Who has not heard of orange wines? Since a few years ago, this type of wines has become fashionable, however, they are wines with a great tradition. To talk about orange wines we must start talking about white wines. Nowadays, white wines are made without skin maceration, hence their pale tones, but in the past, the must of white wines did macerate with the skins, just as red wines do. This way of making white wines gave -and still gives- orange wine as a result.
Orange wines have their origin in Georgia, which is also the country where the wine is presumed to have originated. The ancestral winemaking techniques involved the maceration of the white must with the skins, as well as slow fermentations in “qveri”, elongated, egg-shaped clay amphorae with an average capacity of one thousand liters. This winemaking system has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
This way of winemaking, which in a certain way had been shelved for centuries, re-emerged at the end of the last century in Italy, in Collio Gorizia, on the border with Slovenia. Since then, its popularity has continued to grow, encouraged by the trends of the recovery of traditional viticulture and, little by little, it has crossed borders to Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Austria, France and even to the New World. Figures such as Josko Gravener and Stanko Radikon have been key to the expansion of orange wines, based on a variety such as ribolla galla, ideal for the production of this type of wine, as well as on the recovery of traditional winemaking (fermentation without temperature control, without filtration and without the use of sulfates).
The production of a white wine with skins not only implies an orange color, but also an enrichment of substances found in the skins, such as tannins, polyphenols and terpenes. In addition, at the sensory level, orange wines bring nuances of candied fruit, honey, citrus rind, spicy aromas, nuts, cinnamon, as well as notes of silica and gunpowder.
We have mastered the theory, but now we need to put it into practice, so let’s try orange wines!