Orange...is the new wine
Not really. Re-discovered? Yes. The term orange wine, sometimes referred to as macerated wine, is an old but newly reawakened trend in the world of wines. Orange wine is growing the way rosé did years ago. Recently demand for it has rapidly grown in tandem with the natural wine movement, but within that space, orange wine has a niche of its own.
According to wine experts, the new found rise of interest in orange wine is creating a new type of casual wine drinker: one who is actually eager to learn a lot more about grapes, wine, production, history and more. To discover the history of orange wine, one needs to go back to the beginning of winemaking.
Georgia is a country that lies just about where Europe and Asia join together. To its north is Russia, Turkey and Armenia to its south and Azerbaijan to its southeast. With the Black sea grazing its coastline, it possesses some really fertile grape growing topography. Winemaking, history has it, began here around 6,000 BC. Thus, this region has long tradition of winemaking passed on by generations that go back to over 8,000 years.
To those who are unfamiliar with the making of wines; be clear that orange wines have nothing whatsoever to do with oranges. Orange wines are made of white grapes, fermented with skin contact, unlike white wines which are made with fermented grape juice without the skins. This in contrast to red wines where the skins of red grapes that impart tannins, colour pigments and phenols, are important elements of taste, colour and texture.
White grape skins come in various shades - yellow, orange, golden or even pink, so when the juice is fermented with the skins, the wine, depending on the amount of time the juice sits with the skins, takes on those eye-catching amber, copper or traffic cones hues. The resulting wines are a kaleidoscope of colours and characteristics, ranging from bottles aged underground (to keep the temperature down), in ancient clay vessels for years to other wines that sat with their skins in modern-day stainless steel tanks for a mere three hours.
It is argued that red wine is the heart-healthy wine of choice. Others now dispute this claim, stating that orange wine is filled with restorative and cleansing antioxidants just like red wine is, and is definitely the ‘healthiest white wine’ of choice. To a wine world already riddled with complexities that distance people on its fringe, the ‘red is healthier than orange’ or vici versa, is another debate that will linger on.
Source; External
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