The first post in a series intended for people who don’t really care about all this. Originally published on Alt+Wine.

by Leah Hennessy

TERRIOR: a french word meaning “of the land” commonly used to describe a sense of place in a wine.

You’ve heard the word before: terroir. Or maybe you haven’t. Who cares? It’s a term commonly bandied about by the douchefolk that introduce themselves as “wine aficionados” as well as by people who are not douches but sometimes sound like they are.

Since the definition above is pretty useless, in order to understand terroir think about dialects for a minute. When you hear someone speaking with an accent, you can immediately tell where they are from just by listening to them – assuming you’re familiar with the accent.

If someone were to say the word “yard” and it sounded like “yaaaahhhhhd,” you’d know that person was probably from around Boston. Lots of people that are from Boston have a similar accent, so if you know what it sounds like, you can identify those folks and call their fair city “Beantown” and repeat the phrase “Haaaaahvaaaaahd Yaaaaahhhhd” over and over until they leave your immediate vicinity. Or punch you. Depends on which part of Boston they’re from.

Anyway, it’s the same with wine. Basically. Terroir is like an accent wines carry with them that tells you where they are from. Much like people and dialects, terroir is developed during the growth stage of life. Certain conditions in the weather, soil and climate of a place will impart similar characteristics in the scents and tastes of wines from a region. For example, red wines grown in the Paso Robles region of CA are known for being very bold and almost always smelling a little like violets. (True story.)

So the next time you hear or read someone discussing terroir in a wine, make a quick mental reference to the Jersey Shore and there you have your “sense of place.”

Or don’t. I don’t care.