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Myths in winemaking
terroir, ACH payments
By Brandes Elitch
CrossCheck Inc.
R ecently, I attended a presentation by Mark A.
Matthews, who published a book called Terroir
and Other Myths of Winegrowing. As an agrono-
mist and scientist, Matthews endeavors to sepa-
rate fact from fiction. It turns out there is a lot of fantasy in snobbery.
winemaking, including the following:
• High yield and big berries are the scourge of fine
wine grapes, leading to dilution of flavor and color.
• There is an ideal wine balance, between leaves
stems and roots versus flower and berries.
• The French rule of thumb is 3.7 tons per acre as a
yield not to be crossed.
• There is a critical ripening period, and ripening
can be too fast in warm weather.
• The key to fine wine grapes is the physiological
maturity of the grapes and a critical harvest
decision of when to pick the grapes.
• Stressed vines make the best wine.
• Old vines tend to yield tiny quantities of highly
concentrated fruit.
• Dense spacing leads to small vines and low yields.
• And the biggest myth of all: terroir is the source of
fine wine flavor.
None of those statements can be proven using the scientific
method. What's true is that good weather, high yields and
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quality wine have historically gone together by many
accounts. And crop yield in vineyard production depends
on many factors over two seasons: varieties; cultural
practices; and weather and environmental conditions
such as temperature, light on the developing bud, vine
water status, untimely rain and low temperatures, vine
row spacing and pruning, water, nutrient supply, etc. For
red wines, it has been well accepted that most flavors and
aromas originate with the fruit.
The idea of terroir ? that plants arise from eating the right
kind of soil ? is primarily a marketing term that mixes
extrinsic and intrinsic wine properties; when formalized
into laws restricting production, it becomes a system to
extract high rents. Terroir is a shibboleth that establishes
an in-group in a world unto itself. It isn't wine appreciation,
and it doesn't reflect interest in the vine; it's more like wine
ACH not necessarily better
I see parallels between the myths of the wine industry and
the myths surrounding the idea that the automated clearing
house (ACH) system is a better payment method than the
check because, supposedly, everybody knows that the ACH
is cheaper, faster and easier to use than a check; checks are
going away; and same-day ACH will change everything.
This is what I hear from so-called experts in the payments
industry. Experts, however, aren't always correct.
Some time ago I took the Accredited ACH Professional
exam, because my boss here at CrossCheck wanted me
to make sure that we understood how the ACH works.
Now, NACHA ? The Electronic Payments Association has
been around for 42 years, but when I worked in the cash
management department for a major bank, about 20 years
ago, ACH was a non-starter.
Our Executive Vice President regularly said, "No bank
ever made money with ACH and no bank ever will." We
did not yet have a PC-based ACH product, which made the
testing for a new client who wanted to send us an ACH file
a rigorous event. When the PC ACH product was unveiled,
it was so complicated that only one of the salespeople could
figure out how to set up clients, and he was very popular.
We avoided taking a big loss from ACH fraud that hit the
other San Francisco banks (do a search on Hamilton Taft)
but we did not avoid taking a big hit from a fraudulent
originator who got consumers' permission to pay their
mortgage every two weeks, and then absconded with the
money. After that, the senior risk officer for the bank had to
approve any new ACH account, which had a chilling effect
on selling ACH.