What is orange wine? White grapes, red-wine technique

What is orange wine? It is white wine made the way red wine is made. Instead of pressing white grapes and fermenting the clear juice on its own, the winemaker leaves the juice on the skins, the pips and sometimes the stems. That contact runs for anything from a day to many months. WSET defines the style as white wine made with extended contact between the grape juice and skins during fermentation. It describes that technique as more commonly associated with red winemaking. The skins do three things clear juice cannot. They colour the wine, anywhere from pale copper to deep amber. They release phenolics, which is why an orange wine carries a grip no conventional white has. And they push the flavour into the savoury, orange-peel, nutty register WSET describes. That register sits alongside the fruit rather than replacing it. In shelf terms, this is not a sixth colour. On this site it is filed under white, because white is what the grapes are.

Why is it called orange when the wine looks amber?

Because a UK importer needed a word in 2004 and that one stuck. Decanter's Simon Woolf records that David Harvey of Raeburn Fine Wines coined "orange wine" while working in Frank Cornelissen's cellar on Etna. Harvey's own account is unromantic: "I didn't set out to invent a word, I just used it naturally and it stuck."

The colour it names is a range, not a shade. RAW WINE describes finished wines running from pinky yellows to deep ambers, the spread coming from the diversity of maceration techniques now in use. Georgia leads with a different word: Wines of Georgia, the country's wine marketing body, says its best-known traditional wines are the amber wines made in qvevri from white grapes. WSET's David Way argues that Josko Gravner's bottles are "more accurately described as 'amber' in colour, rather than 'orange'", because years of ageing put a brown tint in the glass.

Two myths are worth killing here. The colour does not come from oxidation, it comes from the skins. Woolf notes that critics "sometimes mistakenly assume that the amber, orange or brown colour signals oxidation". He adds that producers typically seal their vessels after fermentation to keep the wine fresh. And orange wine is not a synonym for natural wine. Woolf is explicit that many producers work with minimal intervention and low sulphur, but that this is not a prerequisite for the style.

The name still does work, which is why the trade keeps it. Saša Radikon put the commercial case to Decanter plainly: "The name may not be ideal, but this style needs its own category. If customers order a white wine and it turns out to be this surprising dark colour, they might not be so happy."

How is orange wine made?

Crush white grapes, put the juice and the solids into one vessel, and ferment them together. That is the whole technique. Everything else is a decision about how long and in what.

Length is what separates a curiosity from a monster. RAW WINE puts the working range at anything from 24 hours to many months. WSET's David Way reports that in Oslavia and Brda today, maceration "varies from a few days to three months, often in stainless steel". Friulian estates that mostly make conventional whites will typically macerate a single cuvée for up to a month.

At the far end sits Gravner, and his protocol is worth reading as a benchmark rather than a norm. Way's account runs like this. Ribolla Gialla is now 90 per cent of the vineyards, half in Italy and half in Slovenia. Wax-lined amphorae of 1,300 to 2,600 litres are filled three-quarters full and buried underground, which Way calls a primitive method of holding a cool fermentation. Then ambient yeast, full malolactic, and six months on the skins with punch-downs five or six times a day. Then pressing in a basket press, six more months back in amphorae, six years in large old Slavonian oak racked every two years, and release seven years after the harvest.

Georgia's traditional method is older and, in its own way, stricter. Wines of Georgia describes grapes crushed in a stone or wooden press called a satsnakheli. The must is loaded into the qvevri with all or part of the marc and stalks, to three-quarters of the vessel. Fermentation on natural yeast, under natural underground temperature control, lasts around three weeks. Then comes a stone, glass or metal lid sealed with clay or silicone, and three to six months of maceration on the solids before the wine is bottled or moved in spring. Georgia's National Wine Agency describes the same sequence from the other side. The chacha, the grape skins, stalks and pips, sinks to the bottom. The qvevri is closed, and the first racking comes in March.

Where does orange wine come from?

Georgia, and then Oslavia. The Georgian claim is not marketing. Wines of Georgia dates the oldest known winemaking qvevri, found in a Neolithic settlement in eastern Georgia in 2015, to 6000 BCE. It puts the country's winemaking tradition at more than 8,000 years. UNESCO inscribed the "ancient Georgian traditional Qvevri wine-making method" on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. It describes an "egg-shaped earthenware vessel" into which "the juice, grape skins, stalks and pips" are poured before it is "sealed and buried in the ground so that the wine can ferment for five to six months before being drunk". Wines of Georgia records that in 2021 the qvevri itself was granted Protected Geographical Indication status. It was the first non-food item on Georgia's State Register of Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications of Goods. That register now fixes its shape, capacity, raw material and production method. Modern vessels run from 100 to 3,500 litres.

