Orange Wine

Orange wine is a term popping up more and more on menus and in boutique bottle shops lately and while the name nicely sets it apart from the styles of wine we're familiar with like white, red and rosé, it doesn't exactly explain what it is. A quick refresher on how wine is most commonly made will help explain. In almost all grapes the juice has very little color, all the color comes from the skins. Red grapes are pressed and then the juice is left in contact with the skins to extract color from them, when this is done only briefly you get the most common style of rosé. In modern times white wine is made by fermenting the pressed juice of pink, green and yellow skinned grapes after pressing and draining off from the skins. But what would happen you ask if you left the skins of green or golden grapes in contact with the juice and made a white wine in the same style as a red? Well that is what is commonly called 'orange' wine. It's not really all that new, wines were made this way for centuries. It's actually what we commonly think of a white wine that is a novelty. Hence as some winemakers explore traditions of natural wine-making from the past that have been partially put away in favor of modern techniques, we begin to see more natural wines using skin contact as a way of adding complexity to wines in a historic and natural way. The skins do create a completely different experience, one that is often more savory and can even create a textural experience in a white wine that many have only previously experienced with reds; tannins and pheynolics, spice flavors, floral and tropical fruits.

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