Terroir

Pasted from Wikipedia:

Terroir (/tɛrˈwɑːr/; French: [tɛʁwaʁ] ⓘ; from terre, lit. 'lands') is a French term used to describe the environmental factors that affect a crop's phenotype, including unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop's specific growth habitat. Collectively, these contextual characteristics are said to have a character; terroir also refers to this character.

Some artisanal crops and foods for which terroir may apply include wine, cheese, coffee, chocolate, single malt whisky, onions, oysters, and tea.

Much effort and money is spent making factory made electronic components consistent and reliable. They are in fact all slightly different, but by and large you can't tell, and in digital circuits these irregularities only appear under drastic circumstances.

Making electronics with natural semiconducting material is quite another thing - some minerals (chalcocite or pyrite for example) seem to vary in their characteristics depending where they come from, sometimes it may be down to the vein or lode where they originate, or the depth of the mine they were extracted from. This is not surprising, as they contain different amounts of impurities due to how and when they solidified. Crystallisation may take place in a series of events over weeks, centuries or millions of years, as different solutions wash through the rock.

This, it was pointed out to me - gives the sounds made with them a particular 'terrior'.