Terroir? I moved to Manhattan in 1992 and started working for the Gourmet Garage. Back then, Mesclun, that now ubiquitous mix of baby lettuces, was only to be found at the Gourmet Garage, Dean and Deluca and a few of the city’s crème de la crème of restaurants. Winter tomatoes came in a cello wrapped package of three barely pink “tomatoes” that were composed of a hard cellular structure inside. Again, Gourmet Garage and Dean and Deluca were the only places to fine brilliant red tomatoes still on the vine.

Today, both of these products are commonplace in every neighbourhood across North America. Just as our food products evolve in the market place, so does food terminology. The word I am thinking of right now is terroir. I first heard the term terroir about 3 years ago in relation to a farmer, who had a specific breed of cows, that grazed the grasses of his land, and he made certain cheeses right on the farm while the milk was still warm from the animals. Today the term is on everyone’s lips. You often hear the term in food conversation, it is the title conferences and food festivals.

While no one ever gave me an exact definition of the word, I worked it out to mean roughly that agricultural products are the result of where they are grown. A strict translation would leave you only at the soil. But isn’t an interpreter's job to glean the full meaning , even if it cannot be summed in one word? Perhaps I have overstepped my bounds but I settled on this: different climates, soils, growing conditions and varietals will create different and unique qualities in the resulting produce. A Chardonnay grape grown in Niagara does not taste like one grown in California or Australia. With my own definition down, I blithely began using the word as well.

I was greatly intrigued that one of the topics at recent 4th annual Ontario Cheese Society Conference was on the term terroir. The exact nature of the presentation was not clear from the program, but there was an inference of the overuse or misuse of the term.

Dr. Ken MacDonald, a University of Toronto professor and researcher in the geography department (and graduate of Kathy Guidi’s cheese education program) presented a fascinating argument for the term terroir. Here is my simplified summary of an hour of brilliant lecture...

In medieval France, there was little travel and specific areas came to make specific products, the traditions of which were handed down from generation to generation. Yes, the products that were produced were a result of the soil and local growing conditions but also of the people who produced the products. After the French revolution, people had more social mobility as well as physical mobility, which accelerated with the invention of the steam engine. As a variety of products became available in the cities, there was a need to differentiate them, to bolster the regions and to educate the public on the new products available. And so, the term terroir came into being, and really just in relation to wine. MacDonald went on to argue that AOC classifications (official designations of terroir) of cheese hugely increased in number in the 1980’s and 1990’s as exports to North America grew. The idea was to help educate the North American public and to defend the unique market of each product. The problem for Macdonald is that in this decade the term has been widely adopted, but with vague or changing meanings and often for mass market purposes. Macdonald’s gave the example of the Terroir wine festival in Prince Edward County. He asks, what is the terroir of Prince Edward County?

I think that there is a point to Dr. MacDonald's concern, but I don’t entirely agree. Lets face it, terroir was originally coined as a marketing term, so why worry about that now? If it takes me about five sentences to explain my definition of terroir, it seems to me that's it is actually pretty useful to have one word that captures all of that, even if it's not precise. And very use of the word terroir stands to educate us all to the nuances of new fine food products Curious eaters might actually be prompted to ask "what is terroir?", which might even lead to a generally accepted definition. (Actually, a group of mostly Niagara winemakers created a wine show named for the English version of what they thought terroir means: "Somewhereness".)

But there another aspect of the term, that I do see as troubling. If, like the French, we attach the meaning of terroir to a particular region, then, following the French, should all the producers of food or wine make the same thing? If we make a direct analogy to Prince Edward County, that would mean that the entire county would grow one varietal of wine grape? Or all the cheese makers near Stratfod make the same kind of cheese? I don't think that's what anyone has in mind. MacDonald suggested that we need to develop new terminology or risk turning the term terroir into a food term recognized by the mass public but vacant of meaning. Maybe we do need to develop our own term, like somewhereness. For me, terroir really only applies to individual farmers in North America, because regions are not collectively doing the same work, or producing the same things with a uniform taste. As far as public education and mass marketing goes why not just use plain language. Prince Edward County already has a festivals named “Harvest” and “Taste of the County", maybe they should just call their festival "County Wines"!

Andy Shay's monthly gourmet cheese boxes can be ordered at shaycheese.ca. Click here to see this month's selection. It's the perfect gift, dinner party treat and epicurean indulgence.