Puro Talha from a cellar with more than 100 amphorae

Thirty years ago, when winemaker Domingos Soares Franco talked about engraving wine, no one understood him. “I was considered crazy. They said, what are you engraving? This guy will ruin everything. But I always believed in engraving. The funny thing is that now it has become popular all over the world”, he tells Fugas after lunch in his vineyards in Alentejo, Adega José de Sousa.

A few hours ago, Domingos and his brother António Soares Franco (both from the company José Maria da Fonseca in Azeitão, also owner of José de Sousa) presented to journalists and guests the new Puro Talha, an amphora 100% in wood, made from clay, according to the ancient craftsmanship used by the Romans more than two thousand years ago.

It took years of hard work and many failed experiments to come up with this wine (one red and one white) that comes close to what Domingos Soares Franco was after. “I don’t know what the ancient characteristics of the engraved wine are,” he says, “but what I’m looking for is something that makes the engraved wine resonate in the wine, revealing the clay, the spices (part of which comes from the golden bitumen used to waterproof the basins). It’s a third dimension added to the wine, and if you do it as written, you can get there.”

What was “written” was documented by agronomist António Augusto de Aguiar in 1876, and these are the techniques that Domingos follows today at Adega José de Sousa in Reguengos de Monsaraz. When José Maria da Fonseca acquired José de Sousa in 1986, this historic Alentejo winery (dating back to 1878) had around 20 barrels. Currently, after searching the region for ancient amphorae and purchasing them, Domingos Soares Franco has 114 of them, filling up an impressive room.

At the top of the ladder, next to one of the amphorae, almost against the ceiling, a winery employee, with the help of a stick, was stirring the mass and putting down blankets. From the time the wine enters the abattoir until it leaves – which can only begin on November 11, St. Martin’s Day – this work happens at least twice a day, but more often four or five times.

The carved wines, made with grapes from vineyards more than 50 years old, Grand Noir, Trincadeira, Aragonês and Moreto for the reds and Antão Vaz, Manteúdo and Diagalves for the whites, require special care. One risk is that fermentation can cause the amphorae to break – something that has already happened at José de Sousa, Domingos said, and it was “impressive.” You also need to be careful not to let the wine go sour.

“With red it’s easier,” he says. “With white you have to be careful not to oxidize it. It has to reach evolution, but not oxidation. Red is more immune to this.” Fermentation usually lasts eight days, after which the wine is left to macerate until November. After pressing the mass, part is aged in carvings and part in chestnut barrels, a wood that leaves no marks. To this last batch is also added a little ripanço wine, made in a small cellar with stems not used in the larger cellar (of which 30% is used, only for red wines), and a little grape juice.