Style
Orange wine
OR-inj
White grapes, red techniques
Skin-contact white wine: amber in the glass, tannin on the gums, tea and apricot in the nose. Ancient in Georgia, fashionable everywhere else.
- orange peel
- dried apricot
- tannin
- tea
- bruised apple
If you ferment white grapes on their skins, you extract color, tannin, and phenolic grip. The result is not oxidized wine (though some are made oxidatively) and not a fault. Georgian qvevri wines, Italian Ramato Pinot Grigio, and Slovenian/Friulian skin-contact whites are the classical references.
Quality ranges from precise and savory to volatile and cider-like. Judge them as you would a light red: structure, cleanliness, and whether the tannin has somewhere to go. They are brilliant with spiced, fried, and fermented foods that bully delicate whites.
Serve at 50–55 °F (10–13 °C), not ice-cold. A light red glass works.
At the table
Service
50–55 °F (10–13 °C). A brief splash in a decanter can help the more tannic ones.
