Orange wines are quirky, trendy and natural — and no, they aren’t made from citrus
Now that you’ve settled into your hammock, maybe someone will bring you a nice glass of orange wine.
Yes, orange wines exist. And, no, they’re not squeezed from citrus.
Already popular among geeks, orange wines are essentially white wines made using red wine methods. So, the juice of white grapes is fermented along with the skins — and that’s what lends the wine its amber color.
These quirky whites are inching their way into the Milwaukee market, showing up at wine shops such as Corvina Wine Co. in West Allis, where you can taste a flight of three orange wines for $18. Other shops with orange wines include Ray’s Wine & Spirits in Wauwatosa and Waterford Wine Co. in Milwaukee and Delafield.
It’s best to ask for them — they might have a little section all their own or be tucked in among other natural wines.
To find out more about this category of wine, I checked in with Justin Spaller, a certified sommelier. With his wife, Anna, he recently launched the Chromatic Wine Co., a Milwaukee-based wine distributor that specializes in natural wines.
Question: What is orange wine? And do people always ask you if it’s made from oranges?
Answer: That’s funny — and, yes, there is a long list of people who have asked that question. But orange wine is not made from oranges, it’s made from white grapes.
So similar to red grapes, which have color pigmentation in the skins, white grapes are not purely white; there is kind of a yellowish, orangish, pinkish hue. And when the wine is macerated on the skins — so it ferments with the skins — it pulls color from the skins and also texture and flavor.
I think of them as the inverse of rosé wine. With rosé, you take red grapes and make it like a white. And with orange, you’re taking white grapes and making it like a red.
Q: Chromatic Wines specializes in natural wines. What are natural wines and are orange wines an example of natural wines?
A: Natural wine is a tough category of wines because there is no exact definition. But I like to think of three major signposts: You have what happens in the vineyard, you have the actual fermentation process, and then you have what happens after that.
With natural wine there is no use of chemicals in the vineyard, so often they are biodynamic or at a bare minimum made using organic farming practices.
Then, with the middle point, the grapes are allowed to ferment naturally using either ambient yeast or native yeast as opposed to sourcing commercial yeast.
And then in the last part of the process, with natural wines, they limit the use of sulfites. Sometimes there is some sulfite used to preserve the wine at bottling, but sulfites
are not used during the winemaking process. And there is a minimal use of new oak. Sometimes there is neutral oak, but often it will be concrete or sometimes clay amphora — so not trying to influence the flavor of the wine with new oak barrels.
It’s not necessary that an orange wine be a natural wine, but I have not seen an orange wine that is not considered a natural wine. I think the type of producers who make orange wine just are on the level of natural wine makers. You could make a conventional orange wine that’s farmed with chemicals and made with commercial yeast, but I just haven’t seen one.
Q: Are orange wines new?
A: Orange wines have really been around for the millennia. It’s hard to pinpoint when they started, but it’s basically one of the original ways of making wine with white grapes in places like the country of Georgia, and in the Middle East.
Then, when traditional white wine became popular in the mid-20th century, you didn’t see it anymore, or at least you didn’t see it in major markets. It took a few producers in Friuli, Italy — in Collio — to really make it popular again. That was in the mid-1990s.
The three producers that really made the current orange wine craze are all Italian producers: Gravner, Radikon and Princic Dario. Now, orange wines are made all over — Italy, Austria, California and Slovenia, to name a few places.
Q: Are they just a fad or here to stay?
A: Here to stay, I think. You know orange wines fall into the natural wine category, and those wines are here to stay. I guess from the drinking-culture
perspective, it’s like craft beer, which wasn’t a fad, and craft cocktails, which weren’t a fad.
Q: What do they taste like?
A: You want to be careful not to categorize — not to speak of orange wines as if they are all the same because much like red wines and white wines, there is a large spectrum. With orange wine, it’s everything from white wines that have just a touch of skin contact, are just a little hazy, but really could be considered a white wine, all the way to wines that are deep and murky and earthy and really structured.
But what you will notice, if I can give broad examples, is that there will be tannin — so it will leave your mouth feeling a little dry from the skins.
And, typically, a lot of aromatic grape varieties are used, so there will be a floral quality to the wine. And — it’s funny because orange wines aren’t made from oranges — but there is a definite sort of tangerine-popping citrus quality in a lot of styles of orange wines. And then also there are some earthier flavors like soil and walnut skin from oxidization that usually happens in orange wine production.
Q: Are they all dry?
A: Not all of them, but most of them are. I’ve had one off-dry orange wine — and that was an off-dry Chenin Blanc from Spain.
Q: What’s the retail price range?
A: From about $20 a bottle — that’s kind of the baseline — to well over $100.
Q: What about serving temperature? Should they be served chilled?
A: It’s a range. If the orange wine is lighter and more aromatic, with just a touch of skin contact, I would say chill, especially in summertime. But some of the deeper, darker ones — particularly the ones from northeastern Italy — I would serve closer to cellar temperature, so 56 to 60 degrees. But that said, I would always err on the side of being chilled when you first open it and then allowing it to warm up a little bit and see when it reaches that right temperature.
Q: What’s intriguing about orange wines? Why should people give them a try?
A: Good orange wine achieves flavors you never thought were possible in a wine.
Drinks on Us features an adult beverage each week that you can order or purchase locally or mix up at home. To suggest a drink, email Nancy Stohs at nstohs@journalsentinel.com or Kathy Flanigan at kflanigan@journalsentinel.com. Email Anne Schamberg at aschamberg@gmail.com.