Terroir: the taste of where you live

Terroir is a French term, commonly used to describe the special characteristics of fine wines. Terroir in its narrowest sense encompasses what we might call "microclimate"; the special characteristics of the soil on one side of a hill, the way the sun shines on the grapevines at each time of the year, the minerals in the water, the breezes or winds that affect the vines. These particular differences, in addition to the skills of the viniculturist and vintner, are what makes a wine from one small estate noticeably different from a wine from a neighboring small estate.

You need not go as far as distinguishing the really fine, and really expensive, wines from the cheaper. One reasonably priced and carefully created wine from a small vineyard is just as good, and noticeably different, from another. Terroir ties the wine that we drink to the place it was grown.

Winemaking in Colorado is off to a good start, particularly on the Western Slope, but I am not a wine expert, so let's look at this term from a wider perspective. What grows in Colorado that is especially fine? Are we familiar with a certain region where the peaches, or the beans, or the onions, have their own special flavor, the taste of home?

We can start with Western Slope peaches, so much better than California peaches that you would think they were another fruit altogether. And the same goes for the beautiful buttery yellow Colorado bartlett pears, available for only a few weeks in the early fall. It is more than just freshness, though freshness counts for some of it. The flavors are sweeter and more complex, because the fruit had to work harder.

It's too "easy" in California. Mild temperatures year round, plenty of water, massive orchards all treated the same, massive farms with spinach as far as the eye can see, all the same. Not the same as Grants Farm spinach, grown in the harsh climate north of Wellington.

Going back to fruit, a good Western slope apple's flavor wins out over a Washington State pampered well-watered apple. My husband tells me the upstate New York apples are absolutely tops, too, tart and crisp in the fall. I haven't had the pleasure of eating a good New York State apple.

On the other hand, it's hard to grow a hot chili pepper in New York. Too cool, too rich a soil, too much water, water, water. Chili peppers need to suffer: make it hot, make it dry, make the days scorching and the nights cold; I want to live in the desert. Northern New Mexico chilis have their own terroirs, and chili experts can tell you that the chilis from one valley are better than the chilis from another valley. And maybe these chilis are not "better" but different from those chilis.

Beans from Dove Creek in southern Colorado, in the San Luis Valley, are really the best I have ever tasted. The higher altitudes, the dry but slightly cooler days, maybe something special in the soil, makes for especially flavorful beans. LoveLandLocals, myself included, have really been enjoying the wonderful pinto beans.

As a society, we have pretty much lost our sense of these differences, since most of the supermarket food is anonymous, thrown together from every part of the globe, sold by price and cosmetic appearance rather than by taste and locality.

Once the food hits the industrial processing plants, any hint of terroir, of the special flavor of any ingredient, is lost in the background noise of high fructose corn sweetener, MSG in all its hundreds of manifestations, cottonseed oil (one of many on the label: count on the manufacturer to use the cheapest one), and multisyllabic words describing chemicals you have never heard of.

Gary Paul Nabhan wrote the first of the "locavore" books: Coming Home to Eat. He was hunting out the special foods of his region, Tucson and the Mojave desert. It's an arid region, and many of the traditional foods have been forgotten by the inhabitants. It was an adventure for him, hunting out the unknown treasures.

You don't have to eat a lot of imported foods to be a gourmet; the French and Italians don't. They know what is best in their neighborhood, in their home territory, and that's what they eat. They eat the sausages made by their cousin Luigi or Antoine, sold in the same shop by their grandparents before them. They eat the lettuces grown right outside the city, and trucked in fresh every morning. We've been to Italy, seen the farmlands outside Rome, eaten the perfectly fresh lettuce at a little hole-in-the-wall luncheonette.

There is nothing difficult here; nothing we can't do. We just need to have our eyes opened, or perhaps our tastes. Open your tastes to the special foods of Colorado. Appreciate the foods grown and raised by your neighbors. We need a Colorado cuisine that doesn't depend on California produce. We can do it. It's time to "come home to eat".