give it some skin
You’ve seen it on wine lists, but what exactly is orange wine?
WHAT EXACTLY IS “ORANGE WINE”? First, let’s clear a few things up. It’s not produced in Orange, NSW. It’s not made from the fruit of the same name (though that kind of orange wine does exist; it’s popular in Spain). And it’s not white or red wine that’s been infused with orange peels. Orange, in this instance, refers to the colour of the wine; the same way that rosé is often dubbed “the pink wine”.
HOW IS IT MADE? In the simplest terms, red wine’s grapes are fermented with skins on
and rosé is made from red-wine grapes with brief contact from the skins but otherwise processed skin-off. White wine is fermented without the grape skins, and orange wine is made from white grapes, but fermented with their skins on for a period of time, as little as a few hours or as long as a few months. The orange or amber tinge of the wine comes from the presence of grape skins during the fermentation process.
HOW DO YOU DRINK IT? Orange wine makes a great aperitif alongside cheese, but is equally suited to meat and vegetable dishes, or spicy food. Even better, it can be drunk both chilled or at room temperature, making it a solid contender for your new go-to tipple year-round.
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND? “Many wine lists will group orange wines together in a separate category or differentiate them from the classic white wines,” says Kylie Javier Ashton, wine consultant for Sydney bar This Must Be The Place. “It can be more difficult when it comes to buying orange wines in a bottle shop and often not as common to find them.” Josephine Perry, 2016 Young Gun Of Wine award-winner and winemaker at Margaret River’s Dormilona, adds, “Legally, producers aren’t allowed to directly label a wine as being an ‘orange’ one unless the fruit itself is sourced from [the area of] Orange. So many producers are naming their wines something a little offbeat and wacky... we named our orange wine ‘Skinnie’.” In both cases, it’s probably easiest to ask the staff to point you in the right direction.
IF IT’S SO HARD TO FIND, WHY IS IT A “THING”? “Over the past 10 years, there has been a growing interest and demand for these wines,” says Javier Ashton. “Some people say that orange wines are a fad that has been brought around by trendsetting sommeliers, because of their novelty rather than their quality,” adds Perry. “However, orange wines have a long history in winemaking dating back thousands of years to the Eurasian wine-producing countries Armenia and Georgia.” The wines made traditionally in Georgia are intense and tannic, resulting in a dark orange hue, but other popular regions include northern Italy, Slovenia and France.