I have a piece in the upcoming Art of Eating about the science behind terroir. I skipped past the vague hand-waviness of winemakers and marketing and went straight to the scientific papers that have been written on the subject to try and answer the question: How exactly does terroir feature X translate into wine feature Y?
I spent a lot of time at the UC Berkeley library reading through articles from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, and many others. And then I translated the scientific results into English. You can think of it as a literature review aimed at consumers.
Call now, and order a copy. Or, better yet, subscribe to the magazine. As I've often said, it is the best English-language food magazine, and it may be the best one, period.
