There's an orange coloured gap in the Vino Cammino selection. We've got special sparklings, wonderful whites, ravishing rosés and robust reds. But we've stopped short of taking on any orange wines. It has never been a big part of our personal wine journey, and so it hasn't ended up joining our portfolio of wines, based on those that we love to drink ourselves.
But it's absence and our continual instinct to skip over it on wine lists eventually got us curious to learn more.
Orange? Amber? Skin Contact?
To begin with, let's get the nomenclature clear. Orange, amber and skin contact are often used interchangeably, but we think the Australian Wine Research Institute has a helpful way to distinguish them and we're happy to adopt their approach. While all of those terms reflect time that white wine spends in contact with its skins and seeds, the AWRI uses the start of fermentation as a dividing line. Skin contact wines are where the juice is pressed and fermented off skins, whereas orange and amber wines remain in contact with the skins during fermentation.
Orange and amber are terms that can be used interchangeably, though, at least in Australia, orange might be confused for wines made in the Orange wine region (named for the town of Orange in the state of NSW). Not to mention the risk of being confused for wine made from the fruit sharing the name.
How is orange wine different to white wine, or red wine?
As mentioned above, the difference between white wine and orange wine comes down to contact with skins. White wine is pressed off the skins quickly (direct pressing) to avoid oxidation. Some short skin contact is a common approach to increaser flavour intensity for some aromatic varieties, but longer skin contact and continued maceration during fermentation can lead to quite a different flavour profile and a change in colour (hence the terms orange or amber wines). The colour difference extends from both oxidation of the juice, but also extraction of colour from the skins.
So for each of the white variety techniques, covering white, skin contact and orange, there is an equivalent technique and resulting category for red grape varieties. Direct pressing or free run juice can deliver white wine from red grapes (like blanc de noirs used in Champagne), or a faintly rosé coloured 'white' wine (like the wonderful Chicchero Sangiovese from Tregole). Short skin contact time (which can straddle the start of fermentation) creates a deeper rosé style wine. Longer skin contact during fermentation creates the classic red wine style, which is to red grapes as orange wine is to white grapes.
Why isn't orange wine more prevalent?
Orange wine has a long history and is a traditional style in several regions in Europe including Georgia, Slovenia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Italy. But it is only more recently that it has seem more popularity in global markets. That popularity may be linked to the rise in popularity of natural wines, as orange wine allows for less 'waste' of the grape components and the tannins from the skins can provide an elevated level of protection from spoilage which sulphur would otherwise be required for.
Why hasn't orange wine broken out of its niche otherwise? It's a difficult question to answer, but ultimately must come down to a mix of personal taste and fashion. For some anecdotal evidence, we challenged ourselves while writing this piece to try several orange wines on offer at bars around Sydney. It took some getting used to. For someone raised on the more traditional white, rosé, and red styles - the punchy texture, sometimes funky flavours and varied colours was often off-putting. Food makes a huge difference. We found these were not wines we could just enjoy on their own, but some were delightful with food.
Will we continue to explore orange wine? Probably not, it was a relief to get back to our favourite whites and reds, but it was fun to experiment :)