Reviving a tradition: making wine in large clay amphorae in Portugal’s Alentejo region

The south of the Alentejo wine region has a tradition of making wine in large clay amphorae known as talhas. Often people would have their own talha and the wine would supply the family. And restaurants frequently had many talha, serving people directly from these vessels. The tradition was to make the wine after harvest in August or September, and then the rule was it had to stay in amphora until St Martin’s Day in mid-November, when the talhas were tapped. These wines would be natural, in the sense that they had no additions (such as sulfites), and were unfined and unfiltered: the mass of skins and stems that fell to the bottom of the talha would naturally filter the wine as it was drawn from a tap at the bottom. In danger of dying out, this tradition has been revived. I head to the region to visit three producers championing talha wine (Herdade do Rocim, XXVI Talhas and Honrado), and to attend the Amphora Wine Day at Rocim where producers from the Alentejo and elsewhere in the world in wine were showing their wines made in clay.