The Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico California seems to be borrowing a concept used in the wine producing areas by which they are surrounded; creating products with their own local terroir. Terroir is the French winemaking term that denotes the flavor qualities local environmental conditions impart to ingredients. The idea being that the wine produced by the exact same grape and winemaking process grown in Napa, California will be subtlety different than wine made in the exact same grape and process grown in Burgundy, France due to differences in the climate, terrain, and soil in which the grapes were grown.

Sierra Nevada is applying the concept of terroir to some of its limited edition series of Harvest Ales by making beer from hops and barley grown on the brewery grounds. According to this article in Beer Advocate Sierra Nevada is one of the few breweries in the world creating estate beers. I think this is very interesting and cool concept and hopefully the 2009 Brewers Harvest Ale release is not so limited that I will not have the opportunity to try one or two to see if I can taste Chico California.

TAGS [ SIERRA NEVADA | ESTATE ALE | ESTATE BREWS | SIERRA NEVADA ESTATE ALE ]