 years, knowing only vintage and region. Compile notes on your perceptions
of the wines. Look for patterns in the notes, and patterns in the wines to come.
Include the greater and lesser terroirs, as voted by price in the market. You may find distinctions
where themarket is unimpressed, and youmay be underwhelmed by wines the
market values. Some of this can be written off to personal taste. Some is pattern recognition,
the way we train ourselves to recognize the faces of people we know, however similar
they may be to thousands of others.
That's how Aubert de Villaine once described terroir expression tome, imagining the
varied personalities of the wines from his vineyards at Domaine de la Romanée–Conti,
their differences in soil structure, exposure and vine coalescing into a face he can recognize
year after year.
As neuroscience develops, itmay take on the brain responses we have fromour sense
of smell. Those responses often stemfroman ancient and instinctual reaction to danger,
whether it's the scent of rotting food or a bear sleeping in your cave. Today, many of us
live in urban cultures where scent neutrality is to the common good, where the ground
was long ago covered in pavement and we hold our noses on the way to the office, passing
the restaurant garbage waiting for pickup. What, after all, is the terroir expression of
Manhattan or Paris? The places bring visualmemories first, and perhaps a faint recollection
of diesel.
Yet we all know of moments when it's a great pleasure to open ourselves to the sense
of smell. Where I live in the hills of Western Massachusetts, I often find myself stopped
at a rosa rugosa bush, or picking thyme and rubbing it between my fingers. It's the scent
of summer in the Berkshires; for me, it's the terroir signature of my home.
This issue is about those moments with wine.
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