The idea of terroir is sacred, but is it helping us to communicate what truly matters?

The word terroir is everywhere: on tasting sheets and in marketing copy and articles. Far from being a unique property of certain distinguished vineyards, it seems as though everyone is focused on expressing their terroir, sometimes to the tune of millions of bottles a year.

- JASON MILLAR

Terroir as a concept originated in the Middle Ages, when describing a wine as having 'the goût de terroir' was often disparaging: literally, the taste of dirt. Appropriate, then, that terroir today has become as common as muck.

Yet as late as the 20th century, it was of little interest to wine writers. George Saintsbury's Notes on a Cellar-Book (published 1920) doesn't mention it. In Alexis Lichine's Wines of France (1951) there's an index entry for terrine de lapin but not for terroir; André Simon didn't think it worth including in his otherwise comprehensive glossary to The Noble Grapes and the Great Wines of France (1957).

That's because the widespread appearance of the word occurs only after the 1976 Judgement of Paris comparative tasting, when California triumphed over Bordeaux. The adoption of the word terroir in wine writing is - ironically enough - a consequence of wine experts' failure to recognise it under blind conditions.