Terroir Review

Terroir Review is a publication that explores the connections between nature, culture, food, and the places they come from. It was established by Meg Houston Maker, a celebrated writer known for her work in food, wine, and cultural topics.

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The Wine Comes First, and Always

3 weeks ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

I was collected at the Florence airport by a stocky man in his late fifties. “Parla inglese, signore?” I asked, as he slung my bag into the trunk. He smiled. “No — a leetle.”I apologized for my own meagre Italian. “Il mio italiano è molto semplice.”“Va bene!” he boomed, unconvinced. My accent is better than my vocabulary. Once we’d made our way out of the airport’s labyrinth, I tried to make small talk.
The Wine Comes First

3 weeks ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

I was collected at the Florence airport by a stocky man in his late fifties. “Parla inglese, signore?” I asked, as he slung my bag into the trunk. He smiled. “No — a leetle.”I apologized for my own meagre Italian. “Il mio italiano è molto semplice.”“Va bene!” he boomed, unconvinced. My accent is better than my vocabulary. Once we’d made our way out of the airport’s labyrinth, I tried to make small talk.
Meg Maker Shortlisted for World Food Photography Awards

1 month ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

I’m thrilled to share that two of my photographs have been shortlisted for the World Food Photography Awards 2025. For fifteen years, I’ve had privileged access to scenes of wine and food making all over Europe and North and South America. I always carry a camera, to document for my own learning and to share with others in articles and online. I’m not principally a photographer, but I try to put my visual and aesthetic training to work when focusing my lens on makers and their spaces.
An Apologia for Terroir in an Era of Tribalism

1 month ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

Terroir writ small is land, geology. Terroir writ large is people, geography. Terroir writ large is about customs, traditions, and what the people of a land can pull forth from it. Food evolves to suit the landscape, the landscape evolves to suit the food. A dialectic. Terroir writ small is concrete (soil, grapes, wine). Terroir writ large is abstract (taste, culture, norms ). Abstractions are unsettling. Terroir is dismissed as elitist, bandied by wine writers to make their work sound important.
An Apologia for Terroir in an Era of Tribalism

1 month ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

Terroir writ small is land, geology. Terroir writ large is people, geography. Terroir writ large is about customs, traditions, and what the people of a land can pull forth from it. Food evolves to suit the landscape, the landscape evolves to suit the food. A dialectic. Terroir writ small is concrete (soil, grapes, wine). Terroir writ large is abstract (taste, culture, norms ). Abstractions are unsettling. Terroir is dismissed as elitist, bandied by wine writers to make their work sound important.
The Piedmont Diaries

2 months ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

On the plane, Boston > JFK > Milan. My first trip to Piemonte. Not my first trip to Italy. During college I spent a semester in Florence, venturing to Rome, Lazio, Campania, wending my way down to Capo Rizzuto, in Calabria, in a tiny car with friends. Later I visited Veneto, Trentino, Emilia Romagna, Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Sicily. Not Sardegna, Liguria, Valle d’Aosta, Molise, Lombardia or, to the point at hand, Piemonte. What did I want from this visit?
Corinne Woodland and Nathalie Caumette

2 months ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

The territory of Faugères yields an astonishing variety of still red, white, and rosé wines, plus an aged brandy called Fine de Faugères. But the region is best known for its red blends, principally of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Carignan, which earn earthiness and savoriness from the schist terroir. Toward the end of my weeklong tour of Languedoc in June 2024, our large group of journalists gathered with an even larger group of Faugères producers for a grand plein-air picnic for seventy-five.
Charlotte de Béarn

2 months ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

The historic estate of Château de Jonquières, in Terrasses du Larzac, has been farmed continuously by the same family for 900 years. Documents held in the archives from the 13th century describe the suitability of its soils for viticulture. It’s likely the oldest continuously producing wine estate in Languedoc. In the 1960s, the family owners pivoted from making wine to selling their fruit to the co-op.
Céleste Renault

2 months ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

In June 2024, I joined a group of journalists and Picpoul producers for lunch at Atelier & Co., an oyster company in Loupian that offers tastings and dockside dining. The light at midday was intense, sparkly and flashing, and the busy port town of Sète shimmered across the lapping waters of the Étang de Thau. This shallow working lagoon yields 13,000 tons of oysters annually, nearly 10% of France’s total production.
Isabelle Champart

2 months ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

Isabelle Champart originally trained in Geography in Paris. Her husband, Matthieu, was from a farming family in Champagne. When the couple took over a family estate in St. Chinian in 1976, the fields were crowned with old vines, but they needed work. The Champarts got going on renovations, and also planted an additional 12 HA. For the next decade they sold grapes to the coop, but started bottling wine under their own label in 1988.