"terroir" news and stories

Salers. Photo: The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills

This summer Slashfood blogger Max Shrem is apprenticing at renowned Paris cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté. For the next two months, in 'Le Cheese Course,' Max will share his impressions and opinions of French cheese à la francaise!

Like drinking wine, tasting French cheese is like going on an exciting journey through different terroirs: The diet of the nation's goats, cows and sheep thoroughly permeates the cheese itself. About a year ago, we wrote about the history and production of Salers, a hard cheese with a cheddar-like texture and meaty, mineral-like flavor. Recently, we discovered a specific wheel of Salers aged by affineur André Bruel that was so intensely meaty we felt compelled to revisit the fromage's intriguing flavor.

Bruel's affinage powerfully highlights the rich flora of the Auvergne in southwestern France, where Salers hails from. Aging Salers in the region's renowned Duroux tunnels, he produces a cheese with a more complicated array of flavors -- from eggy and meaty to fruity and vegetal -- than traditional Salers.

We should think terroir with most of our foods, especially when it comes to wines and cheeses. Artisanal cheeses from one dairy cannot be replicated at another. Cheese-makers at different farms can share techniques, but their cheeses will never be identical because of differences in soil content. The pastures upon which the cows, sheep or goats graze affects the flavor of their milk which affects the taste of the cheese. For this reason, when purchasing cheese it's important to think of terroir.

In French, terroir means soil, terrain, land, ground and earth. A cheese, like Laguiole, is partially defined by its region because of the soil. Laguiole has a slightly meaty and mineral-like taste that derives from the milk of cows grazing on grass that grows out of soil rich in volcanic ash. When purchasing cheeses, it's important to consider the condition of the animals that produced the milk that created the cheese. The animals should be grazing freely. At the very least, they should be fed grasses, leaves and flowers from the soil on which they live.

In Italy, a movement called Sotto Cielo -- literally "under the sky" -- has taken shape in order to preserve this cheese-making tradition. As industrial cheese-making becomes the norm throughout the world, people are increasingly interested in finding ways to preserve past culinary traditions by paying close attention to terroir.

This is just another way you can tell the difference between poor quality and good quality. An artisanal Comté will have a beautiful intense aroma and taste because the cows are grazing on meadows full of wild dandelions and native grasses.

Yesterday I picked "Ethiopia Sidamo" from the thermal pot at my fave local coffee shop, on a whim. I almost never go with the boring, ordinary Colombian house blend. Sometimes I'm wowed by my alternative selection, other times it's just coffee.

Color me wowed. I can't get enough of this stuff. It tastes like berries. No lie. And I'm sure you're thinking, coffee that tastes like berries? I totally passed that raspberry-flavored stuff up in the coffee aisle at my grocery store. But this is more a terroir thing (do they call it terroir in coffee?). The coffee beans, they're not that different from grapes, after all. Roasting brings out these amazingly complex and, yes, fruity flavors. According to the roaster, Stumptown Coffee, "The cup is Neopolitan ice cream... Intense chocolate, strawberry and creamy vanilla flavors in every sip." Plus it's organic and fair-trade and ohmigod I am so in love with this coffee. I wish I could give you a taste, you'd never be the same.

I watched Mondovino last night which got me thinking about the importance of terroir in regards to wine. Recently the U.S. and E.U. came to an agreement that will evenually protect regional names such as chianti and champagne (as well as allowing the U.S. to sell over-oaked chardonnay in Europe). As wine become more globalized people are fighting to preserve regionality. Why does it matter? The most eloquent essay I've read on the subject lately was by Terry Theise on the Dr. Vino website. Theise, a wine importer, talks of spirit of place in terms that are both metaphyiscal and practical. Terroir matters according to Theise because grapes flourish where they feel at home and when the grapes are happy they transmit subtle qualities which make for better wine. I don't quite agree with him when he says that chardonnay doesn't really work well outside of Chablis and Champagne but his argument for the power of place is compelling. Good wine is often about hard-to-pin-down qualities and terroir is part of the soul of the wine.

The movie itself was a bit of a muddle sometimes as it jumped from region to region and interview to interview but it did drive home the idea that something is lost when wine goes corporate. It also made me wish I was drinking one of the wines from the movie rather than the bad cabernet from Mendocino I had poured. The movie's website has links to the websites for some of the wines featured in the movie including the Domaine Hubert de Montille.

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