It should come as no great surprise that the reason wines from different regions taste and smell different from each other is because no two regions share the same climatic, geographic and historic attributes. Indeed, wine styles can vary greatly from row to row within a single vineyard. And this is as it should be.

In the wine world, few things are more challenging, and thus rewarding, than developing the ability to confidently recognize the countless differences between one place and another; after all, there are reasons that a typical Puligny-Montrachet smells and tastes distinct from a typical Meursault even though both are made from 100 percent chardonnay and in close proximity to each other.

Sadly, rather than exulting in the stylistic nuances that are intrinsic in and the very essence of terroir, we—meaning all of us: winemakers, importers, distributors, retailers, restaurateurs, writers and consumers—often throw up our hands in surrender at the prospect of making sense of what might seem senseless to the consumer we are trying to sell a bottle to (us in the trade) or learning enough to make a confident choice for a dinner bottle (the “un-schooled” consumer). Or, worse, we simply prefer that everything taste pretty much the same in the belief that anything more is unnecessary and the province of snobs or obsessed “experts.”

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not caring about any of this; but that said, if you are one of those who does, it’s up to us on the supply side to give you something worth caring about. On the pages that follow, each devoted to a particular region, be it in France, Italy or the United States, there will be a brief overview of that particular region’s signature characteristics. Those might range from historic facts to geographic markers to observations about the way the business of wine has been conducted there in the past and present. Or a combination of all of these. In other words, what the French have termed terroir, a concept that resists a consensus definition but is universally agreed to be of the utmost importance.

It is my belief that the reason Ice Bucket Selections wines are worth knowing, whether they retail for $10 or $100, is that they are fair representations of where they come from. In other words, a Sancerre will taste like a Sancerre and not like a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand. This doesn’t make Ice Bucket Selections wines “better,” it simply makes them authentic.