Celler Gerisena is bringing back wines in amphorae
More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks and Romans spread the use of amphorae from the Empordà as the receptacles where they fermented grapes and crafted wine.
This millennia-old winemaking technique has come back to the Empordà via a number of wineries with the Empordà Designation of Origin, including Celler Gerisena, which has revived this clay receptacle to offer wines that stand out for their minerality and freshness and the high degree of purity of the primary aromas of the variety used.
Celler Gerisena makes a sweet wine from overripe Samsó grapes in handmade terracotta amphorae holding 145 litres without any cladding or glazing on their surface.
“The micro-porous structure of baked clay from Terres d’Autan allows for an exchange of liquid and gas between the wine and the air around it, yielding a slow yet steady stream of oxygen. The wine also becomes more concentrated due to evaporation, while utterly respect for the wine itself. Thanks to this porosity, which is twice that of a normal barrel, and thanks as well to the baked clay’s stabilising effect on the wine’s acidity, we seek to produce a sweet wine where the profile of ripe fruit is heightened while also becoming more complex in the mouth,” explains the winery’s oenologist, Natàlia Duran.
