Winemaker turns to ancient technique, turning grapes into wine in just months – ABC News

Amphoras have been used to ferment and age wine for thousands of years.

Now one Mudgee winemaker is going back in time to the ancient technique.

David Lowe has been making wine for more than 40 years, but his new pursuit has led him to one of the oldest winemaking techniques in the world. 

“We’ve harvested by hand bunches of grapes and just threw them all into this 600-litre pot, which is now buried in the ground,” he said.

“This type of fermenter was used thousands of years ago to hold liquid, it could have been water, it could have been olive oil and often it was wine.

“This was the oldest way to store wine because it kept it constant in temperature, so you put them in this and it used to have oil on top of it, which sealed the wine off from any air.”

It is an ancient technique that dates back to the early Greeks and Romans, but it has grown into a thriving counterculture in winemaking over the past decade.

“We harvested on the 14th of February and it’s been there ever since,” Mr Lowe said.

“How long it’s going to be there you might ask? Well, we don’t know because it’s a new thing for us.

“But we’ve also got the same pot outside in a cage in the winery so we’re comparing one in the ground to one out of the ground every couple of weeks to do the slurping and testing.”

Why are ancient pots so special?

The secret to amphora containers is in the substance they are made of — clay — which can be thought of as the middle ground between steel and oak barrels.

Stainless steel allows for an oxygen-free environment and does not impart any flavours into the wine while oak, on the other hand, allows for ample oxygen to reach the juice and the wood’s tannins also affect the wine’s flavour and aroma.

“A wooden barrel stores wine in an environment where you pick up oak character and there’s a softening because of a little bit of air that goes through the wood as the wood is porous,” Mr Lowe said. 

“What we’re doing is we’re looking at the effect of not only the temperature, but from a biodynamic point of view, it’s picking up all the forces of the earth.”

“So if you bury it in the ground, it picks up all of the things that go through the earth and the earth being the source of the microbiology of the plants, the nutrients that feed the plants, and feed life forms.”

Not as simple as it looks

Mr Lowe even surprised himself with the early results from his subterranean experiment.

“The wine is a beautiful red in colour, it’s quite clear, it’s settled and it’s got a really nice attractive, slightly peppery shiraz character,” he said.

But getting it out of the ground and into a bottle is proving a little more challenging for Mr Lowe.

“I’ve got to bottle it up, but I just don’t know how to empty it,” he said.

“It’s only two months old, often wines need two to four years to be soft and mature. Here it’s ready to drink now.”