Terroir ! Such a French idea that there is no equivalent for the word in any other language. It is so tied up with tradition and shrouded in mystery that sometimes we are accused of waving the word in front of us to hide our ignorance. Yet the idea goes back a very long way. Terroir is the essence of great wines. It is to wines what heredity is to men, i.e. both everything and nothing. Everything, because without it, nothing is possible; and nothing, since it is only revealed through the achievements of work and the acquiring of culture. The question of a pre-eminence of terroir is no more debated today than the old vain philosophical quarrel about innate and acquired knowledge in man. We know how much they are inextricably linked and perfectly complementary.

Among those things that make up the terroir of great growths are first and foremost the natural conditions : soil and climate. It is the climate that permits vine-growing to take place; in certain cases it allows the grapes to reach a balanced ripeness.

In such privileged places, where the ripening is necessarily slow and uncertain, the soil plays such an important rôle that very slight variations, even between two neighbouring plots, can result in great differences in the quality and typicity of the wines.

Most of the mechanisms of these interactions are not well understood, but the fact that they exist is beyond doubt. Included in the quality factors inherited in the great growths, and therefore belonging to their terroir, is the long experience of having built them up.

Without the care and passionate commitment of men's work, a ridge of gravel, however 'privileged' it might be, would never have become a great vineyard.

The most suited grape varieties had to be chosen, the conditions for vine-growing had to be defined, the techniques for vinification and ageing had to be fine-tuned. This work has been going on for over four hundred years and forms a part of our terroir.

It is our job now to reveal this wonderful heritage and perhaps to add a new little stone to the edifice.