The French word terroir is very important in our Nordic primary produce culture, a fact that is often overlooked. Usually terroir is defined as the impact of the cultivation location on primary produce. In other words, the impact of all sorts of natural forces - soil condition, sun, wind and rain - that enables us to bring the primary produce to the table with its own distinctive characteristics. By consuming the produce we become part of the surroundings that go into the food, and the cultivation location becomes part of us. It works both ways. For that reason the origin of primary produce, its identity, is vital if we want to avoid becoming alienated from ourselves. No matter who we are.
Red wines from Burgundy, German Mosel wine, green lentils grown in Puy’s volcanic soil, peppers from Espelette in the Basque region, Sardinian goats’ cheese, Faroese early turnips, walnuts from Perigord, apricots from Buis les Baronnies and so on, differ from a range of Danish agricultural produce because they are affected by the terroir in which they are grown. The primary produce and the products derived from it could be described as having a terroir dimension. In the most literal sense, it is the terroir that makes them so unique.
Nature is so infinitely diverse that it is almost impossible to find exactly the same cultivation conditions in any two places on earth. The terroir is the ‘soul’ of a location and is largely unaffected by time. If you return to Perigord in two hundred years’ time you will still be able to grow superb walnuts there. In comparison with this permanence, human beings are a transient secondary factor.
But what is so special about the Nordic terroir? If we are going to talk about Nordic cuisine as more than just a modern man-made creation, it must exist. What makes the Nordic countryside and the Nordic cultural landscape so unique?
The main reason is the fact that as far as primary produce production and the countryside is concerned we enjoy special and favourable climatic conditions, in spite of the northern location of our region. Add to this our large undisturbed areas of countryside and very small population. Nowhere on earth do we find a temperate climate so far from equator. There are two reasons for this: firstly, the Nordic region essentially has a coastal climate, with mild winters and damp summers, and secondly, the sea currents contribute to the favourable growing conditions. The Gulf Stream ensures that the most northern part of the sea around Norway is free from ice, and the Irminger Current, a branch of the Gulf Stream, breaks off south of Iceland. It flows south of Greenland and up along the west coast of keeping this coastal stretch ice-free throughout the year as far north as the Arctic Circle on the 67° N parallel.
Due to the northern location of our region, the light conditions are quite unusual. Our long dark winter is followed by a summer with wonderful days that are much longer than those of our southern neighbours. And the days’ length and brightness are of great importance as far as plants are concerned. Without wishing to upset any scientists, it is possible to equate the sum of light with richness of taste. This is because plants acquire all their energy and consequently their entire taste foundation from light.
Through photosynthesis light produces life. Photosynthesis is a unique quantum trick patented by plants. They convert solar energy into chemical energy. Plants are the only living things able to make the sun’s energy accessible to all other living creatures. Without photosynthesis there would be no life on planet earth – neither plants nor animals.
The end product of photosynthesis is sugar. It sounds almost boring, but the perspective is mind boggling once you grasp the concept: in this instance you must not consider sugar to be merely granulated sugar. On the molecular level, sugar equates with energy, sunshine in disguise. It is this cosmic energy that plants very kindly put at the disposal of all the earth’s vital processes. Sugar is a basic natural fuel that has been around for 3.7 billion years.
This energy covers all the plant’s needs and is the only fuel they require. It is used for making phenol, proteins, oils and other interesting compounds. The sugar energy fuels the plant’s inner creativity.
It is solely this metabolic energy that is finally converted into taste – ensuring high concentration and diversity (complexity) of appealing flavours. When we have plenty of light we also have plenty of potential for taste. However, although the foundation for taste is established we need to do more before we can put it on the table.
Not all wild plants are tasty. Although per definition the ones we have chosen to cultivate are. When cultivating a plant it is not only the growing location that affects the plant’s ability to develop its natural taste. The way it is cultivated is just as important. As plant growers we must understand how to manage our resources carefully and take advantage of what nature has to offer. If we grow solely for quantity we betray taste. Intensively cultivated plants are automatically “diluted” when they are forced with lots of nitrogen. They absorb more water and develop less complex compounds. This dilution of taste also reduces the distinctiveness of the growing location. We lose out on essential parts of this terroir dimension.
Plants that grow slowly with moderate and well-balanced nutrients enjoy optimum conditions for producing a tasty end result that expresses their cultivation location. Some forms of plant stress can improve the plant’s positive characteristics. When plants have to defend themselves, for instance against pest infestation, they start to produce a series of new substances in order to survive. These secondary compounds are strangely enough often beneficial to our health and may even improve the complexity of flavours.
