Terroir is the wine world’s word for the way a place ends up in the glass — soil, sun, wind, water. Nabhan takes it out of Burgundy and drops it on the Arizona-Sonora border, where he’s spent his life. Mexican oregano turns out to be strongest at the driest edge of where it can grow, because the plant is under stress. Mesquite flour tortillas taste like the bosque the pods came from. He works through grass-fed beef, capirotada, corvina out of the Sea of Cortez, and Cabeza de Vaca eating whatever he could find after the shipwreck. Then he pushes the idea past dirt and weather: The hands patting out the tortillas are part of it too, and so is his own Lebanese ancestry, since half these foods came from the deserts his people left.
Desert Terroir