What does terroir mean? A science mapping of a multidimensional concept

Abstract

Terroir is a pivotal concept in defining collective quality labels for agricultural products, such as geographical appellations. With climate change likely to significantly impact these appellations' delimitations, an in-depth understanding of terroir's various dimensions becomes imperative. Yet, the literature presents diverse and multifaceted definitions of terroir, making it a challenging concept to delineate. Utilising 913 articles from 1986 to 2023 sourced from Scopus and adhering to the SPAR-4-SLR bibliometric protocol, we conducted a science mapping that includes analysis of document co-citation, co-authorship, bibliographical coupling and keyword co-occurrence to elucidate terroir's definitions, research fields and issues. We propose a bibliometric analysis methodology that enables detailed mapping of the concept by disciplinary fields. The proposed methodology is applicable to systematic literature reviews aimed at studying a domain while incorporating the diversity of scientific disciplines in which it is investigated. Our analysis confirms that, in terms of agri-food sectors, the literature predominantly focuses on wine. More specifically, within the fields of business, economics and social sciences, the primary applications of the concept are with respect to geographical indications and climate change. Research conducted in agricultural and biological sciences facilitates a better characterisation of terroirs in terms of microbial characteristics. This increasingly enables a distinction to be made between the soil—i.e., the terroir place—and the quality of agri-food products. Future analysis can make use of this knowledge, as well as that on the cultural dimensions of terroir, to better understand the economic impacts of the different dimensions of terroir.