Wines fermented and/or aged in clay vessels have seen an important revival in the last couple of decades, largely thanks to the rediscovery of the winemaking traditions of Georgia and to prominent producers, such as Joško Gravner in northeast Italy, themselves inspired by visits to the Caucasus. This led to a close, almost inevitable, association between clay vessels and low-intervention, skin-fermented white wines. The natural wine movement embraced amphora wine as a category of its own and soon enough qvevri (see box, p34) were on every hipster’s social media feed.
Making wine in clay containers is not, however, synonymous with low intervention or extended macerations. Following the hype of the early 2000s, many winemakers – from natural fanatics to technology-driven orthodox – have experimented with clay vessels as yet another option in their toolkit. This diversity is shown in the selection that follows; clay is used by winemakers with very different profiles, backgrounds and approaches, to produce myriad styles of wine.
MANAGING AIR & HEAT Clay vessels have been used to ferment, store and transport wine for millennia. Chemical analysis of neolithic jars found in Georgia and dated back to between 5,800 BC and 6,000 BC show (as widely reported in late 2017) that these jars were used by the world’s earliest-known winemakers. Across the Mediterranean, amphorae were widely used by Greek, Iberian, Lusitanian, Phoenician and Carthaginian civilisations to transport and trade wine, and remained the vessels of choice after Roman occupation.
