Amber champions: Top 30 orange wines

Five years is a long time in wine. When I first wrote at length about orange wines in Decanter, in 2015, many wine pundits still viewed the style with suspicion – if not downright derision. It felt slightly bleeding edge, even if these wines had been appearing on our shelves for more than a decade.

Now, in 2020, the fourth wine colour has elbowed its way into the hearts and minds of exponentially more adventurous drinkers around the globe, with orange wines produced and enjoyed on every continent. And justly so – with four possible combinations of red or white grapes with or without skins, why ignore 25% of wine’s possibilities?

Some are still perplexed by the style – or, more particularly, the name. If you accept the lexicon of red, white and rosé, then why not orange too? In actuality, all four terms describe the winemaking technique (grape colour, plus skins or not) rather than colour or style, per se.

It follows that not all orange wines are dark-amber coloured, tannic and cidery, just as not all red wines are mega-purple hued, grippy and oaky. Each of these four categories of wine offers up a multitude of taste, aroma and weight profiles.

Let’s tie down that definition: orange wines aren’t made from oranges any more than rosé wines are made from roses. The term, first coined in 2004, concisely describes wines made from white grapes that have been fermented with their skins, unlike mainstream white wines, where skins will be discarded beforehand (even if a pre-fermentation cold soak is part of the equation). These are white wines made like red wines, the perfect food-friendly marriage of a white grape’s acidity and freshness with the texture and structure more often experienced in reds.

A style with history

The concept is timeless. Georgia boasts archaeological finds indicating that wine has been fermented in amphorae (qvevris) made of clay for at least 6,000 years – and amber wines (made from white grapes) have always formed the cultural backbone of this important wine nation. Historical records and winemaking books from Austria and Slovenia show that skin-fermenting white grapes was common in many parts of the old Austro-Hungarian empire.

As New Zealand winemaker Theo Coles (The Hermit Ram) notes, ‘these are basically pre-technology wines’. The modern-day concept of a light-coloured, fresh-tasting white wine requires a press, a destemmer and most probably a temperature-controlled stainless steel tank and a filtration system. Orange wines have simpler needs: just perfect grapes and a vessel (be it clay, wood, steel or plastic) for fermentation.

Such simplicity in wine is a virtue that has come into much sharper focus with the increased interest in minimal-intervention or natural wines. The modern revival of orange wine overlaps with and has been underpinned by the natural wine community – it shouldn’t be forgotten, though, that the term ‘natural wine’ represents an overarching philosophy, whereas ‘orange wine’ describes a specific production technique.

The genius of modern-day Collio pioneers Joško Gravner and the late Stanko Radikon was breathing new life into an older style of winemaking that the world had largely forgotten by the 1950s. Their daring presentation of vino bianco macerato (macerated white wine) as fine wine rather than rustic vina da tavola acted as a catalyst.

It’s given a whole generation of younger Slovene and Italian winemakers the confidence to make similar stylistic decisions – and to take risks, knowing that there’s now a receptive audience for their output.

What’s old is new

While the technique of skin-fermenting white grapes has its deepest cultural roots in Georgia and central Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, northern Italy), many other countries and regions are now rediscovering their own similar traditions. In Portugal’s hot Alentejo region, making wine in large amphorae called talhas has a history that dates back to the Romans, yet its practice took place behind closed doors until very recently. As with Georgia, skin-fermented white grapes and thus amber or orange-tinged wines have always been to the fore – Alentejo’s reputation as a red wine region is a recent development.

Talha wines are traditionally consumed straight from the clay, with the cellars transforming into ad-hoc social spaces during the winter. However, since the creation of a talha wine DO in 2010, bottled examples also exist. Amphorae of all shapes and sizes are common in Spain too, and increasing numbers of artisan winemakers have equipped (or re-equipped) their cellars with tinajas in recent years. Staying in the Spanish-speaking world, Chile has an old tradition of producing roughly destemmed, barrel-fermented wines called pipeño, now being revitalised by producers such as Roberto Henríquez in Bío Bío. Both red (chiefly País) and white (Moscatel) varieties are skin-fermented.

Winemakers in New World countries are enthusiastically taking to the style – and often repurposing skin-fermentation in new or innovative ways. In Stellenbosch, Mick and Jeanine Craven use it as part of the blend, rather than going for a no-holds-barred ‘orange’ style. Deirdre Heekin, based in cold-climate Vermont, uses skin contact to add vital depth to her hybrid grape varieties. And in Central Otago, Japanese winemaker Yoshiaki Sato skin-ferments to create silky smooth, Burgundian-style cuvées where fruit and aromatics don’t overwhelm the other elements. The possibilities are endless.

Orange wine as a genre can now claim a number of seminal producers. Notable examples include Gravner, Radikon and Dario Prinčič in Oslavia; Mlečnik, Movia and Cotar in western Slovenia; and Vodopivec and Skerk in the Italian Carso.

For the recommendations here, though, I’m sharing recent discoveries, lesser-known producers and exciting new projects. The wines I’ve selected run a very broad gamut, whether your taste extends to lighter or heavier, aromatic or savoury, structured or supple. Uncork them with an open mind, don’t chill too much (12°C-14°C is about right) and if possible, combine with sustenance. Have fun, and let’s talk again in another five years?

Simon Woolf’s top 30 orange wines