Orange Wine

Orange wine is a very popular term for white wine that is made in the fashion of a red wine.  In the Asian Caucasus region where they've been doing this for 5,000 years they call it amber wine.  Other terms include skin-contact or skin-fermented wine or using larger terminology, non-interventionist winemaking, which gets more to the point - This is the furthest thing from the common filtered-clear white wines on store shelves.  Possibly as a reaction to that norm, David Harvey coined the term orange wine in 2004.

With skins and seeds included in the grape maceration and fermentation (sometimes up to a year!), the wine acquires pigment, phenols and tannins; giving it a robust, perhaps honeyed nose and a complex, lacquered nutty flavor.  This kind of a big white wine would show well with curried Asian cuisine or cabbage or any meats/fishes with a similarly high phenolic character.

Orange wines are made everywhere today.  In Friuli-Venezie-Guilia, Italy and Slovenia they have been doing it for hundreds of years applying the name Ramato to their Pinot Grigio version.  

Aside from our interest in the essential wine character and food affinities, health consciousness may be driving the orange wine fever.  Much like red wine, the skins and seeds in the production of orange wine are believed to slow mental decline and the risk of heart disease.  During maceration, anti-oxident chemical compounds like kaempferol, quercetin, catechin and resveratrol leach into the wine and neutralize unstable molecules (free radicals) that cause cellular damage.

Now here's some good news for all of us.  While there have been no specific studies of health benefits from orange wine consumption, it is believed any wine consumption in moderation improves longevity.  Wine drinkers have a lower risk of metabolic syndrome, the group of conditions that raise the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancers of the bowel, colon and prostate.