For every good idea I have, I get at least three ridiculously bad ideas. And some of those bad ideas make it far beyond the planning stages.
So, last week, I was joking about the rhetoric we terroir-lovers tend to use. We get very wrapped up in the importance of a wine reflecting a sense of place and we can often minimize the efforts of the winemaker. We say that winemakers should only act in order to produce good fruit that reflects the place where they’re growing the fruit. Anyway, we can get a little carried away with the rhetoric. So in the spirit of making fun of myself, I bottled some vineyard dirt and put it up for sale on the website.
The idea, unfortunately didn’t stop there. Once I had a bottle of dirt, it was pretty much unavoidable: I had to do a dirt tasting.
Tasting notes: dry, abrasive attack; strong minerality; dead leaves; low alcohol; significant sediment; muddy finish
So, without further ado, Ryan O’Connell from O’Vineyards tastes some dirt and makes fun of himself.
If we can learn anything from this ridiculous exercise, it’s that the perfect wine is not 100% vin de terroir or 100% vin d’effort but some clever middle path between these two extremes.