What is Terroir? A Definition and Three Things to Get You Started
each farm produces its own flavours and aromas
If culture is “the way things are done around here” then terroir is culture for plants. It’s “the way we grow around here.” Climate, soil, landscape, and the microbes that live within the soil create unique conditions that plants need to learn and adapt to so they can thrive.
The best known examples of terroir are probably wine and coffee. For wine, terroir affects the sugar content and tannins. For coffee, altitude is an important factor. High altitude coffee trees produce smaller beans with a sweeter more floral taste while low altitude trees produce larger more chocolate flavoured beans.
Terroir affects the oil content in hops and the ratio of aromatic terpenes within it. The result is differences in bitterness and the balance of flavours between citrus and pine to floral and earthy. Check out the following image that shows the results of a blind aroma test of two Cashmere hops grown on different farms.
Twenty three brewers participated in a blind aroma test of hops and rated on a scale of 1-5 the presence, if any, of common hop aromas. A total of ten hops were used in this test and the brewers were sure that they were all different varieties. In fact, they were all the same variety just from different farms around North America. Each farm produced its own unique version of the same variety of hop. This was exciting news for brewers that are used to buying blended hops from large distributors who aim to make their product always perform the same.
2. Hop terroir almost disappeared during the 20th century
Although beer is thousands of years old, hops weren’t a common ingredient until the 13th century. But the 19th century was the reign of the hop, as acreage tripled in many hop-producing nations. Farmers, brewers and especially drinkers argued over which region produced the best hops. Back then there were only a handful of varieties, compared to the hundreds on the market today, a result of modern breeding programs. Where they were from made a big difference.
Each country had its favourite styles. Each region, its specialties. Each city it’s proud local invention. And every brewer had his own take. Beer was passionately local. It was even a part of regional identity, like a shoulder patch proudly stitched onto a uniform.
But it wouldn’t last. Intensive cultivation contributed to depleted soils and less-resilient plants. Unusually cold weather stressed crops and an outbreak of hop diseases crashed yields. Downy mildew, verticillium wilt and hop aphids ripped through crops in America and then Europe. Rising hop prices led to a reduction in the use of hops, leading to a rise in popularity of more affordable, less hoppy styles. By 1909 hop acreage in England had returned to where it had been in 1800. And then the unthinkable happened. The rising tide of nationalism that helped build beer into a part of regional identity took a dark turn. War, which many in Europe thought had become so expensive and economically ruinous as to be impossible, broke out in 1914.
Hop production plummeted in Germany and decreased further across Europe and the UK. By the 1930s England had only 16,500 acres of hops and the hop industry on the east coast of the United States had completely collapsed. War returned after the Great Depression. German hop yields decreased by two thirds. Economic depression retuned to Europe after the war as an entire continent struggled to rebuild following its industrial-scale self-destruction. But a tender green shoot of hope emerged from the rubble of the blitz. A centre for hop research was founded in 1947 at Wye College in London, though it would be decades until the implications of this would be seen.
The 20th century was a dark age for beer in general, and hops in particular. The period between 1930 and 1980 was especially bad. A period of industrial consolidation cast its shadow over the brewing world. Small breweries were purchased and closed by big conglomerates with the soulless efficiency of High Modernism. Tradition was out. Science was in. Beer became an industrial product. Flavour and regional style weren’t as important as efficiency and standardization. Cheap consistency was the goal. Sure, the beer wasn’t very good but this was also the age of advertising. Beer was no longer what the local brewer or pub owner liked to make. It was what corporations told you to drink. Where it was from hardly mattered because it was all the same.
3. Hop terroir started making a comeback in 2016
The explosive popularity of craft beer, especially the uber-hoppy IPA, during the 21st century created a renewed interest in hops. Increased demand raised prices and small farmers began experimenting with this new cash crop. Small-scale farms sprung up throughout North America, Australia, New Zeland and Europe. Often these were tiny operations with farmers converting a small portion of their land to hops.
Hops are a perennial crop, growing back from the roots each season. It takes about five years for hops to reach full productivity, making the 2020s the first decade of what might become a new hop terroir renaissance. But small scale farmers need your help. Brewers are sceptical of the quality of hops from small, unknown farms. They don’t have the time to obtain and evaluate hundreds of samples from around the world. Certainly, some of these small scale hops aren’t good, usually due to a lack of farmer access to expensive harvesting and processing equipment. But some are fantastic.
We’re putting in the work to get samples, test them in blind aroma trials, make test batches, and then bring you the best hops in single-origin, terroir beers. These beers can show the brewing industry that small farmers can produce great hops.
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