Enjoying a wine of a different colour
As a sommelier, I have been trained to appreciate a wine’s appearance and analyze the clues it offers.
It can indicate defects, alcohol strength, sugar levels and even age. Narrowing down the colour of a wine is always my favourite part. I branch through the shades of yellow and red in my mind — is it straw yellow or lemon? Is it ruby or brick?
When teaching my students, I often tell them to think of crayons — if you were lucky enough as a kid to get the box of 64 you know what I’m talking about. Shades of yellow would range from green yellow all the way through to yellow orange.
However when we think of wine, we often are very polarizing about the choices.
“Would you like red or white tonight, honey?” “What goes best with duck, red or white?”
The answer actually could be neither. There are more colour options than just red and white, and ironically they’re not new; in fact they predate both. Allow me to welcome orange and pink wine to the stage.
Pink wine, more commonly referred to as rosé, is still enjoying its renaissance. Long gone are the rosés from the 1980s, which were overbearingly sweet and unsophisticated. Today winemakers of the world look to the south of France for inspiration, where they have been consistently producing a dry, serious and food-friendly version for hundreds of years. Ever since the Greeks brought vines to Provence in 600 BC, this region has excelled in this style.
Today, consumers are more open to selecting rosé as their third colour option, as it really is the ideal pairing for many dishes (like that duck), or simply sipping on the patio.
Consumer support is helping, because rosé production is on the rise. France alone has increased production by 31 per cent in the past 11 years, and here in Niagara the options for local rosé grow annually. Westcott’s Delphine Rosé, for example, is a beautiful version that both quenches thirst and treats the senses to a bounty of aromatic fruit. Leaning Post offers a lovely, lipstick-hued sipper, and Thirty Bench has the most elegant version I’ve tasted so far this year, complete with a rebranded bottle.
Rosé also happens to be very trendy. With hashtags like #roséallday and #brosé (because, yes gentlemen, gendering colour is a thing of the past, and it’s cool for you to drink rosé, too), generations from millennials to baby boomers are all happily sipping on this fresh, beautiful and foodfriendly option.
If you want to join the party, consider International Rosé Day on June 9, when Henry of Pelham is hosting its event Rosé All Day, Malivoire is offering We the Rosé and Andrew Peller properties (Peller Estates, Trius Winery, Thirty Bench and Wayne Gretzky Estates) are running Yes Way, Rosé, a weekend of sipping and noshing.
While rosé is basking in its fame, orange wine is slowly reintroducing itself to the masses.
This style of wine is thousands of years old, and breaks the conventional rule that white wines are created without grape skin contact. In this style, winemakers use white grapes and let them macerate with their skins to incorporate flavour, structure and that oh so beautiful orange hue. In the ancient practice, these fermenting grapes are placed in large vessels called Qvevris and buried underground for months. Countries such as Georgia and Slovenia are still pursuing this style of winemaking, and it’s being experimented with in the New World.
I have the great benefit of working at Niagara College where applied learning is always at the forefront, so it was no surprise when I learned that our winemaker Gavin Robertson is already working on orange wine with our winery and viticulture technician students.
As he explains: “The wine went down to ferment in early October. We buried it to the shoulder and then covered the vessel with hay to insulate. It continued to ferment underground until we opened it in late April.”
Robertson used the Sauvignon Blanc grape, because he believed it was an excellent teaching opportunity.
“Not only do the aromatics support orange wine style, but we can show students the variations a grape is capable of, from our stainless steel version, our oak-aged fumé and now orange wine.”
Wine student Robbie Day explains that he wasn’t afraid of the hard work that it took when he was taking part in production.
“It’s easy to overlook the difficulties of working with wine in underground containers. After our pump failed we had to use a bucket on a string to hoist the wine from the underground tanks. By the end of the day I was covered in orange wine, rain and mud, but it was totally rewarding. I hope to be involved in more experimental projects in the future.”
As we prepare for the launch of summer, I can think of no better wines to pair with. In 2015 the New York Post stated that orange wine would be the new rosé, but I disagree. I think they each have their own corner in the wine world. They both practise unconventional skin contact in terms of wine production, have gorgeous gemstone colours, and pair perfectly with fresh summer foods.
So branch out beyond the red and white world for a change, and bring some more colour to your life.