"Ledoyen attributes this to the elusive French idea of terroir. No translation accurately explains this concept [...]"
Terroir means earth, hence land (as in Terra for the name of planet Earth). Every peasant everywhere throughout all time understood and understands that the local soil and conditions affect the final agricultural product.
There's nothing elusive or untranslatable about the French word.
This is a very very restrictive way to explain "terroir".
The simplest way I could describe this word as we use it in france is "a region along with its traditions and local peculiarities". So yes, the earth is part of it, but the culture, the traditions, the people, the crops, are part of the terroir.
For example, anyone can grow ducks. But the southeast of France has a long tradition of duck breeding and food products made of ducks, and is renowned for it. There is knowledge and craftmanship involved in the notion of terroir.
Or, hunters will often turn their game into terrine (i'll let you google that), and pretty much anyone will make it roughly the same. Granted boar may be tastier in the south due to the sun and the soil, but I have really no idea. But the notion of terroir enters there because each region will add its own twist; like the cognac region often making "terrines au cognac", or normandy "terrines au calvados".
Another example is "saucisson" or dry sausage. Regions will often make produces of terroir by adding local stuff; like in savoie where you'll find saucisson with beaufort or other mountains cheese in it. Or in normandie you'll find barbecue merguez (hot sausage) with bits of camembert inside.
We tend to use the term quite loosely, and it's pretty common to hear about humans being pure products of the terroir they grew up in.
(Nothing here is to cast aspersions to France or the French whom Im rather fond of)
Again, English words for dirt, e.g. land, can be used for the exact same meaning. The word terroir is not elusive; rather this is just another case of upper class English speakers fetishizing French culture mixed with French cultural conceit all too eager to oblige.
Italians have the exact same concept of "terra" when they explain why a little village in Umbria makes the best prosciutto (it hits the best humidity level allowing for optimal drying rate). Or why not all the land in Montalcino bear the same quality wine (mostly due to the quality of the amount of sun/shade)
And the Spaniards have the same concept with their "Tierra", including to describe people's attitude from those regions (just go to Euskal Herria)
In fact, your entire message is basically the definition of the EU's DOC.
The idea that terroir is an elusive French concept is also incredibly Eurocentric. Im European (origin) so I only have European examples; but do you really think that advanced civilizations like the Chinese or Japanese don't have the exact same concept as "terroir"?
I agree that saying it's an elusive uniquely French concept is wrong. It is a fairly common concept. But at the same time I don't think English has a good word for it.
Culturally that's not that surprising. The idea that a sausage from one region of the country is materially different than a similarly produced sausage from the a different part of the country is common in France, Germany or Italy, but doesn't seem common in England or the USA. And since it's not a thing in their culture it's not a thing in their language.
Which in English/American modus operandi means importing the word from the first place they heard it (usually France) and claiming it originated there.
No "terroir" has not the same meaning as earth or land. It's wider and related to both the local environment and local practices.
Wikipedia says:
Terroir is a French term used to describe the environmental factors that affect a crop's phenotype, including unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop's specific growth habitat. Collectively, these contextual characteristics are said to have a character; terroir also refers to this character.
Yes, he clearly knows that, he gave multiple specific examples of local environment and local practices. I agree, terroir is not an elusive and untranslatable concept, it's a well understood and widely translated concept.
"epicaricacy" fails the simplest test for word-ness: it's never [0] used with the expectation of being understood without explanation. (Nor ever has been, according to Wiktionary.) It seems to have been one of the earliest Nihilartikels.
It could still be adopted as a learnèd (read: pretentious) borrowing from Greek, of course, but in that case it would be spelled epicharicacy.
Except he provided an inaccurate translation so it seems to me that the concept is not so well understood...
IMHO it is indeed untranslatable in the sense that there is no single word in English with the same meaning so that a translation requires a description (illustrated by my quote from Wikipedia that spends a whole paragraph explaining what it means).
In Japanese we have the word 風土 (Fuudo) which is a compound of 風 “fuu” which means in this context “manner/style” (it can also mean “wind”) and 土 “do” which means “earth/soil”. Like “terroir” it describes the interplay between the physical land, local customs, and spiritual aspects.
