All You Want to Know (but were afraid to ask) About Orange Wine

You might have noticed more and more wine lists listing orange, natural, amber, skin-contact or macerated wines. The technique and process of making orange wine itself is ancient but has resurfaced in the last decade or two increasingly gaining popularity – albeit sometimes in a polarizing fashion. Drop the terms ‘natural wine’ or ‘orange wine’ amongst wine lovers and just wait for a heated debate to start! To put it simply, orange wines are essentially white wines that are made like red wines. Reds are typically made by fermenting the grape juice with the skins, whereas whites are made without the skins. The skin contact (or lack thereof) is what gives wines their ultimate colour.

In October NQ Wine Club featured an orange wine for the first time.

FATTORIA DI VAIRA, MICHELE LORENZETI & ERIC NARIOO, Molise – Biodynamic 2021 VINCENZO BIANCO Grape; Falanghina, Trebbiano

Fattoria di Vaira is one of the largest biodynamic farms in Italy, with more than 500 hectares, 40 of which are planted to vines. Here they cultivate vegetables, grains and cereals, and produce fresh cheeses, olive oil and honey. They have been working biodynamically for several years with three aims, to maintain the fertility of the soil, to allow the plant to find its own natural way of resisting pests and disease and to produce products of the highest possible quality.

Golden in the glass, this medium bodied white blend of Falanghina and Trebbiano has lots of character. This is a ripe wine with a scent of orange peel on the nose as well as peach and pear. It's herbaceous and, as it’s a skin contact wine, there is a touch of tannin on the finish. It's unfiltered so expect some sediment and a bit of haze, or as they like to call it...extra flavour. With apologies to Hans Christian Anderson (and Danny Kaye)

Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine!

Look at the colour, the haze, the sheen! This glass of wine is all together But all together it's all together The most remarkable glass of wine that I have ever seen. This nose of mine at once determined The scent of orange as well as peach and pear The taste of stone fruits with quince and smoky nutty flavours combine.

To make an orange wine, you first take white grapes, mash them up, and then put them in a large vessel (often cement or ceramic). Then, you typically leave the fermenting grapes alone for four days to sometimes over a year with the skins and seeds still attached.

The orange hues come from the flavonoids in the skins and the lignin in the seeds, the extreme variations in hue depending on how much time the fermentation lasts. This is a natural process that uses little to no additives, sometimes not even yeast. Because of all this, they taste very different from regular white wines and have a sour taste and nuttiness from oxidation.

Far from new, these wines can trace their origins back to Slovenia and certain parts of Northern Italy and even further back, being based on techniques used traditionally in Georgia thousands of years ago, with some wine historians dating it back to 8,000 BC and ancient earthenware winemaking vessels containing residual wine compounds having been found dating from 6,000 BC. Traditionally, winemaking there took place in huge qvevri, the wine macerating, fermenting, and ageing with the grape skins in these huge clay vessels, generally buried underground. The resulting white wines gaining the orange hue, structure, body, and tannins that today fall into the ‘orange wine’ category. So much for a new phenomenon!

In northeastern Italy, ”ramato,” which is Italian for auburn or copper, is a style of orange wine primarily made from Pinot Grigio, as well as Sauvignon Vert and Ribolla Gialla. In neighboring Slovenia, the style has become a hallmark of the country’s historic winemaking tradition. In France, the Jura region is known for Vin Jaune and Côtes du Jura, both of which are made in a similar method with an oxidative style. In the New World, particularly within the last decade, producers in New York, California, Oregon, Australia, Chile, and more have experimented with the style.

While ‘orange wine’ is frequently used synonymously with ‘natural wine’ its important to note that, while many are grown organically or biodynamically and produced with minimal intervention using only native yeast and little or no additives or sulphites, there are exceptions. The term itself, ‘orange wine’, has been credited to British wine importer David Harvey who first used it to describe this non-interventionist style of white winemaking.

Orange wine can be made with any white grape varietal. The story of “orange” wine is one of reclaiming ancient ways and bringing them forward into a modern world that had fallen prey to technical winemaking. It's increasing popularity grew partly from a resistance by the consumer to additives technology and the processing of ingredients. It would be nice to think that the growth in the natural wine market was as a result of greater consumer understanding of where their wine comes from, and how any particular wine is grown and produced, however, the truth is probably that it's rise in popularity has been driven by sommeliers, natural wine bars and certain specialty retailers, aided and abetted by importers and when Esquire and Vogue start writing about “natty” wines the public followed, succumbing to temptation and following fashion. One challenge this creates is that there are a lot of natural wine drinkers who aren’t identifying flaws, or who see flaws as “character.” They’re being sold faulty wines, and loving it.

Often bringing great pleasure to those who seek adventure and disappointment to classic wine lovers orange wines have moved beyond fad and this move suggests that we may soon stop treating them as quirky one-offs and start simply considering them another option within the drinking spectrum. That they’re not curiosities the way they used to be moves us closer to appreciating today's far broader world of wine. You decide. Until the next time.

The King is in the all together But all together the all together He's all together as naked as the day that he was born. And it's all together too chilly a morn!