Checking out a new taste continent

FOOD: American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of our Woods, Waters and FieldsBy Rowan Jacobsen Bloomsbury (US), 288pp. $25

TERROIR, THAT devilishly difficult to pronounce term (get over sounding like Inspector Clouseau and just say “tare-wahr”, usefully advises the author of this book), is all about location, location, location.

In certain special places, a mysterious alchemy happens between soil, water, air, climate, and the specific foods produced in that region – often just one single item, like a cheese or a wine or a ham – and the result is pure bliss.

Appellation is the formal realisation of terroir in Europe, with the EU now legislating for it to the degree that only hams from a small region of Italy may be legally called Parma, and only blue cheese from a cave-riddled area of France, Roquefort. Fixing the notion of terroir in this way may be reassuring, argues food writer Rowan Jacobsen, but isn’t it also just a little bit dull? What happens to innovation and surprise when only a certain type of ham always gets to be Parma? And it always tastes the same?

His answer is to suggest that palates go explore the vast and relatively unconsidered gastronomic landscapes of the Americas (plural: he is not just talking about the United States, but a whole swathe of territory from Canada down to Panama). American terroir is the gastronome’s new taste continent to explore, up till now underconsidered for its own love affairs between place and food.

“If our terroir is immature, it’s also youthful, with all the energy and exuberance that brings,” he argues.

In each of 12 delightful, drool-inducing essays he explores just one single item in constantly surprising detail. The Aztec word from which we derive avocado, ahuacatl, means "testicle" – who knew? (But it makes sense when you think of an avocado.) And this unusual fruit is alone in using fat as the payload rather than sugar for the animals that ingest it and excrete (and thus spread) its seeds. Given that its original target population was not guacamole-eating turistasbut giant sloths and mammoths, lots of fat was good. Now that they are usefully extinct, we get to gorge ourselves on the marvel that is the Michoacan avocado, often grown with upwards of 30 per cent fat.

You say you like cheese? Perhaps you have never considered that “the magic of cheese is really the art of controlled spoilage, of making milk rot right”. In terroir cheese-making, local fungus reigns supreme, and the skill of the good cheese maker is knowing the point at which the rot has gone on just far enough to produce a toothsome morsel but not over the edge.

Or consider maple syrup. That intensely pure sweetness comes from boiling down a walloping 40 gallons of spring-rising sap into just one gallon of liquid amber. The very words invoke childhood longing – many a time I raided the bottle in the fridge with a soup spoon when my mother was safely out of the kitchen, and relished its unique mellow afterglow.

Some facts truly depress. Our demand for perfect, red, easily transportable apples means that of 14,000 varieties listed by the US Department of Agriculture in 1905 we are now down to less than 100. The large-scale growers just focused on cloning whatever the emerging supermarket culture desired.

Thank goodness then for some special producers of apples in Washington’s Yakima Valley, busy growing old varieties and creating new ones high on the mountain ridges that give extra flavour. Mountains, notes Jacobsen, are a consistent motif in terroir. Whether wine or coffee, apples or maple syrup or cacao, elevation and a little additional stress tend to make things we eat taste even better.

This book is impossible to read without wanting to immediately try each food it celebrates. Happily, Jacobsen predicts the direction of our desires, and includes a couple of recipes at the end of each essay along with a list of websites and phone numbers for sourcing these marvels. I would guess a few people will plan their American holidays around taking in some of the locations and businesses listed, too. Oh to be in a Vermont “sugarhouse” boiling down maple sap in spring.

Ultimately, the future of terroir lies not with the land, but with us, cautions Jacobsen. “For terroir to be more than a whim, it has to answer the question, What does this landscape do best? And the market must be knowledgeable enough to support that, to be willing to pay for superior foods to keep the producers in business.”

Educate yourself, and bon appetit.

Karlin Lillington grew up in Canada and California and writes about technology for The Irish Times