<-------- Back to beginning of article

Photo by Abraham Karam

Arizona's Terroir
[ter-wahr]

Translating roughly as “of the soil,” terroir is invoked by wine enthusiasts to express the special flavor and texture characteristics that geography, geology and climate impart on wine. (As in: “This sangiovese really reeks of Tuscan terroir.”) 

With its clay-like, loamy soil and “great drainage,” Arizona wine country offers an excellent facsimile of the terroir in Spain, according to Arizona Stronghold Vineyards winemaker Tim White: “Spanish varietals like tempranillo are starting to do really well here.” Other insiders liken Arizona wine country to the Rhône region in southern France. Rhône-style grapes – syrah, petite sirah, mourvèdre and grenache, to name a few – account for the majority of Arizona’s most acclaimed wines. 

Terroir is not absolute. It can change from vineyard to vineyard – a concept known as “micro-terroir.” However, White and Arizona Stronghold vigneron Maynard James Keenan isolated several flavor components as distinctly Arizonan: “Toasted aromatic herbs and dried spice... roasty characteristics.”

Though uninitiated folk associate Arizona terroir with extreme heat and aridness, often the opposite is true. “We actually get a lot of late-season frost and monsoon rains in the high desert,” White says. “We also have extreme diurnal temperature shifts from day to night – about 50 degrees.” These climatic vagaries can be a deal-breaker. When Arizona’s wine industry was getting underway in the ’80s and ’90s, several neophyte winemakers dabbled in pinot noir – a grape mastered in the Burgundy region of France, where it adapted to brisk, chilly winds and Burgundy’s comparatively well-irrigated soil. Needless to say, most pinot noir plantings failed miserably here. In short, the terroir was wrong.

Terroir as a winemaking philosophy is hotly debated, as techniques such as oaking and chaptalization (adding sugar) can all but erase terroir nuances. That’s why White prefers neutral oak and natural methods: “It should be just a little nudge here and there. You want the grape to speak loudest of all.”

                                                           <-------- Back to beginning of article