"Land" doesn't mean just the stuff you can hold in your hand. It literally has several pages dedicated to it in the OED. The big one. "Ground" too.
It so happens that the word for "dirt" in many languages acquire meaning that transcends mere silica and humus, as our Japanese friend pointed out.
And why would this surprise anyone? "Terroir" is using the word for "ground", "land" as a poetic metaphor for everything needed to make a peasant happy (as opposed to content).
> Again, English words for dirt, e.g. land, can be used for the exact same meaning. The word terroir is not elusive; rather this is just another case of upper class English speakers fetishizing French culture mixed with French cultural conceit all too eager to oblige.
I am not a native English speaker as I am French. From my knowledge of english, I don't feel like "land" would encompass the same meaning as "terroir". And I'm far from saying that the concept is french; rather than the word itself is complex. By glancing at other replies in this thread, it is closer to the Japanese word somebody else mentioned. "land" is too down to earth (pun intended) for the meaning. One case though I would consider them similar is for describing people, e.g. someone saying "I'm a pure produce of the highlands (land)!" which is similar to someone saying "Je suis un pur produit du terroir bourguignon !" (I'm a pur produce of the burgundy terroir).
As another commenter put it, the earth is maybe 25% tops of terroir.
> Italians have the exact same concept of "terra" when they explain why a little village in Umbria makes the best prosciutto (it hits the best humidity level allowing for optimal drying rate). Or why not all the land in Montalcino bear the same quality wine (mostly due to the quality of the amount of sun/shade)
Notice the difference between your examples and mines: yours are "the best of this" and "the best of that". Notice how mine are all simple foods, popular foods (popular as in populace, not as in showbiz star), unexceptional foods. Terrine is made with the offcuts of hunting game. Same for sausage. In fact, we would not say that Moët or Veuve Clicquot champagnes are terroir produces; but Beaujolais Nouveau definitely is, . Terroir is about the mix of local products and deeply cultural items, not michelin-star proscuitto. It is not about that special variety of tomatoes that only grows on a 1km² field on the north-east side of mount Vesuvio. It's about what would be done with said tomatoes.
> In fact, your entire message is basically the definition of the EU's DOC.
If you're talking about regional protections (AOP/AOC in France: Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée/Protégée), those are like, the exact opposite of terroir. Well, of terroir the true one, not the fantasized posh one from the aforementioned English people. Such protections are made to avoid consumer confusion to ensure only sparkling white wine from the Champagne region can be called Champagne, or that only dry and hard and salty cheese from the Parma region can be called Parmigiano Reggiano. There is no notion of protection in what we call terroir (but pride yes, we're french after all!).
> The idea that terroir is an elusive French concept is also incredibly Eurocentric. Im European (origin) so I only have European examples; but do you really think that advanced civilizations like the Chinese or Japanese don't have the exact same concept as "terroir"?
I was only commenting about the word itself, trying to explain the notion we encompass with it. As for other civilizations, they most definitely have. In fact, I'm pretty sure the two you mentioned go even further that us given their very strong attachment to traditions, craftmanship, and locations.
Anyways, this word is so large that we have several of the longest comments I've ever seen here on hacker news :)
I was extremely pleasantly surprised by the fact that Ethiopians seem to sharre a proper understanding of terroir for qat and honey and, boy, are there major differences from one region to the next. (Astonishingly I didn't perceive anything similar for coffee, which was dark roasted almost everywhere I went, despite astounding bioclimatic and genetic conditions throughout the coffee belts.) The Chinese certainly have something like it, but probably more refined and articulated around much higher social classes. Certain teas were paired with mineral waters from a specific source for instance — that far exceeds the more rustic French notion of terroir.
That being said, terroir is something more that just "land" and includes the idea of common rules or ways of doing things, and of course genetics.
When a type of cheese can only use the highly creamy milk from a specific breed of cow, the result is highly specific and tasty, yet it doesn't express anything that's really related to the land itself at that stage. Camembert is widely understood as a typical terroir-expressing product, yet it would be pretty much the same if it were produced elsewhere than in Normandy with the same production methods, breeds, yeasts, and same access to pasture for cows for instance. It's the common approach that lends terroir to it. (Well, theoretically, because the an unpasteurized Camembert fermier will actually be more similar to a creamy, soft-ripened farmer's Brie than a pasteurized industrial Camembert, the slight difference is butterfat content notwithstanding).
