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| Rocim “Clay Aged” Alentejo/Portugal 2020 Sopromadze Krakhuna Imereti/Georgia 2021 Bodegas Gratias “Terra” Tardana La Mancha/Spain 2021 Cirelli Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo Anfora Abruzzo/Italy 2022 Sopromadze Dzelshavi Imereti/Georgia 2018 |
| A frequent kvetch regarding the practice of fermenting and aging wine in terracotta amphorae is that it’s merely a trend, and as such we should dismiss and deprecate them. Yes, amphora-aging is indeed a trend but one that is only about 10,000 years old. Personally, I accept and appreciate trends in wine because winegrowing is rarely static, the endless compulsive repetition of what was once. Not all wine trends are salubrious (piquette, aging wine in 200 percent new oak), but imagine 2,500 years ago, “hey, Demetrios, did you taste the limnio that Pheobe’s family made? No…really, you must try it!” At the same time, I abide by Chesterton’s fence—maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason things are as they are.
Tonight, we’re tasting wines that are aged in various sorts of clay vessels. The most ancient vessel, the Georgian “qvevri,” will be well represented by two very different wines from Sopromadze, one an orange wine; the other a light, modestly funky red. Sopromadze is from Imereti, where the tradition is for shorter macerations, and indeed Sopromadze’s krakhuna, a white grape, sees zero maceration, though it is fermented and aged in qvevri. Qvevris have several unique features, foremost of which is they’re a bit leaky, and so the traditional practice is for growers to coat the insides with bee’s wax. We’re also tasting a clay-aged wine from Portugal, a country with a long (but not quite as long as Georgia) tradition of using terracotta amphora for wine production, sans the bee’s wax. |