It Was All Orange

What are orange wines?

Orange wines, aka skin contact wines, are simply those made with the juice (extracted from the grapes) hanging out with the grape's leftover skin! Imagine crushing a grape to extract all the delicious juice inside. What's left (the squished grape) still has plenty of flavour, acidity, and other compounds. By soaking these skins in the juice, you can gently extract the extra colour and flavour. This is not a new thing. Thousands of years ago, before people said they only drink Pinot Gris and the like, pretty much all white wines would've been made with some degree of skin contact. In fact in Georgia, a country with a long and fabled history of winemaking, the traditional way to make white wine still involves skin contact! They go a little crazy on it, breaking it down into 'golden' and 'amber' wines, depending how long the skin contact goes on for. Given their texture and power, it helps if you imagine skin contact/orange wines as a cross between a red and a white. The ageing with the skins draws out additional tannin, so the wines can often have a bit of grip or a touch of bitterness to them. The flavour profile can also tend towards a riper, more tropical spectrum (dependent on the grape variety, of course), but it's common to see flavours and aromas of peach, apricot, and pineapple, as well as orange blossom, beeswax, and honey. They often have a slight saltiness to them, which further enhances their food-friendliness.

3 amazing orange wines to try

In this special pack you'll enjoy: Aptitude Wines 'Contact Theory' Skin Contact White 2024 Easily the most provocative wine in the Aptitude Theory lineup, this is an unusual blend of Riesling and Cortese, with both grapes spending time gathering complexity and tang on their skins. This is a tart, nutty, and honeyed white that at first glance seems round and creamy, but then along comes the tang, with a crunchy super clean finish to balance things out. It builds on you, and you can't help but admire the clever textural complexity of this interesting wine. Rouleur 'Pinot Gris et al' Skin Contact 2024 Who said that orange wine needs to be wild? This Rouleur Pinot Gris-based skin contact wine is crisp and fresh like a cucumber (though it tastes more like mandarin than cukes). Using grapes from the chilly heights of Whitlands in the King Valley (which is seemingly cold all year round), this smells like a bowl of potpourri, and tastes like an exotic mix of tangerine, musk and ginger then a lovely tangy twist. Radikon 'Slatnik' Chardonnay Blend 2022 Slatnik is a blend of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Vert - aka the grape once known as Tocai Friuliano (until the Hungarian wine industry helped ban the name, but that's another story). Fermented over a week on skins (which is full-bodied red territory), this fascinating orange wine has so much going on, from the floral marmalade and orange blossom hints, through to the taut, tangerine-tipped and grippy palate, right through the finish. What a wine!

Interesting to note

So, what's the difference between orange/skin-contact wines and rosé? They are entirely different styles of wine. Rosé is made using red grapes, giving it a pink/rosé colour, whereas orange wine is made using white grapes, giving it an orange/amber colour. Too easy!