Contributing wine editor, David Harker, travels to Castilla-La Mancha to learn how a renewed interest in traditional wine making could rescue an ancient craft.
The hot sun on his back and sea spray stinging his eyes, an intrepid Greek mariner gives up a nervous prayer to Poseidon. He is setting sail towards the Pillars of Hercules carrying a precious cargo of wine in amphorae. An amphora is a two handled earthenware container. Pointed at the bottom for leverage and lifting. Broad shouldered, narrow at the neck and a mouth small enough to seal.
Amphorae were the bulk containers of their day. They enabled the spread of wine culture to all corners of the Mediterranean. From Crete to Cairo, Carthage to Cartagena. Today, broken amphorae litter the bed of the Mediterranean. Evidence of a lost trade that lasted from the Bronze Age to the middle of the twentieth century.
To make amphorae you need clay. High quality, yellow clay. In Spain they call clay jars tinajas and in La Mancha there is a small town rich in tinajero clay. Clay is to Villarrobledo, what coal was to Newcastle. At the height of tinaja manufacturing Villarrobledo was the largest producer of tinajas in Spain.
Tinajeros, miners, transporters and muleteers. Men, women and children. All employed in an industry perfected by the Moors and little changed since. At its peak one barrio boasted 70 kilns producing 7,000 tinajas a year from small, family workshops.
And so it was for 500 years. The hot air thick with dust, the noise of a thriving industry, of men shouting, mules braying and stones grinding.
Villarrobledo today is a sleepy Spanish town. In the empty backstreets, behind an anonymous door, hides one of the few remaining tinaja workshops.
Tinajas Orozco is a pottery workshop passed down through at least six generations. From father to son and now father to daughter.
Tomas Gomez grew up among clay jars. Playing as a child in the clay, watching his father, José Gómez Orozco in his workshop. Tomas was around 10 years old when José introduced him to the craft of tinajero. 80 years later you will still find the sprightly Tomas around the workshop. He greets visitors and keeps an eye on his effervescent daughter Maribel.
Maribel Gomez runs the business. She works by hand, without the use of lathes or moulds. Just as her father taught her.
First she grinds down the clay. Milling the clay like flour and mixing with water. She then spreads the clay evenly on the floor to dry. This cake of mud is then broken into pellets and kneaded by foot until malleable. The clay is now ready to be made into a tinaja.
Each jar is assembled in stages, piece by piece, allowed to dry and another piece added. Building the height of the jar by adding ring upon ring of clay.
Villarrobledo was famous for making the largest clay jars in history. Tinajas four metres tall, two metres wide and weighing 2.5 tonnes. The Tinajero, bent under the weight of clay slung over one shoulder, would need to climb to a platform to reach the top the jar. He would then work at height, sculpting the jar by hand.
Once built, the tinaja is fired for strength. The heat increasing gradually in a large, wood fired oven. When the temperature reaches 900 degrees centigrade the heat is maintained for 12 hours of firing. The fired tinaja must then cool for 10 days.
The process is long, laborious and requires great skill. It is not scaleable, there is no production line. From beginning to end the process takes three or four months in winter, or two months in the warmer, drier summer.
Little wonder that the introduction of concrete all but killed off this ancient craft. By the start of the new millennium only a handful of kilns remained in production. The skill of the tinajero a dying art.
The turn of the new millennium was also the dawn of a new winemaking philosophy. A philosophy born out of a concern for the planet and a respect for heritage. A philosophy of organic agriculture in the vineyard and minimal intervention in the winery. A philosophy of wine made on a human scale. To use amphorae, each piece hand made from natural materials, was the natural choice for the new trend.
Despite his hipster pony tail and full black beard Carlos Cerdán is no follower of fashion. Working alongside his brother Juanjo and sister Lucia he says: “We haven’t invented anything, we do what our grandparents did.”
Carlos and his siblings exemplify an exciting new generation of wine-makers. Their family values rooted in time, place, people and sharing. The team at Bodega Cerrón are passionate about their unique landscape. Pursuing projects such as the recovery of abandoned old vineyards.
Carlos uses a wide range of vessels in his winemaking. Oak barrels of different sizes, concrete, steel and tinajas. Carlos can point to older tinajas made by Tomas and newer vessels made by Maribel. The benefit of clay is that it allows gentle oxygen ingress without adding oak flavours. Essential qualities that allow his wonderful white wine – “El Cerrico” – to vividly express a sense of place.
Daniel Medina, of Bodegas Las Calzadas, is another champion of tinajas. Danny returned to his family owned bodega after spells working in Rioja, Australia and New Zealand. Like Bodega Cerrón, his family had always sold their grapes to the local cooperative for bulk wine production. Danny believed there was a better way.
He took the risky step of going it alone. Determined to make high quality, amphora aged wines from the family’s 100-year-old vineyards. In the past, the La Mancha farmer would keep an amphora in his cellar. Fermenting a little wine for his family’s consumption. Danny has been able to rescue antique tinajas, as well as becoming Maribel’s very first customer for new wine jars.
The Bodegas Las Calzadas “Tinacula” range includes a white wine from the rare Pardilla grape variety. The wine spends three months on lees in large, 2,200-litre antique tinajas. While a red wine from the Bobal grape is aged for five months in new, smaller, 500-litre tinajas.
I hope that the popularity of low intervention winemaking will revive the ancient trade of the tinajero. There is a natural synergy between artisanal wine-maker and master craftsman. An understanding as vital as the relationship between a living wine and the vessel that it rests in. The ancient Greeks believed that all matter consists of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. And that is all that you need to craft amphorae.