The fetishizing actually transformed the way local products are perceived and grown, by lending importance to the idea that instead of going for something generic, we should be aiming to express something more, the way some grape varietal can express the underlying mineral bedbrock (as with Chardonnay in Burgundy's Chablis area, which is geologically a region of Kimmeridgian limestone). It's posh to some extent. I remember meeting a old wine producer from the Loire region at a wine tasting a few years back who was befuddled by some of the audience's questions and that basically asked us to keep the complex questions for his son because he had only been trained to make wine that was nice to drink in the same way his forefathers did and just had no idea in what way his soil and grapes were special because those were the only ones he knew.
A lot of it is fake/commercial gatekeeping and poring over details of DOC regulations can be quite disturbing at times. For instance, DOC foie gras produced from Barbary ducks, which cannot naturally deliver fat liver like geese and that were never used before being hyperselected by the French agricultural research institute INRA in the postwar era. Meat products or cheese that use generic methods that could be applied anywhere seem to be the worst offenders. DOC cheese with clonal lines of moulds, give me a break… DOC wine in Italy seems to be similarly impacted if I'm to believe Jonathan Nossiter of 'Mondovino''s fame. Interestingly, one of the Italian winemakers in his follow-up documentary 'Natural Resistance' actually says something along the lines of "there's no concept of terroir in Italian"" and basically everyone in that documentary use the French word. I really do think it's an interesting, elusive concept, but one that intuitively clicks with people throughout the globe that don't necessarily have as mature a word for the same ideas and that most French people don't necessarily understand either because of how commercialized it is and how prevalent the paradigm of uniformization has become. Everyone wants terroir, but Camembert uses albino moulds because everyone wants them perfectly white, cider comes with labels mentioning how the liquid might be cloudy but it remains perfectly safe to drink, etc.
> do you really think that advanced civilizations like the Chinese or Japanese don't have the exact same concept as "terroir"?
No, they do not. But they do have other concepts which in turn cannot be translated into European languages. The great thing about human consciousness, culture, and language is that not everybody is working off the same epistemological map. There really are concepts which don't translate 1:1 from one language to another. That doesn't mean they can't be understood across cultures -- just that they may take many paragraphs of text to convey the meaning accurately, whereas in their original cultural context that meaning is embedded in the shared experience of how that word is used.
Think about Greek words for "Love" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). With a short paragraph of text you can at least the gist of their meaning (but there are definitely shades of meaning which will nevertheless be missed, barring greater immersion in its use). Suffice it to say, simply mapping those words onto "Love" will lose a huge amount of meaning.
Agreed that it's annoying to present words that aren't directly translatable as incomprehensible mysteries, which could never be understood by the non-French mind. Of course it can be understood, it just takes a bit of work to understand this. But equally, I don't think it's appropriate to go the other direction and think that there's a straightforward 1:1 mapping, when there definitely isn't.
Notably you didn’t translate the meaning, or, at least, “earth” or “land” is certainly too narrow.
Terroir is very broad, including the plants growing nearby, the climate, the topography, nearby features (grown near a river?), sunlight, and so on. I’m not a wine expert, but I know there’s even further things which can be included, some contentious, like tradition / process, microbes, etc.
see my other comment, but terroir is not only applicable to wine. it's more about stuff that's made in some specific place. and the people with their traditions are, I would say, as important to the notion of terroir.
> There's nothing elusive or untranslatable about the French word.
Indeed. But “terroir” also encompasses things like climate, techniques, and processing (and therefore indirectly people, know-how and tradition). Not only the land. It’s a bit broader than just the place of origin.
"Terroir" does not mean "earth". The word for "earth" is "terre". They are obviously related, but not the same thing. Terroir is about much more than just the soil. Your translation is inaccurate.
I don't know if territory captures the entirety of the meaning. There's a notion of culture and tradition that isn't captured by the kinda geographic meaning of territory
It seems like it's a bit like "home soil" which has cultural connotations.
