Meeting with Pedro Parra

In just a few years, this Chilean, who holds a doctorate from the National Agronomic Institute of Paris-Grignon, has established himself worldwide as an expert in terroirs and their relationship to wines. The Athenaeum has just published the French version of his book.A wine, a rock. Let's revisit his approach, this work, "his" Burgundy...

How would you define the concept of terroir?

In a somewhat clichéd manner, everyone describes it as the triptych of man-soil-climate. This is somewhat reductive in more ways than one. This approach somewhat minimizes the role of humans in this relationship and their interpretations when it comes to planting, pruning, and harvesting. It also does not take into account the rock itself, or the life within it. Yet, most great wines come from rather rocky soils! Not to mention the temperature of the soil, for example. So, upon closer inspection, for professionals, the notion of terroir is much more complex than the generally shared triangular view.

How does the terroir as you imagine it influence the wine?

Understanding this relationship primarily involves changing the model. Analyzing the soil of vineyards without considering their wines poses a problem, doesn't it? Unlike most of my colleagues, I started with the premise of moving from the wine to the terroir. Specifically, starting in 2006, alongside my geological investigations, I began to educate my palate by tasting methodically. For years, 5% of my income was devoted to purchasing bottles for my Monday morning tastings. Better still, in contact with two great Italian oenologists, Alberto Antonini and Attilio Pagli, I discovered a different way of appreciating wine. Less New World, more European, it focuses more on texture in the mouth than on aromas and color. While the latter two can easily be manipulated in the cellar, the sensations in the mouth do not lie. They are the expression of soil, of rock... It is impossible, for example, to obtain wines full of tension, minerality, purity, and lightness, so dear to Jean-Marc Roulot, on clay soils. By nature, these are sources of roundness. Conversely, this typicity calls for shallow soils, of silt or sand, and numerous fractured rocks, very dry and white, signs of low iron oxidation and therefore a lesser presence of clay.

However, two wines from different wineries, originating from the same soil, are not necessarily identical...