What the heck is orange wine?
Orange wine is a confounding combination of adjective and noun. Such wine is made of white grapes, not citrus oranges, but it is an orangish colour, or slightly amber, if you will.
The pleasing hue comes from maceration, letting the grape juice stay in contact with the skins for an extra two weeks or so, to extract more colour, texture and flavour.
Little Farm Winery in Cawston crafts such a wine and amps up the uniqueness by giving it a natural and non-interventionist pied de cuve treatment.
What that means in the case of the 2017 Pied de Cuve Orange ($35) is small clusters of Riesling grapes from Little Farm’s own Mulberry Tree Vineyard are gently tread upon, not stomped.
The activity allows fermentation to start with only the naturally occurring yeast on the grape skins.
Such fermentation continues for 14 days before being pressed into stainless steel tanks and aged another eight months on the residual yeast and bottled unfined and unfiltered.
The wine tends to naturally clarify itself, however, it does appear slightly cloudy in the bottle and glass. The results are spectacular. Besides the attractive colour, the pied de cuve means the wine is a pure reflection of grape, place and vintage.
In this case, crisp Riesling that took on the mineral characteristics of Little Farm’s calcium carbonate soil during the long, moderate 2017 growing season.
The nose is fittingly orange oil, peach skin, dried apricot and flowers.
The taste is again appropriately orange zest, and spice with some subtle tannins from that extra time on the skins.
Only 190 cases were produced and this wine sold out quickly last year, so visit the winery or get on the computer to order at LittleFarmWinery.com.
The 2017 Pied de Cuve Blind Creek Vineyard Cabernet Franc ($35) received similar natural yeast fermentation and non-interventionist winemaking.
It turned out light and juicy with aromas and flavours of mixed berries, wild herbs and violet.
The 2016 New-ish Oak Chardonnay ($45) is a departure for Little Farm.
Generally, the winery uses only older oak barrels to age its Chardonnay, thereby getting some texture and complexity without the oaky smell and taste.
However, for the New-ish, barrels that had been used for only one prior vintage were employed to impart some subtle toasty, buttery and nutty qualities.
But, there’s still plenty of fresh lemon, peach and minerality to beautifully balance this Chard.
Little Farm is owned by husband-and-wife Rhys Pender and Alishan Driediger, who call themselves wine growers because they do it all from farming and harvesting to winemaking and distribution.
Pender is also one of only 350 Masters of Wine in the world, a wine educator with his own Wine Plus business, judge and wine writer. world to make versatile and pleasing, rather than astonishing, whites.
Sandhill Wines from Kelowna and Red Rooster Winery from Naramata are changing all that with two stellar examples.
Sandhill 2017 Pinot Blanc ($19) spent a little time in oak to produce a textured and fresh wine with aromas and flavours of pineapple, pink grapefruit, apple and pear.
The Red Rooster 2017 Pinot Blanc ($17) also has some light oak to compliment its fresh acidity, pineapple and green apple profile.
Either wine is perfect as a standalone sipper or paired with pan-fried fish, roast chicken or pork tenderloin.