The Return to Terroir Tasting Panel: part two

We pulled chairs around a long and narrow wooden table. To me right was Pascaline, next to her Anne-Claude. A fine champagne-vigneron, David Leclapart, afflicted with the sniffles, sat across as did Nicolas. To my immediate right, the very Laurence Olivier look-a-like, Mark Angeli. Peppered in-between were names I recognized but faces I did not. Stefano Bellotti, sat at the head and introduced the Italian wines to the group. Stefano, I believe, was the first Italian biodynamist, having gone the way of Steiner in 1981. He has one of those magical biodynamic properties, filled with vitality, diversity, donkeys, chickens, kids. Like La Coulee, you slam the car door behind you and suddenly you wish you had arrived on horseback, or at least bicycle. We weren't having a good time with the wines until he presented the San Fereolo dolcetto. Stefano said before we tasted, "There is only one problem, her father is Italy's most important journalist." With that kind of introduction, we were all prepared not to like the wine but it was the real thing. It was real Dolcetto, dusty with a bright cherry, perhaps a little too concentrated but not terroir cancelling density.Famous daddy or not, the wine from Nicoletta Bocca charmed the table. But too many others wines were cunundrumatic. One pinot noir was coffee syrup. Another was marred by toasty new wood. Another was viciously acifified. Yet another or three had runaway volatility. A brunello was snuffed out and probably a refugee from the troubles that region had--the color was decidedly NOT sangiovese grosso. Another white wine from Germany was obviously yeasted. A down under riesling brought Stefano to proclaim it was crap. One syrah from Sonoma was too concentrated, too hot, and too fruit-driven. I was not alone in wondering how these people could think they wanted to be part of the group. It was clear that most people putting their wines up to be considered had no idea what the group's purpose was about or more to the point, the concept of terroir was as fractured as a smashed mirror. "This is a phrase for you, Alice," Nicolas said to me. "Mondo Character. AOC Mondialization of the wine world." He was perplexed. Yes, on more than one occasion Nicolas had to despair about the lack of song in the bottle. The tasting was an emotional. In the end, yes, I could break down why each wine that failed, failed, but more and more I saw that it did come back down to its song. Years ago I was rejected from BU creative writing program. I went in for my conference with Sue Miller. Sue who was not in favor of my application was nice enough to read me the comment of someone who did: Leslie Epstein, who happened to be the head of the department, wrote, "She has what we cannot teach and we can teach her what she does not have." Yet, if my writing was a wine, it would have made it into the Return to Terroir group. I thought of this story when after the tasting I received an email from someone in the states who was as rejected from the group as I was from BU. And he was pissed. Why did he write to me? Because Nicolas told him that I might be able to explain why his wine, even so carefully made from grapes so perfect in their phenolic ripeness, did not have a voice with which to sing the Return to Terroir tune. Why me. Why me? First I felt I had to defend American winemaking to the group, then I have to defend the Return to Terroir position to California. Why me. Why me? TBC