Where does our food come from? Hundreds of popular books, documentaries, television series and magazines seek the answer to this question. Consumers reflect on this question and make their purchases accordingly. The only way for this question to receive so much exploration and hype is if the answer is not as straightforward as the simple question implies. To discover where our food comes from often requires tracking an intricate web of unexpected actors and origins. These origins can be shocking, unsettling, even repulsive. Surprise and disgust are the costs that we pay for seeking the truths about industrial agriculture.
Naturally, when a system is not performing the way certain groups or individuals want it to, they will build their own measures of resistance. Therefore, while the products of industrial agriculture dominate the economic market as well as our pantries, we also observe a growing prevalence of what has come to be known as alternative agriculture. Alternative agriculture is the arena where other, smaller movements come to play. Here we watch as organic products, local products, artisanal products, biodynamic, non-interventionist etc. make their debut or, arguably, their revival.
The human actors who participate in these movements engage themselves in the battle against conventional agriculture for varying reasons. Some are concerned with the preservation of local communities and traditions. Others feel gratification for their more intimate connection with their food systems. Better tastes, flavors and aromas motivate others to choose alternative agriculture practices. Some echo Aldo Leopold’s, author of the Sand County Almanac, land ethic and seek to do improve relations between themselves and “the land and the animals and plants which grow upon it” (Leopold). These individuals live by Leopold’s argument that our ethics must evolve to include “nonhuman members of the biotic community, collectively referred to as the land.” Leopold writes, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise…. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land.”
Leopold’s land ethic offers another pillar to the monument that is terroir. Terroir is a term that so often demands veneration and Leopold gives another explanation as to why. To understand why Leopold’s land ethic relates to all the buzz about terroir, one needs to first know what all is meant by this rather illusive word.
Terroir often is used as a synonymous term to “soil and climate” and it is the vague ingredient that imparts a geographical identity to a product. It is also the reason that many fine products are praised. If a product reflects its terroir, then one could argue, that there is a certain authenticity to it. Naturally, something as intangible as le goût de terroir or the absence thereof is highly contestable. Amy Trubek offers a definition that does the quickest and best job of situating terroir. She simply explains it as “the taste of place”.
If the taste of a place is what Trubek and consumers like her seek, then, naturally, the land, the organic counterpart to a geographic concept, is the origin of terroir. The biotic community described by Leopold is the vary thing that imparts the taste of a place. Through the valorization of terroir, a consumer can begin to understand the value of the land as well. And visa versa.
Let us consider a commodity like wine: a product made both industrially and alternatively. In both agricultural models, vines first begin in the land. Whether or not that land, or place, if you will, is reflected in the final product depends on several factors. First of which is the treatment of the land. I know too little about conventional viticulture to explain in detail the processes that happen in the vines, but often, there are few reservations about the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. While the grapes are spared, other local flora, fauna, microorganisms and micronutrients are not. These all contribute to the land, the place and the subsequent tastes. Consequentially, alternative vintners abstain from these treatments, choosing instead natural substitutes. In the case of biodynamic producers, these vintners use specific preparations and follow a calendar, which permit them to better nourish their land. Other natural, or alternative, vintners borrow inspiration from their biodynamic colleagues and adopt certain practices to their own vines, while adhering to their respective ideologies when it comes to the stewardship of their land. Leopold’s land ethic may not be as popular or recognized of a term as terroir, but the two are inexorably linked in discourses about alternative viticulture.
While a land ethic paramount in the production of alternative wines, there is also something equally necessary that has yet to be coined. Therefore, I will call it a product ethic. In the case of wine, and perhaps all unprocessed foods, a product ethic is as important as a land ethic when seeking the truest reflection of terroir. In viticulture, there is an obvious part of production that happens in the vines, where the land interacts with the fruit. The next part of production happens after harvest in the cellar, where the winemaker interacts with the fruit. These two moments of production have been distilled into a rhyming binary: “the land and the hand”.
Just as the land gives un goût de terroir, the hand of the winemaker is equally responsible for imparting the same ‘taste of place’. A product ethic would describe winemaking practices that pay equal respect to the products of the land as it does the land itself. In the case of wine, the product is grapes and grapes can be manipulated, either a lot or a little. Without a product ethic, grapes become just one of many ingredients necessary to make wine, along with a slew of others that muffle, mutate or eradicate terroir. A product ethic would seek to honor the land that produced the grapes and therefore, would intervene as minimally as possible, instead preserving the truest sense of terroir.
Food and wine can be enjoyed for a number of reasons, not just for a true reflection of terroir. Consumers also consume for pleasure and for energy. Both are fine reasons to eat, but lack the opportunity to contextualize the experience, something that terroir offers. If one seeks to know the ‘taste of a place’, then that is to better know the place, to appreciate the place. In the pursuit of terroir, production methods must consider more than individual pleasures or calories consumed. Furthermore, one must consider more than economic yields, something beyond which industrial agriculture too often cannot look. If we focus on terroir, we in turn, are forced to consider more than the final product, we must turn our attention to the steps in between, the measure taken to foster le goût de terroir.
Terroir helps us understand our links to a place; a way to taste different lands’ respective legacies. Trubek synthesizes this better than I when she writes, “Terroir and goût de terroir are categories for framing and explaining people’s relationship to the land, be it sensual, practical, or habitual. This connection is considered essential, as timeless as earth itself.” I believe that Leopold would raise his glass to that.
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