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A wine that tastes of "gout de terroir" usually tastes earthy.

Answer: False.

I love the French term gout de terroir, but like so many French expressions, it exists in some halfway point between the literal and the romantic. Gout de terroir (literally “taste of the terroir”) is the distinctive flavor a wine acquires from the combination of a given grape variety grown in a specific place. Over time, for example, winemakers notice that a certain variety from a certain plot of ground always has the same discernable flavors. That’s the gout de terroir. So, for some wines the gout de terroir may indeed be earthy, but not for others.

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