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Amphorae ageing in the Med: Podere San Cristoforo’s experiment

The Tuscan estate claims to have the world's first modern wine matured under the sea in amphorae. James Button explores the reasons behind the experiment and tastes samples of both the land and sea-aged wines.

In 2016, Tuscan estate Podere San Cristoforo decided to submerge a number of its bottles off the coast of Italy, in the Mediterranean Sea,  in the first of a number of underwater wine experiments.

This initial test proved encouraging, and so the estate decided to take the project a step further. They used research from archaeological finds of wine amphorae from shipwrecks, that still had their contents intact, to inspire an experiment with submerging its own wine in terracotta amphorae.

It’s not the first time a winery has experimented with ageing wines under the sea, although Podere San Cristoforo claims it is the first winery in the modern age to attempt this using amphorae.


Underwater wine: S’Amfora


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