How Amphora Day Has Reignited Communal Joy … And What It Could Mean for the Wine Business
I recently attended Amphora Wine Day in Portugal’s Alentejo region, an event hosted by Herdade do Rocim that drew close to 2,000 visitors, including wine lovers, producers, and members of the trade from several countries. We were all there, in theory, to network, connect, and learn about the ancient tradition of making wine in clay vessels, also known as amphora or, locally in Alentejo, as talha.
The experience—joyful, holistic, brimming with laughter and music—felt more Grateful Dead tour than dutiful adulting. It reminded me of why I fell in love with the vast, complicated world of wine in the first place. But it also reminded me of how far the world of wine has devolved in the past decade or so.
How many wine “festivals” have I been to that felt anything but celebratory, special, or entertaining in the past decade? I often mill around feeling simultaneously bored and overwhelmed; I feel (admittedly self-imposed) pressure, but no real desire to “find a story.”
We all know the basics, but, just for the sake of being thorough, let’s review: last year, there was less wine consumed than any year since 1961, according to the Organisation of Vine and Wine.
Why Is Wine Consumption on a Downward Spiral?
Most experts attribute the decline to health concerns, shifting demographics, a more competitive drinks landscape, and rising prices. But is there more to it?
“We have turned wine into a boring thing that most people don’t understand,” says Pedro Ribeiro, Rocim’s general director and winemaker. “In the end, wine has always been about celebration and having fun—coming together. And yes, we did seem to lose that in the industry.”
Rediscovering the Joy of Community
To be fair, we seemed to have lost the spirit of community. We are in the midst of what U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy described as a loneliness epidemic in 2023. Researchers with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Care Common project have investigated the epidemic, finding that 21% of adults in the U.S. reported serious feelings of loneliness, with 29% of adults aged 30-44 (wine’s target market) reporting feelings of frequent or constant loneliness.
Loneliness is more than an emotion. Experts say that it’s a feeling of disconnection that poses a threat to the physical and mental health of sufferers on par with those caused by smoking and obesity.
A solution that is frequently floated is perhaps deceptively simple. A broad re-engagement with communal events could create a sense of shared identity, reducing feelings of isolation. Anthropological studies of comunitas, or “the sense felt by a group of people when their life together takes on full meaning,” struggle to describe the perfect formula for creating this sense of joy sparked by group of activities, but agree that the pleasure of group experiences often emerges at festivals and music events.
In other words, gatherings like Amphora Day.
“Amphora wines have existed for thousands of years,” says Ribeiro. “And while they fell off the radar for a long time, and were really only even produced in Alentejo for a long time for home consumption, as soon as people encounter the amphoras and the wines from them, wine suddenly becomes easy to understand. You don’t have to explain it.”
I flew home, delighted but troubled. What made Amphora Day so distinctly delightful? And can that particular type of enchantment be, if not bottled and distributed, at least echoed and duplicated in other areas of the world of wine? First, we should define the particularities of Amphora Day.
What’s the Deal with Amphora Day?
Amphora Wine Day was launched by Herdade do Rocim in 2018, with a distinctly local-global hybrid approach that has characterized the celebration ever since.
The celebration and festival coincides with St. Martin’s Day, which is a celebration of Alentejo’s patron saint. Alentejo is one of the few places in Europe where winemaking in clay pots has remained alive and well for more than 2,000 years. But, until very recently, the practice was considered too rustic for modern wine lovers.
“I started hearing about amphora wines in 2010,” says Paul J. White, an expert of Portuguese wines and the author of Talha Tales: Portugal’s Ancient Answer to Amphora Wines. “I basically heard that people were making wine in huge clay pots in Southern Portugal, and I was intrigued. I kept inquiring to see if I could visit, but it took me a long time to persuade anyone to let me try the wines. They were basically made in people’s homes, and, if they were sold at all, they were sold in large refillable jugs. I expected the wines to be really rustic, but the red especially was wonderful. Soft, fruit-forward, very Beaujolais-like.”
After finally trying talha wine in 2012, White’s interest in the tradition of making and consuming these wines—which was most prevalent in the Alentejo villages of Videgueira, Vila de Frades, and Vila Alva—increased.
At the same time, respected producers like Rocim were becoming more keenly interested in the region’s historic wines.
“We were one of the first wineries to bottle these wines commercially,” Ribeiro says. “We started bottling them in 2010. People thought we were crazy because it was known as peasant wine, and it wasn’t respected.”
People loved the wine, but perhaps they loved the story behind the wine just as much.
“I was seeing a real desire for stories of connection in wine when I visited markets, especially in the U.S.,” Ribeiro says. “People were wanting authentic wines with a story, not just expensive wines from Châteaus. I also felt a certain responsibility to tell the story of the talha wines. People in Lisbon and Porto didn’t even know that these wines were produced in Alentejo for thousands of years.”
Ribeiro slowly elevated the reputation of the amphora in Portugal, just as a global movement embracing these wines was taking off.
“There were small movements happening around the world with winemakers revisiting these traditional wines,” White notes. “The passion and excitement around wines made in clay vessels by vintners and the people who tried them was obvious.”
Lifting Up a Region and Way of Life, Seeding Inspiration
In 2018, Ribeiro decided to create Amphora Wine Day in Alentejo in his quest to drive global appreciation of talha.
“I felt like it was the next step for the story of talha,” he says. “I didn’t know if we’d have any real interest, but the first year, we had 20 wine producers and 500 visitors.”
This year, they had 50 producers from across the world, including Portugal, Armenia, Georgia, France, and South Africa, and close to 2,000 passionate visitors from across the world. Nea Berglund, chief winemaker at her family’s Bordeaux winery Château Carsin, came for the first time in 2025 as a producer and importer of amphora wines, and says she would love to return next year.
“The fact that it’s all around amphoras and talhas makes this event very special,” Berglund says. “Compared to other industry events, the level of enjoyment was much higher. Wine is indeed in a tough place, and I think at Amphora Wine Day, it is more than just the wine that brings people together. And it’s more than selling and finding new clients.”
As an events producer herself, Berglund says she appreciates the way Rocim incorporated local food (eight restaurants offered traditional regional cuisine) and local musicians (there were traveling bands playing around the floor) into the event flow, underlining Amphora Wine Day’s celebratory, uplifting, and energizing core.
“I think the interest keeps increasing because what we make is by its very nature authentic and artisanal,” Ribeiro says. “Every wine made in a talha is limited in production by the size of the amphora, so it’s a niche that you can’t scale. And it’s wonderful to see how the pride in this tradition has grown here in the region, but also across Portugal. Now people in Lisbon and Porto know about talha wines.”
And people in London and Paris do too.
Today, what Amphora Wine Day has done for the region is self-evident to long-term observers like White, who has attended every celebration since 2018.
“At the time, there were just a few talha taverns,” White says. “Now there are dozens, many of which have between 20 and 30 talhas, instead of 1 or 2. They employ four, five local people. The amphora movement has brought life back to the Alentejo, which is one of Portugal’s poorest regions.”
What Amphora Wine Day has done for the industry is less obvious at first glance, but it’s easy to see where it could take us.
People are drinking less wine because it is perceived as unhealthy, out of touch, too expensive. At the same time, the world is becoming lonelier and less able to have a good time.
To take a step toward resolving all of these issues simultaneously, perhaps it’s time to revisit wine’s deep roots in large communal events focused on fun and the love of wine first, and education and networking second.