Nivel de llenado de carga

Late nineteenth-century regionalism and the retour à la terre (“ return to the soil” or peasantism) that fl ourished between the two World Wars con- tributed to defi ning the singular nature of foods through terroir. To be sure, neither regional specialty nor the term terroir was anything new. Gallo- Romans knew that their best oysters came from Brittany and Normandy and that there were no better hams than those from Bayonne. The royal tables of the absolutist era groaned under the weight of what was best from all over France. In the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century, Grimod de la Reynière advocated gastronomic tourism, writing that one had to travel to Riom (Auvergne) to eat the best frogs legs, properly prepared by a knowledgeable local expert. In 1808, the lawyer and pharmacist Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt published a carte gastronomique (gastronomic map) keyed with small pictures to show the typical foods for each region and town. Awareness of regional particularity increased throughout the

century and was key both for rallying nationalist sentiment and stimu- lating the tourist industry. During the twentieth century, the effort to decentralize culture from Paris into the provinces led to cooperation between the state and the regions to develop local identities.

Like regional specialty, the term terroir is as old as the hills that it long designated. Terroir is related to terre (earth, dirt) and territoire (territory, area). Of Latin origin, the term has been used in French since the thir- teenth century to mean a plot of land suitable for cultivation. In the nineteenth century, as trains and other forms of transport made it easier to travel and also to perceive regional variations, the term took on an association with other characteristics perceived as local. A person’s way of speaking, if redolent of the countryside, was called the accent of his

terroir.

Today, the term terroir is used to evoke the connection among place, manufacturing process, and taste that defi nes good-quality, artisanal wines and foods. For wine, components of terroir include the climate (tempera- ture, rainfall) of the location where the grapes are grown, sunlight, topog- raphy (slope, altitude), and soil (its physical characteristics, chemistry, interaction with water). Terroir also includes historical and cultural prac- tices of the people involved, or the human element. One speaks of a wine or a food, such as lamb from the prés-salés (salt marshes) and garriguettes, the elongated strawberries originally grown in scrublands, as having the

goût du (taste of) terroir. This meaning of the term terroir informs the

familiar French metonymy for wine. Whereas American wines are identi- fi ed fi rst by the name of the grape (merlot, pinot noir) from which they are made, French wines are identifi ed fi rst by the place from which they come: a Côtes-du-Rhône, a Chablis, a Bordeaux, or the specifi c vineyard within a geographical region or even a town. Additional details, such as the cépage (type of vine or grape: gamay, cabernet, and so on) and the year or vintage, are named second. A food or wine with the taste of

terroir is understood in opposition to commercial or industrial fast food

and supermarket products seen as sterile and impersonal, of unclear prov- enance and little savor.

The specifi city that informs terroir also underpins the Appellation d ’ origine

contrôlée or AOC (Controlled Denomination of Origin). Regulations

for the AOC derive from classifi cations for Bordeaux wines instituted in the mid-nineteenth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inexpensive Spanish and Portuguese wines were cutting out French wines from European markets. Bordeaux wines, at that point, were not known as being unusually good or even very distinctive, as they are today. As a way of competing, winegrowers from the Médoc region

applied themselves to strategically developing grands crus or distinguished Bordeaux wines that stand up to long aging and command very high prices. To improve quality, they carefully cultivated the oldest and best vines. They paid special attention to aging the reds in oak barrels. Along the way, these growers also consolidated the cultivated parcels on their estates. This reinforced the connection between the place where grapes where grown and the resulting wine. As a measure of protection for their exceptional wines, proprietors evolved special classifi cations that were applied beginning in 1855. The best label of premier cru (fi rst growth) and even the least distinguished label of cinquième cru (fi fth growth) vastly increased the market value of these wines. The prestigious labels were not easy to obtain. In the fi rst year, the premier cru designation was awarded to wines from four estates. The fi fth estate was not added

until 1973. 19 _{The many winemakers whom the grades excluded naturally}

wished to obtain some sort of distinguishing label for their own bottles. The fraud laws became important for winemakers, as imitations of the distinguished bottles came on the market. More capacious legislation passed in 1935 established the Appellation d ’ origine contrôlée, which could be applied to wines from locations other than in Bordeaux. In 1990, the

AOC was expanded to cover all manner of foods as well as wines. Today,

the AOC certifi es the place of origin, the specifi c type, and the mode of production of a variety of products, from the poulet de Bresse (Bresse

Village appellation red burgundy from the Côte de Beaune district of the Côte d’Or. Courtesy of Philippe Bornier.

chicken) and beurre d ’ Isigny-Sainte-Mère (Isigny-Sainte-Mère butter), to various fruits, and including some of the vins de table (table wines).

Because the designation AOC indicates a historical pedigree and also functions something like a patent for the fi nal product, extensive research and documentation are necessary to establish the application dossier for a food. The certifi cation of the AOC gives a concrete, practical form to the appreciation for quality and particularity. It embodies the general acknowledgment that food with the best fl avor and the most appealing textures may result from carefully, even painstakingly, overseen processes of cultivation and manufacture. The AOC also functions as a protection- ist measure that is a boon to sellers and producers and to tourism.