Climatic stress can also be positive. Light plays an important role if the primary produce grows high above sea level, for example in mountainous regions. Here the light is different because it has far more ultraviolet rays. Exposure to this form of light is often harmful to living organisms and consequently you would expect it to have a negative effect. However, the plants protect themselves by creating a thicker skin and more colourings in their leaves as well as in the fruit. Nature’s own colourings are often both healthy and tasty. This phenomenon is well-known in wine where red wine is especially rich in polyphenol, which is prevalent in grape skin. It imparts colour to the fruit and protects our body from our often harmful lifestyle. Plants grown at high altitude are particularly rich in antioxidants, which among other things have a beneficial effect on our cardiovascular system. There is a distinct interaction between taste and health, as long as we are talking only about natural primary produce.
The Nordic terroir has been blessed with other beneficial factors. Usually our summers are cool with large temperature variations throughout. Very hot days are often followed by cool summer nights. During the long periods from flowering of the fruit to their harvest and the plants’ germination to seeding, these temperature conditions create a very unique environment for plant growth.
When the climate changes the plant has to keep up; it has to adjust to survive. For obvious reasons it cannot simply up and move so it has to change its structure and its biochemical make up. The more varied the climate, the more varied the plant’s internal constitution becomes. It forms complex aromatic compounds, particularly bitter substances and acid components, which it would not form anywhere else in the world.
The turning point for the revitalization of Spanish cuisine was innovation in restaurant cooking. In our opinion, development of New Nordic Cuisine should focus on utilizing the potential of our primary produce. We must create unique primary produce and refine it so our food and our meals can relate their Nordic heritage beautifully and clearly through taste, smell and source. That said, with emphasis on the local Nordic heritage as growing conditions vary enormously from Greenland to Skåne in southern Sweden. It would also be of great benefit for our planet if we as citizens and consumers improved our own awareness of terroir.
In the same way as you can tell if olive oil comes from Liguria, many more of our home grown vegetables and fruit, plus the juice, wine, snaps and vinegar made from them, should show their locality. We should grow corn that differs from all other corn in the world, and use it bake our own special bread. Likewise, all the otherwise excellent beer that is currently brewed in this country needs a Nordic terroir dimension. Our livestock should also be chosen using more specific criteria, and we should leave them to live and feed so that not only the meat but also the milk and cheese become something special. A more ambitious form of production would have a favourable effect on the eco- system’s sustainability, the amenity value of the cultivated countryside and the preservation of our agrarian history.
From these reflections it is plain that the distinct features of primary produce are a result of the interaction between nature and man. This is very evident in the case of Chambolle Musigny. The unique taste of this red wine is partly due to the climate and soil conditions of the location, and partly to the long growing traditions. Countless generations of wine growers have agreed on how this wine should taste. More or less subconsciously they have therefore tried to express the distinctiveness of the locality, the terroir, by adjusting the growing methods to make the most of the Chambolle-style.
It is not easy to separate terroir from culture, and perhaps we should not even try, apart from possibly in natural eco-systems. When we gather fungi, beech leaves, birch juice, ramson, chick weed, wild berries or when we milk cows grazing in pastures or on commons, we deal with primary produce which has been exposed to very little cultural influence. An old and well balanced eco-system is the perfect expression of the terroir in question as it has evolved gradually over centuries. Here nature has chosen the combination of species for us, and has ensured that the different species live together in an almost unbelievably complex harmony. We can only do our best to try and emulate this by growing produce organically with more than one crop in the field. Such natural eco-systems can justifiably be said to be intelligently designed. Here you have a flora and fauna system that gives each specie optimal conditions for expressing their distinct features. And this is exactly what we take advantage of when we source produce from these locations. Even in the best case scenario, when we grow primary produce we may not only adjust poorly to the terroir, but we may also create an eco-system with a very low complexity leading to a poor ability to adapt and utilize resources effectively. This often has a negative impact on the terroir, which is not kept intact when yield is prioritized over sustainability.
What lives and grows naturally in the Nordic region tastes Nordic and communicates a distinct “order” that we want to be associated with. This is why produce from uncultivated areas is so highly thought of in professional kitchens today. Irrespective of the kilo price of the produce that is shot, caught or gathered.
