WORLD’S GREATEST VINEYARDS
What is the world’s greatest terroir? It’s a very tricky question, and one that wine lovers could debate for hours. But we thought we’d try to answer it by asking a selection of highly respected experts. So, after much discussion, here’s the Decanter dozen. Agree? Disagree? Do let us know...
You could call them ‘patches of dirt’. Many do. It’s strange, though, that flippant disparagement: soil is the basis of human nutrition. No soil; no us. And vineyard soil stands at the summit of agriculture: the world’s greatest vineyards are the most prized and expensive morsels of agricultural land anywhere on our planet. This tells us two things. The first is that the chance to drink and taste great wine is a peerless pleasure for which those with resources will pay beyond reason. And the second is that only this patch of dirt will do. Only this patch makes that wine.
Great vineyards are unique; they elude duplication or substitution. We don’t yet fully understand why this is so, especially since such uniqueness is opaque in grape juice, the primary agricultural product, and only becomes apparent after the transformations of fermentation and ageing. But it is so.
Hence this feature. Why, long-term Decanter readers may exclaim, haven’t you done this before? The answer is that it’s so damn difficult. Our valiant contributors have fought their way through a blizzard of challenges to come up with this dozen, but we fully expect the list to be criticised and challenged again. We still think it’s worth doing – as a talking point, as a focus for reflection, as an incentive. And for fun.
NO EASY TASK
Lists of this sort are subjective. That was why we canvassed widely first, but our top choices are no less subjective for all that. One obstacle is that vineyard definitions vary between regions. The ideal is the Burgundian climat – and Burgundy’s long standing as ‘the vineyard region’ par excellence encouraged us to select two of its own, one for white and one for red. Bordeaux is as great, yet the fact that most of its wines are sold under the name of a commercial entity (the château), and those wines blended anew from a different selection of vineyard parcels every year, makes it problematic from a pure vineyard perspective.
Another major challenge is that a vineyard’s worth is only proved in time – half a century or more, let’s say. Many of today’s key regions haven’t yet had 50 years of close scrutiny, fastidious viticulture and limpid yet ambitious winemaking in their finest sites. We’ve made educated guesses about where greatness may lie in this case, but they are guesses which await the proof of time.
And then… meet the wily brands. In regions
