Amfora: A Place Where Community Meets Quality Wine

1. Could you please introduce Amfora?

Amfora Winebar is first and foremost a community place in Sky Park in Bratislava, which allows a wide variety of people to meet. Every week we organize a themed evening with live music and, for example, in cooperation with Stratupeak, we organize bi-weekly meetings for startups and fans of startup topics. It's also a place where people come to experience and sample something new. As a wine shop, we focus on wine from winemakers who respect nature. We're interested in what winemakers spray in the vineyard and what means they use to grow their grapes. So we choose wines from winemakers who do not use pesticides and herbicides and, where necessary, use herbal sprays approved, for example, under the Demeter regime, which are actually purely natural herbal sprays. These winemakers then try to process premium grapes authentically and offer premium wines, from which we select the creme de la creme, which you can then taste at Amfora. 

2. What is your opinion on the development of the wine market? Where do you see its positives and negatives?

As with other foods, more and more consumers are looking at the composition and production of wine. However, wine as a food still does not have to include the ingredients on the packaging, and winemakers who use chemicals in the production of wine do not have to state on the packaging that they have used them in the production of the wine. The consumer who is interested in the composition and production must therefore ask what style of winemaking is involved. It is in recent years that we have seen more and more consumers becoming interested in this subject. The ever-increasing demand for artisan wines produced by winemakers is a clear sign that we also have many consumers in Slovakia who are interested in the way wine is produced and who want to drink pure wines without the use of chemicals in the growing of grapes and in the production of wine. And that is, for me, quite clearly a positive trend.  

3. What prospects do you see for the future of the wine industry? Do you expect any changes, new opportunities or risks?

In Slovakia, the number of vineyards is decreasing every year. This is caused both by new construction in wine-growing areas and by the ever decreasing interest in vineyard management. Vineyards are not always just large hectares of land, as we sometimes see in photographs, but very often small plots of land in wine-growing areas. Working in vineyards is still agricultural work, where one is connected to nature. And farm work is not exactly the most popular activity in today's society. Recently, I have seen the emergence of many small wineries of around one hectare that want to produce wine honestly and without chemical intervention. Often these wineries bring very pleasant surprises. You can taste, for example, the red wines of the Bystriks, who are very confidently fighting the myth that it is impossible to make good red wine in Moravia, and their Cuvee Signature, for example, has convinced many a hardened critic of Moravian red wines. Will you try it too?   

4. How would you evaluate the novelties in the wine industry?

The wine industry actually has three components. The agricultural, where we depend on nature, the technological, where the winemaker decides how to ferment the wine and what processes to use, and the artistic, because even using the same processes, each wine carries part of the winemaker's personality and is his preference. I would not underestimate the artistic part at all, because it is often very important and is reflected not only in the wine but also on the label. Therefore, especially in the case of artisan wines, where the winemaker not only creates the wine himself but also decides what label to put on the wine, it is very relevant to choose wines according to the label as well. If you like the label, chances are you and the winemaker will also agree on the taste of the wine.

In terms of innovation itself, the wine industry is a very conservative industry that often operates based on tradition and agreement along the way. Innovation in the agricultural part of course happens, but lately it's often been back-to-basics innovation, so the winemaker is producing primarily premium grapes. A few decades ago, the emphasis was more on yields, but today we know that at higher yields the grapes are of lower quality and then produce lower quality wine. That is why winegrowers who want to produce quality wine harvest only around 1-2 kg of grapes per bushel. From a technological point of view, winegrowers today are trying to innovate and learn from each other and from one region in Europe to another, and innovation here is often based on tradition in another region. Artistically, the scope for innovation is much richer, and we can see this in the variety of wines on offer and their labels. 

5. What is the impact of digitalisation on wineries?

Digitalisation is now permeating all areas of our lives. I think all exporting winemakers in the EU have felt the digitalization of the customs system in the last year :D.

Today's digital world clearly provides not only wineries with great access to information and exchange and makes communication easier. So nowadays even relatively very small winemakers are shipping wines abroad. Generally in Slovakia and Moravia we have a lot of very successful winemakers who supply wines to world-class Michelin restaurants in the USA, Canada, Hong-Kong or Japan, but they are not so well known on the domestic market, even though they make world-class wines. 

Anyway, wine is actually a wonderful analogue activity in today's digital world, which encourages me and my friends to occasionally put down our digital devices and engage in analogue conversation.

6. How could QR codes on wine bottles contribute to improvement?

What is sorely lacking, in my opinion, is the obligation for the winemaker to declare what preparations he has used to produce it. Winemakers who make wine poetically use only their own grapes and do not add anything else to the wine. However, the conventional way of making wine involves a wide range of preparations and chemicals that are used today in about 95% of the wines you find in the average supermarket, where the wine has to stand in unfavourable conditions for more than a year. Traditional wine houses that produce premium wines also do not like to use these preparations. I think there is a growing trend in Champagne, Rioja and Tuscany not to add anything extra and to preserve quality using traditional methods. However, the fact that the composition may not be indicated on the bottle of wine makes it difficult for the customer to find out. The QR code is certainly a great way of providing information, but I think that the obligation to indicate the composition is also important. In my experience, more than one customer has been very surprised to find out what is used to make wine in some mainstream wineries. That is why I definitely recommend that you always buy wine from specialist shops and, of course, from Amfora, where you can be sure that you will choose a wine that you will be happy with.