For a little change of pace, I picked up a bottle of Pascal Jolivet 2003
Sancerre ($16US). If I had been served this wine blind I'd have _sworn_
that it was a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc! It is almost colorless, with a
slight greenish cast and has the typical "cat ****" aroma that is so
distinctive of this varietal. There was nothing in the nose that betrayed
its French origin, and only a slight softness on the palate that hinted at
it. I recalled someone on this NG opining that Marlborough SBs seemed to
show no trace of terroir - only fruit.

That got me to wondering:
Could it be that terroir is a function of very slight, regional
microbiological infections? ( I hesitate to use the term "spoilage".) IOW,
if a wine is made very meticulously cleanly (as this wine obviously was) it
will show _only_ fruit and give little or no hint of the origins of that
fruit? Obviously this could only apply to white wines, as red grapes are
fermented on their skins along with all the dirt etc. that comes in on them
from the field. White juices OTOH are often very well cold settled and
racked away from all that muck before it has much of a chance to affect the
flavor.

Does good white winemaking technique consist in throwing away the terroir
with the bathwater, so to speak?

Tom S