There's more to wine than terroir

Fashionable techniques, such as whole bunch fermentation, are bringing an extra dimension to winemaking

Received thinking in the wine trade these days is that what goes on in the vineyard is more important than what happens in the cellar. It’s all part of the triumph of terroir, the quasi-spiritual French idea that what makes a really great wine – or, these days, coffee, tea or crisps – is that it tastes of where it comes from.

Which is fine up to a point: but it does overlook the significant advances made in what has been a bit of a golden age for creative viniculture (what happens after the grapes are picked), with producers playing with the raw material in ever more ingenious, sensitive ways.