The New Hue

The New Hue

Viticulturists round the globe are challenging age-old notions of what wines can be, says JEFFREY T IVERSON, who explores the emerging trend for unconventional white cuvées that are increasingly known as orange

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he history of the arts is one of experimentation and paradigm shifts, with every generation creating new idioms to better embody their era. Yet if we’ve come to expect such evolutions in literature or music, when it comes to wine, we sometimes forget that creative men and women are ever pushing the boundaries of their craft as well. Today, a growing number of winemakers around the world are rejecting conventional categories to work in a genre beyond white, red or rosé – orange. Challenging our every preconception about wine, these autumnal cuvées have launched a scintillating debate about pleasure, authenticity and terroir, a debate reignited with every flame-tinted glass.

As wine guide Decanter recently put it, depending on who you ask, orange wines are either “the most characterful,

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thrilling and food-friendly styles on our shelves today, with their deep hues, intense aromas and complex flavours” or else they’re “unpalatable curiosities that no right-thinking wine consumer would ever choose to drink for pleasure”. What’s certain is they turn the rules of modern winemaking on their head. For an orange wine is, in fact, a white wine vinified like a red: instead of fermenting the white grape juice apart from the crushed berries as usual, it’s kept in contact with the grape skins for weeks or months. The result is a cordial with the appearance of an off-white wine, the texture and tannins of a red, and aromas ranging from orchard fruit, apricots and citrus, to smoke, nuts, and even umami-like flavours. While detractors assert such shades are evidence of oxidation, their defenders insist orange wines are simply infused with

The New Hue

Viticulturists round the globe are challenging age-old notions of what wines can be, says JEFFREY T IVERSON, who explores the emerging trend for unconventional white cuvées that are increasingly known as orange

T

he history of the arts is one of experimentation and paradigm shifts, with every generation creating new idioms to better embody their era. Yet if we’ve come to expect such evolutions in literature or music, when it comes to wine, we sometimes forget that creative men and women are ever pushing the boundaries of their craft as well. Today, a growing number of winemakers around the world are rejecting conventional categories to work in a genre beyond white, red or rosé – orange. Challenging our every preconception about wine, these autumnal cuvées have launched a scintillating debate about pleasure, authenticity and terroir, a debate reignited with every flame-tinted glass.

As wine guide Decanter recently put it, depending on who you ask, orange wines are either “the most characterful,

1

CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

thrilling and food-friendly styles on our shelves today, with their deep hues, intense aromas and complex flavours” or else they’re “unpalatable curiosities that no right-thinking wine consumer would ever choose to drink for pleasure”. What’s certain is they turn the rules of modern winemaking on their head. For an orange wine is, in fact, a white wine vinified like a red: instead of fermenting the white grape juice apart from the crushed berries as usual, it’s kept in contact with the grape skins for weeks or months. The result is a cordial with the appearance of an off-white wine, the texture and tannins of a red, and aromas ranging from orchard fruit, apricots and citrus, to smoke, nuts, and even umami-like flavours. While detractors assert such shades are evidence of oxidation, their defenders insist orange wines are simply infused with

polyphenols and vital minerals from the skins – the very building blocks of terroir.

Though controversial, for many discriminating establishments, the debate is no longer whether to include these wines on their menus, but what to call them. The regal Ritz in London, like the modish 10 William Street in Sydney, list them as “orange wines”. New York’s Gramercy Tavern prefers the expression “unconventional whites”. Yet for Englishman Doug Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrene, which imports a hundred exemplars of the style, from the terracottabottled Erde cuvée by Austrian Sepp Muster (weingutmuster.com) to the 100% la crescent Vinu Jancu by Vermont’s La Garagista Winery (lagaragista.com), more than their hypnotising hues it’s the technique that ennobles these wines. “I think ‘skin contact wine’ is a purer term,” Wregg says. “Orange is but one colour on an incredible spectrum for these wines, from golden yellow to burnt amber.”

Similarly, Pascaline Lepeltier, until recently sommelier of the upscale eatery Rouge Tomate in New York’s Chelsea district, uses the term “skin-fermented wines”. Whatever the appellation, as she told Bloomberg, “They’re here to stay.”

Few would have wagered as much in 2001, when cult winemaker Josko Gravner (gravner.it) of Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia region created perhaps the first contemporary orange wines. Gravner had been titled “King of Italian Whites” for his pioneering use of stainless steel and temperature control technology in fermentation, but his quest to restore his region’s millennium-old ribolla gialla grape to its former glory led him to abandon modern methods.

Finding inspiration in the country of Georgia, viticulture’s birthplace, Gravner adopted the ancient practice of fermenting white grapes on their skins in underground, clay amphorae. Critics feared Gravner had lost his way, but the sheer depth of character and beguiling complexity of his new wines soon won many back, while inspiring not only winemakers in Italy and Slovenia like the late Stanko Radikon (radikon.it) and Ales Kristancic (movia.si), but an entire generation.

Today, vintners as far flung as Mike Weersing of Pyramid Valley Vineyards in New Zealand (pyramidvalley.co.nz) and Vanya Cullen of Australia’s Cullen Wines (cullenwines.com.au) cite Gravner as the catalyst for their own skin-contact experiments. Cullen says her 2014 “Amber” semillon sauvignon blanc came as “a natural step in creative as well as artisanal winemaking”. South African Craig Hawkins had a similar sentiment when he first tasted the savoury skin-fermented vermentino by Italy’s Antonio Perrino. “It just made sense,” he recalls. “It fundamentally changed the way I thought about wine.” Hawkins’ flagship release from his Swartland winery, Testalonga (+27 7260 16475), was a skin-contact chenin blanc – a style so new in 2008, he had to lobby wine authorities to establish a “skin-macerated white wine” category just so he could export it.

Now Hawkins’ wines are served in boho bistros and Relais & Châteaux properties around the world. “Chefs love them, because they match with almost any type of food,” he says. “The skins impart flavours and sensations you don’t experience with typical white wines.” And which will keep the critics debating. Yet walk into the London Ritz today and order a glass of sunset-tinted chinuri by Georgian Iago Bitarishvili – a skin-fermented wine made in 2015, yet seemingly plucked from antiquity – and you may just agree, the vinous zeitgeist has turned a rather stunning shade of orange.

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