A couple of years ago I wrote a piece about 'terroir', that wonderfully elusive French word that decorates many a wine writer's columns. You can think of 'terroir' as a wine's local neighbourhood and just as with people, some wines tend to show more of their neighbourhood than others. You can think of it as a wine with a regional accent, or with a traditional costume, traits that mark the owner as coming from a particular place.

In the wine world that particularity of place gets divided up finely. To take one area as an example, Chablis has its greater geographical area, there's a smaller area designated as 'Premier Cru', and an even smaller one designated as 'Grand Cru'. The Grand Cru area, the slopes immediately to the north of the town of Chablis can be easily seen in its entirety. It's just seven big fields, and each one is a grand cru with its own name. When you look at these slopes from the town you'd wonder how this division ever got made, but when you go up into the vineyards you find there's a logic to it. The soil types vary and the fields we divided on the basis of soil types. Some slope more steeply than others and hence expose more of the vines to the sun. Some fields are stonier than others, making the ground quicker draining, which also affects the vines' conditions. Some are better exposed to the sun than others, which can mean a further twenty hours sunshine by the year's end and a different degree of ripeness to the grapes. All these factors affect the vine's ecology, and is what we know as 'terroir'.

But what brings me back to the subject is that terroir is not necessarily at the centre of wine making. For some it represents a philosophy of viticulture that knits together the vine, its sustaining earth, its management by man and the climate that surrounds it. But for others it simply obfusticates what is clear - that wine is a product made by a fusion of wine-makers and grape variety. In their view a wine can be made to take on any style, irrespective of its provenance, it's simply the choice of the wine-maker in his high-tech winery. When you think about it, it's almost impossible to differentiate between full-flavoured, very extracted red wines from the New World. Even wines from different continents can taste remarkably similar, making the wine-maker the centre of the process, not the terroir.

If terroir is to have a useful meaning, then perhaps it should be kept to define those differences that occur when similar vines are grown in slightly different surroundings, as in the Chablis example above. By this definition it means the characteristics that a particular place implants to the vine, through its soil, its climate, its grape variety and the management imposed by the hand of man.

Wine of the Week

Chateau Dereszla Tokaji, 2000

If you're looking for a real dessert treat that won't have you paying out in the Chateau d'Yquem league, you could try this delicious and luscious Tokay. Like all good dessert wines it lingers long on the palate and the flavours are intense. A bit of a bargain in my opinion, at €15.50. Available from Mitchels of Kildare Street and Glasthule.