Wine,
before the
barrel.

The Centro Nazionale di Studi Classici curates the entire scientific-literary apparatus of exAmphorā. It is the project's philological backbone: the place where the ancient sources are read, verified, translated, and then handed over — rewritten as producible practice — to the vintner and the artisan.

For each step of the winemaking we began from the text. First the reading in the standard critical editions, then the comparison of variants in the manuscript tradition, then the translation — deliberately not literal — and the commentary. Only then was the ancient practice handed to Paolo Marchi (what is applicable in today's cellar?) and to Artenova (what is achievable in clay, at this scale?).

The four voices — Cato, Varro, Columella, Pliny — are not show quotations: they are an operational grid. The what (which dolium, which clay), the where (the sunken cellar), the how (sealing, resting), the with what (the pittacium, the brushwood). What the Centro discards is equally telling: textual choices — weak manuscript readings, less authoritative variants, late contaminations of the tradition. The next filter — what of all this is safe, sound, applicable today — does not belong to philology. It belongs to the vintner.

Paolo Marchi is an agronomist-oenologist trained at the University of Florence: first a degree in Agricultural Sciences and Technology, with an experimental thesis developed within the Chianti Classico 2000 project; then a second degree in Viticulture and Oenology, both completed with the highest grade.

Since 2007 he has practised as an independent consultant. He works both in the vineyard and in the cellar, from rootstock selection to maturation management, for established Tuscan wineries and for small auteur productions — among them Rubis, Catturasogni, Arche, Vento Fermo, Canto dell'Acqua, La Giostra.

His method is the method of observation: listening to the parcel before intervening, preserving the raw material rather than altering it, accompanying the wine toward equilibrium rather than building it a profile. An oenology, in his own words, “respectful and visionary”. It is precisely the kind of attention a project like exAmphorā requires: amphora winemaking asks for patience, not for technical intervention.

For exAmphorā, Paolo Marchi is also the filter of contemporary reproducibility: the final decision on what — out of everything the Centro brings back from the sources — actually enters the cellar. An ancient prescription passes into the product only if it is safe, food-grade and stable. MOCA, HACCP and Italian wine regulations: that filter is his.

paolomarchi.com →

The amphorae of exAmphorā are fired in Impruneta, on the hills south of Florence, by Artenova: one of Italy's reference kilns for terracotta jars used in winemaking. This is not a romantic choice — it is a technical one.

The clay of the Impruneta deposit — galestro, rich in calcium carbonate — has a rare micro-porosity that has been recognised for centuries as ideal for the breathing, sealing and thermal stability of liquids. In practice: the amphora breathes with the wine without dispersing it, and in a sunken cellar it holds a stable temperature.

Artenova's amphorae are still built by hand, with the technique called a colombino: the artisan lays one upon the other thin clay coils — lucignoli — and shapes the vessel from the inside. It is a slow practice — even a small format takes days between shaping, drying and firing — and it is why every piece is slightly different from the next.

Artenova has worked terracotta for decades, and since 2008 has devoted itself specifically to wine jars after a long phase of oenological experimentation. Today it is a reference point for Italian and foreign wineries that choose to vinify in amphora.

giare.terracotta-artenova.com →