I can't think of an exact single word in English for the translation but I imagine every large country has the concept of regional cuisines and farming traditions feeding into a regional identity
British people often point out that other languages don't really have a word for "fair play" but it's not like these cultures don't understand and respect the importance of integrity, respect, justice etc.
In general this don't-have-a-word-for thing is massively overplayed (hygge probably the worst example). We're all the same species of ape.
> Is Paris Metro so shallow because of the quarries?
The Paris metro is a mixture of deep, subsurface, and surface tracks. There are a lot of shallow tunnels mostly because cut-and-cover was easier and cheaper than digging deep underground.
Paris is very complicated underground. Besides the quarries there are the sewers, catacombs, some underground lakes, reservoirs, etc. It is definitely a complicating factor when planning new metro tunnels.
> When is Tim Traveller's video on the subject coming out?
You’d think exploring the closed parts of the catacombs would be right up his alley (actually I would be surprised if he did not try, even though he might not want to put that on YouTube). They’ve been cracking up on trespassers recently but it still is fairly popular with the urban exploration crowd.
> Paris is very complicated underground. Besides the quarries there are the sewers, catacombs, some underground lakes, reservoirs, etc. It is definitely a complicating factor when planning new metro tunnels.
I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath all those obstacles? Seems to be the way London has gone with the Elizabeth Line. Although that may still be shallower than Paris' quarries and lakes.
> I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath all those obstacles
Paris has been doing it for decades. All new lines in Paris (such as metro line 14, opened in 1998, RER E) have been dug by tunnel boring machines, and are at a depth below 20m. Same goes for all new lines outside of Paris proper, like most of the Grand Paris Express 200km+ new lines.
> I wonder if the French are considering digging underneath all those obstacles?
The problem is the Seine phreatic zone, which starts usually between 15 to 25m below the surface. Some GRS galleries are actually completely inundated and others have a level of water that varies between the seasons.
In order to have some metro going underneath the Seine river, they had to freeze it first. It is not an easy task, so there must be a real advantage to going under the Seine.
Tim-like pedantry corner: the quarries and the catacumbs are actually the same thing. Catacumbs are parts of the quarries that have been turned to ossuaries, and are reachable from the wider quarry network.
> You’d think exploring the closed parts of the catacombs would be right up his alley
I'm not that sure, since he does not want to do illegal stuff (like for the belgian test track where the factory is now closed to the public). As for visiting those parts legally, well, I'm only aware of a few instances where there has been the media granted access. But it was more for documentaries about how the police works down there, not for a general history lesson. Both the police nor the IGC (the french administration managing the quarries) will bother with Tim sadly. So yes it'd be up his alley if he could do it legally.
> They’ve been cracking up on trespassers recently
It's actually the opposite. There's a constant cat-and-mouse game going on, and they're switching strategies recently, which I could experience first-hand. Current strategy is about prevention because they know they cannot prevent people from getting down there, so they're emphasizing safety and not hurting yourself because they "don't want to get woken up at 9AM a sunday morning because someone got lost".
> Tim-like pedantry corner: the quarries and the catacumbs are actually the same thing. Catacumbs are parts of the quarries that have been turned to ossuaries, and are reachable from the wider quarry network.
Fair enough. It’s still useful to distinguish them because they evoke different things. Also, aren’t the bits we can visit physically separated from the broader quarry network due to cave-ins?
> I'm not that sure, since he does not want to do illegal stuff
He certainly used to do this sort of things (and I did not check recently but in the past he posted some videos filmed in places where he was not allowed to be).
There are places that are normally closed off but that can be open occasionally like during the heritage days. At least one quarry, the Montsouris reservoir, and I think parts of the old sewers as well. Those are already quite cool and interesting.
> It's actually the opposite. There's a constant cat-and-mouse game going on, and they're switching strategies recently, which I could experience first-hand.
There’s always a bit of both. I don’t have a recent first hand experience, it’s just a mate who works with the Parisian fire brigade. There are near misses regularly, though rarely as bad as the teenagers who got lost for 3 days a couple of years ago.
