Holy Terroir
Chances are you’ve come across scenes of wine aficionados engaged in ritualized acts of tasting. Taking in a Zinfandel or Cabernet by way of histrionic inhalations and audible slurps. Conjuring up hints of plum and tobacco and, what is that, Cool Ranch Dorito?
However refined these tasters’ palettes, it’s a scene ripe for parody. And many have given it that treatment. But behind the histrionic wafting and occasional linguistic overreach is a legitimate discipline: Oenology, the study of wine. And one of its core tenets is known as terroir.
What is terroir? As its unpronouncability suggests, terroir is a French word and it simply means “soil” or “earth”. But in relation to wine, its meaning is more complicated.
Essentially, it’s the idea that the conditions in which grapes are grown – specifically soil, weather and water – get expressed in the flavor of the wine. And that in combination, these factors give a vintage its character. They anchor it to a place and time, and distinguish it from wines of the same variety grown elsewhere.
A version of terroir exists within other culinary spheres. Purveyors of grass feed beef cite its texture and tang and cheesemongers remind us that Camembert is not just a variety, but a village.
Which brings me to ChatGPT.
Where wine tasting meets good writing
Because whenever possible, writing – specifically writing done by people – should have its own terroir. Perhaps more importantly for those who string words together for a living, what counts for terroir in writing is, for now, virtually inaccessible to an algorithm.
But what is it? What’s the written equivalent of the sandalwood pushing into the Merlot or the clover coming through in the cream?
As with wine, terroir in writing means that the conditions from which the writing emerges – a culture, an organization, a moment in time – are made manifest in the message.
Content that is recognizably yours
In the case of business communications, that means prose that reflects the organization’s character; that its history, conditions and culture are somehow alive in the text. You can sense its geography, its idiosyncracies and its mood.
It’s well-placed references to the firm’s origin story: That legendary plant manager, the business you won or, perhaps as importantly, the account you turned away on ethical grounds. The heart-rending story told by the division lead two quarters ago that now stands as a shared memory.
It’s the quotidian things, too — that painting in the lobby, the falafel place across the street, the temperamental polycom in the fourth floor conference room.
As we ponder the potential consequences of Chat GPT and its ilk, its worthwhile – and for now, reassuring — to think about what that technology can’t do. And one thing it most certainly can’t do is terroir.
What AI doesn’t have
AI has no institutional memory. It doesn’t know what color the curtains are. It doesn’t know about the time the PA gave out at the town hall and a pair of leaders laughingly passed a lapel mic back and forth to keep things moving. It doesn’t know why the CMO’s nickname is “Buttons.”
You do.
These days, many of us spend lots of time clicking around programs and apps that ever-so-generously autocomplete our thoughts and sentences. We oblige them. It seems like a small thing. A timesaver. And the fact is, sometimes it doesn’t matter. But sometimes it does.
It’s worth asking: In ways large and small, how many of us are doing our own version of autocompleting? Habitually unfurling cliches or the same shopworn phrases our competitors are employing or that algorithms are prompting us to use.
By failing to reach for something new or different — a reference, an angle, an evocative word instead of a merely serviceable one — we rob our writing of its character. And in the process, we participate in our own obsolescence.
More than just job security
It’s easy to coast. I’ve done it. And I’m far from fully rehabilitated. Because making the extra effort to breathe life into copy is really, really hard.
But imbuing that copy with terroir isn’t just a tactic panicked scribes should embrace to combat the rise of the machines. Rather, along with clarity and conciseness, these grace notes are the very essence of good writing and effective communication.
Over time, through effort, adjustment and refinement, Chat GPT may actually write well. You know all about that progression. But in the meantime, let’s take inspiration not just in what it can’t do, but in what we may have stopped doing.
It’s not enough to dismiss AI as a wellspring of bloodless, denatured dreck. For writer’s it should be a call to arms. Not to be taken up against technology but to be brandished against our own complacency.
