🍷 Amphora wine

Amphora wine is wine that ferments or matures in clay vessels instead of wooden barrels and steel tanks. The idea is very old: wine was made this way thousands of years before barrels appeared, and now the method has returned. Different countries name the vessels differently. In Georgia they are qvevri, buried in the ground. In Spain they are tinajas, in Portugal the talha (wine from the talha), and in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia amphorae and similar vessels are used. Clay is porous: it lets in only a little air and adds no taste of wood to the wine. The wine comes out clean, with a fresh taste of fruit. Often white grapes ferment in the amphora with their skins, and such wine is called orange wine. It is amber in colour, with tannin. But amphora wine can also be red, or white made without skins. Working with clay needs care: the vessels are fragile and hard to clean. So the method is more often chosen by small farms making small batches. In the wine world the word "amphora" refers more to a method than to one exact shape of vessel.