> they're emphasizing safety and not hurting yourself because they "don't want to get woken up at 9AM a sunday morning because someone got lost".
Makes sense. Going on a rescue mission before the morning coffee is just not done :)
> Also, aren’t the bits we can visit physically separated from the broader quarry network due to cave-ins?
The bits that can be visited legally is the museum, and it's isolated with man-made walls, not accidental cave-ins. It's very much on purpose. There have been several occurences of people digging holes from the illegal part to the museum for fun (like doing parties), swiftly fixed by the IGC. Speaking of the IGC, their sole purpose is to avoid said cave-ins.
And to expand a bit about the pedantic distinction: there are multiple ossuaries in the largest network of quarries: the official one, and two others only accessible illegally. There's one under the Montparnasse cemetery (the one visible in most catacumbs youtube videos), and another one near porte d'orléans.
> At least one quarry, the Montsouris reservoir, and I think parts of the old sewers as well. Those are already quite cool and interesting.
Yup! Those are definitely worth a visit. And fun fact, there are two "layers" to the montsouris reservoir: the top one with the water, that can be visited, and the bottom ones, which are the foundations of said water "tank". It's a forest of large pillars with a few artifacts. AFAIK those are not visitable legally, but were illegally due to a crawlspace between the illegal part of the quarries and it. It was quite fun :)
> There are near misses regularly
Indeed. Most of the times where the fire brigade is called is when there are accidents in the accesses to the quarries: opening manholes, falling off ladders, etc. And whenever such an accident occurs, the authorities closes off the access to avoid further accidents. Well, unless it's a safe one to avoid more dangerous ones to be opened by people. I've used several such accesses that where ... not smart to use, to say the least :)
(oh and pass the bonjour to your mate from someone I hope he'll never have to rescue!)
> teenagers who got lost for 3 days a couple of years ago.
this is very rare; usually from a combination of drug use and sheer bad luck. given how many people there are dwelling during the weekend, it's rare for noone to stuble on you when lost.
I'll reply only on the second point because that's a topic I know (I happen to wander quite often in those quarries). And no, there is no mushroom production anymore in the quarries.
The paris area is too crowded now, and for economies of scale, existing quarries are too hard to use, and will use old quarries further away (but not as old as the "catacumbs" to have larger tunnels easier to work in). Also, what's often called the catacumbs are quarries dating back to the middle ages, and thus are narrow, turny, wet, etc. Just a pain to work in.
Oh, and don't forget the dwellers that like to go down there, and would be sure to spoil all the crops.
I'm assuming the mushroom in question is agaricus biosporus in white button form. Interesting to hear the 3 star Michelin chef say there is a huge difference between paris mushrooms and industrial mushrooms of the same species due to the natural way it grows, because mushroom foragers often find this species in the wild and it's cousin agaricus campestris, but I never hear anyone mention it is particularly better than store bought mushrooms. The wild ones I've tried tasted fairly similar. For other cultivated mushrooms like lion's mane or oyster, foragers also don't claim huge taste benefits to the wild ones, and there is usually some fly larvae even if they look good.
Do the catacombs provide some extra benefit in substrate or environment for the taste? I'm now curious about trying these, and I also wonder how they would do in a blind test.
The article claims that it does, because of the limestone terrior. But I don't have much confidence in that claim, because the author is obviously at pains to make this mushroom sound as special as possible for the sake of a story, calling it a "unique species" when it is just another cultivated variety of the same old Agaricus bisporus.
The mushrooms are imported from China or Poland as mycelium, and the harvest is done in France. Since the law distinguishes between mycelium and mushroom, the mushroom were technically produced in France.
I read "mushrooms" as "museums" and thought this is about the catacombs where they stored all the human bones, because the cemeteries were full... It's open for public tours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CfazQ2P8D8
I've been there, and thinking back to it, the amount of bones is horrific. Each skull used to have a brain in it, and was an individual...
Terroir means earth, hence land (as in Terra for the name of planet Earth). Every peasant everywhere throughout all time understood and understands that the local soil and conditions affect the final agricultural product.
There's nothing elusive or untranslatable about the French word.