Merriam-Webster: “The combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character.”
How do we identify and relate to others? The microcosm of our personal world is wrapped up in infinite memories with the sense of place, time, and events into an ever-evolving matrix. The mystical moniker, terroir, evolves as an attempt to define all the elements that have gone into the creation of the taste of wine: geology/minerals — both natural and added — soil composition, weather, water, degree of sunlight/heating and cooling, the addition and subtraction of flora and fauna, stress of seasonal conditions, the winemaker’s consciousness and knowledge of craft/timing, and much more — depending on how far into the metaphysical we want to travel.
Of course wine is best shared in social intercourse; and an individual winemaker’s understanding of terroir must be understood by all who share the fruits of her senses.
Usually this definition is limited to a field, crop, season, region, and, of course, all bets are off in the next growing cycle. But what if we expand our view and visualize our terroir not just within an appellation or specific growing region, but encompassing the entire earth, with all its systems? And what if we decouple the definition of terroir from wine to specifically include the infinite matrix of life across the planet? OK, let’s scale it down at least to North America, for simplicity of transportation — and much more about this in a bit!
I guess you can rightfully call this “ecology,” but for the sake of adventure, what will happen if you seek to discover macrocosmic terroir through travel?
Are we burning incense and chanting too much here, for crying out loud?
Would this be Eco-travel. How about Terroir Travel? Best left for haunted house tours!
What we hope to accomplish and share with you will be the stories behind the veil of the mundane, searching for the keys to unlock the labyrinthine systems constituting the terroir of life on the move. From time to time we may fabricate fanciful fables, challenging your sense of reality, to prepare for an “Aha!” moment.
In wanderlust we search for the terroir of all the elements that have gone into the creation of our life now on the road, making us unique and unusual, common and comforting.
“…but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“Wandering is the activity of the child, the passion of the genius; it is the discovery of the self, the discovery of the outside world, and the learning of how the self is both at one with and separate from the outside world. These discoveries are as fundamental to the soul as learning to survive is fundamental to the body. These discoveries are essential to realizing what it means to be human. To wander is to be alive.”
― Roman Payne
“Foreign places yield more to one who is himself worth meeting.”
― Beowulf Poet