Last Saturday I was at the Amber Wine Festival in Trieste, a harbour city in Northeast Italy.
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If amber wine is synonymous with orange wine, only more poetic, in the same train of thought, red wine can be proudly called cinnabar wine. I love it.
What has tinted Italian wine orange?
Trieste is the capital of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a region famed for orange winemaking in Italy. The location had not been chosen for this festival by chance.
This green grape skin maceration practice stemmed from Central Asia 8,000 years ago, and in the 3rd and 4th centuries B.C. was brought to today’s Slovenia by the Celts and the Illyrians.
After the First World War, Slovenia became part of Yugoslavia, when grape growers had to hand over their grapes to the government. Using these grapes, the government churned out cheap, mass-produced white wines, largely eclipsing the orange wine tradition. It was not until Slovenia gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 that grape growers reclaimed their grapes and their freedom to make wine as they wished. That was when a orange wine revival movement began in Slovenia, whose neighbour to its west, Friuli in Italy, was also naturally influenced by this way of winemaking.
Orange Wine Made How?
Orange wine is made from green grapes, where the skins are kept during the fermentation. This way, the carotenoids in the skins are able to enter the juice, giving the final wine an orange colour. Orange wine was the original form of wine made 8,000 years ago in Central Asia. The white wine we are familiar with today was born only after the emergence of juice pressing and skin removal later on.
Orange wine comes in different shades of orange depending on the length of skin contact with the juice. Brownish orange indicates long contact, probably throughout the whole fermentation and even longer, while light orange is the result of just a couple of hours of skin maceration.
MRP
Without exception, the wineries exhibiting at the Amber Wine Festival were mainly from Friuli and Slovenia.
Malvasia, Ribolla Gialla and Pinot Grigio are the main grapes used by the wineries in Friuli to make orange wine.
Malvasia is an extremely aromatic grape variety. When made into white wine, it can be too perfume-like to be enjoyable. But in its orange version, the overpowering aromas are suppressed to a certain extent, allowing the acidity to shine. For those who want to explore more possibilities about Malvasia, orange wine is a good choice.
Ribolla Gialla orange is very similar to Malvasia orange in terms of flavour, but with Ribolla Gialla, this is not a compliment. Ribolla Gialla, when white, has a distinct flinty, sagey character which stands out among all the too many whites existing on this planet. But when orange, it tastes just like many others, sweaty, jackfruity, irretrievably blending in.
I then realised that skin maceration could either make or break a green grape-based wine.
Pinot Grigio (also known as Pinot Gris), when made orange, is the best this variety can ever be and arguably the best orange wine can be. Just try Sivi by Dario Prinčič, you’ll get what I mean.
With pinkish greyish skins, the orange wine made from Pinot Grigio grapes boasts a lovely copperish tinge (in Italian called “ramato”; rame meaning copper), and black tea and hawthorn flavours on top of the usual orange wine profile of sweaty and jackfruity. Pinot Grigio in orange is as wonderful as Ribolla Gialla in white.
My once experience with Movia’s sparkling wine hadn’t been that satisfying, but their Pinot Grigio I tasted on the festival was delicious, almost comparable to Dario Prinčič’s Sivi.
Orange Wine=Natural Wine?
The fact that orange wine is made according to ancient practice dating back 8,000 years often gives the impression that it is pre-industrial and natural. But in fact orange wine is no equivalent to natural wine.
Orange wine is made from juice contacted with green grape skins, whereas natural wine is made from grapes grown organically or biodynamically, then unfiltered and without the addition of sulphur dioxide. In other words, a wine made from grapes grown conventionally cannot be considered a natural wine even if it’s orange in colour, whereas a wine made meeting the above criteria for natural wines, even if it’s not an orange wine but a red, white, rosé or sparkling wine, can be rightfully called natural wine.
My Next Orange?
The bouquet of orange wine is more subdued, and most orange wines are relatively homogeneous flavour-wise. For this reason, I may give orange sparklers a try because the fizz usually amplifies the aroma and flavour, to see if I’ll be able to discover more about this wine style.
