The first thing you’re bound to notice when you pick up a bottle of Mary Taylor Wine is the lack of a familiar grape on the label. No Pinot Noir or Cabernet, no Chardonnay or Merlot.
That’s because we, the team of lifelong wine lovers who make up the Mary Taylor company, think about wine differently than the usual brands lining the shelves of your local supermarket or big box store. To us, the name of the grape only tells part of the story of what wine is supposed to be. The missing key, which the great winemakers of Europe have known for centuries, is “place.”
When Mary first fell in love with wine in the early 1990’s, it was the European classics that truly spoke to her and stole her heart. As a young professional selling French and Italian wine, first in the New York wine auctions and then as a merchant, she quickly learned to appreciate wine in the “Old World” way— not as a luxury good reserved for special occasions, but a living agricultural product that belongs to everyday life.
This awakening eventually led her to move to the storied region of Burgundy. There, deep in the heart of rural French wine country, her experiences living and drinking among the area’s independent artisan growers cemented her understanding of wine as a form of liquid culture, reflecting the people and places where it has been lovingly crafted for generations.
A specific French term exists for this romantic notion that, in addition to tasting delicious, wine should tell us something about the area from which it came. Although impossible to translate literally, this concept of “terroir” has sometimes been described as a “sense of place,” or “somewhere-ness.” It explains why the Pinot Noir from one village in Burgundy will taste noticeably different from the same grape grown in the next town, or even the next vineyard over.
It’s also the reason why most European wine regions label their wines not according to the grape variety, but the “place name,” or “appellation” where it was grown. Whether known in French as appellation d’origine protégée, in Spanish as denominación de origen, or in Italian as denominazione di origine controllata, the basic idea is the same: each designated area imparts its own special identity, no two expressions alike.
