Terroir

No, it's not a typo. It's foreign.

Today my friend Chris (a self-proclaimed oenophile) told me a little bit about wine. He mentioned the concept of terroir, which is a French term referring to the effects of geography and geology on wine production. He said that the French divide vineyards into sections and assign numbers to them. Then they put the numbers on the labels of the resulting bottles of wine in order to indicate quality as a measure of the land used for the grapes. His comments made me curious, so I read more about terroir here and here. I learned that climate, soil, and specific location of a particular vineyard (or even a particular row or vine within a vineyard) have influence on the way the grapes (and therefore, the resulting wine) taste. It seems to make sense, so I was also interested to learn that the concept is a little controversial. I'm certainly not well-versed in the world of wine, so I can't speak to that debate, but I do know all this talk about wine makes me want to go to a vineyard.
Or at least pour myself a glass.

Oh, and the picture is of the only French wine I have at my house right now. I haven't ever tried it, and I have no idea what kind of terroir it has.