Who restarted the style in Friuli and Slovenia?

Two growers in one village, and neither of them invented it. Woolf points to Matija Vertovec, a priest from the Vipava valley. His 1844 manual Vinoreja za Slovence recommended skin macerations "from 24 hours to 30 days". It noted that "it improves the flavour and durability of the wine, and ensures it will ferment to dryness". The practice was then largely abandoned as the region industrialised. WSET credits Mario Schiopetto in Capriva del Friuli with bringing temperature control, selected yeast, the pneumatic press and stainless steel to Italian white wine in the second half of the 1960s. Pale, fruity, tannin-free whites became the point.

The revival came out of Oslavia. In the mid-1990s, Woolf writes, Stanko Radikon concluded that his thick-skinned Ribolla Gialla had more to give. His son Saša gave Decanter the best line in the whole subject: "For years, it's as if we were just making rosé from the grapes of Château Pétrus." WSET records that Gravner used a hail-wrecked 1996 harvest to macerate his surviving Ribolla on the skins, and that Gambero Rosso panned him for it. Woolf adds that he visited Georgia in 2000 and switched entirely to qvevri in 2001. WSET names the others who followed, all in the same cluster of hills either side of the border. They are Dario Prinčič in Oslavia, and in Brda, Aleks Klinec at Medana, Edi Simčič at Vipolže and Aleš Kristančič at Movia.

What does orange wine taste like, and why does the tannin surprise people?

It tastes like a white wine with the structure of a red, and the tannin is the part nobody is ready for. Skins carry phenolics whether the grape is black or white, so fermenting on them extracts grip. Georgia's National Wine Agency describes traditional Kakhetian wine as characterised by "high extraction, a high content of phenolic compounds and tannins". WSET's tasting note on Gravner's amber Ribolla is orange peel and walnut, full body, with intensity "well balanced by firm but refined, medium plus tannins".

The range is wide and worth respecting. Woolf separates lighter, shorter-macerated wines with "subtle phenolics" from what he calls the more extreme end, the Ribolla Giallas of Radikon, Gravner and Dario Prinčič. A few days on skins gives texture. Six months gives something you chew.

That tannin also buys time. Woolf notes the practical reason the technique survived in the Collio hills at all. Macerated white wines generally have increased longevity, because the antioxidants in the tannins act as a preservative. A conventional white and a skin-contact wine from the same vineyard and vintage do not age on the same clock. That is the part that matters if you are deciding when to open a bottle rather than what to say about it.

How is orange wine different from rosé?

They are opposite processes, which is why they are not neighbours on a shelf. Rosé takes black grapes and removes skin contact. Orange wine takes white grapes and adds it.

WSET sets out three routes to rosé. The first is direct pressing, where black grapes are pressed and the juice taken off the skins quickly with "minimal interaction with the skins and their pigmented tannins", after which the juice "is fermented like a white wine". The second is short maceration, where crushed fruit spends a brief period on skins before pressing. The third is blending red wine with white. Every one of those is a technique for getting less out of a skin. Orange wine is the technique for getting more.

Style	Grapes	Skin contact	What you get
White	White	Juice pressed off before fermentation	Pale colour, no skin tannin
Rosé	Black	None (direct pressing) or a short maceration before pressing	Pink, minimal skin tannin
Red	Black	Fermented on the skins	Colour, tannin, structure
Orange	White	Fermented on the skins, 24 hours to six months	Copper to amber, real tannin, savoury depth

Why is orange wine filed under white here?

Because the grapes are white, and a category has to be something you can filter a market by. Our producer atlas filters by seven styles: red, white, rosé, sweet, champagne, sparkling and fortified. Orange sits inside white, on the grape rather than the technique.

That is a filing decision, not a verdict on the wine, and it goes against part of the trade. WSET argues orange wines "have established themselves as a distinct category, alongside white, rosé and red, still and sparkling". Georgia goes further and treats amber as its best-known traditional style rather than a subset of anything. Both positions are defensible. Ours is that skin contact is a winemaking technique, like barrel fermentation or carbonic maceration. Techniques belong in a filter rather than in the top-level taxonomy. The alternative is a category that has to absorb every future fashion in the cellar. How we label and separate things is set out in our methodology, including the cases where we have got it wrong before.

How should you serve orange wine, and what does it go with?

Serve it like a light red, not like a white. RAW WINE's guidance is that orange wines are high in both tannin and acidity, and are best "slightly chilled - around 15C or cellar temperature". WSET reports that Gravner's own recommendation for his amber Ribolla is that it be drunk at a typical red wine temperature. Fridge-cold does two bad things at once: it flattens the aromatics that were the whole point of the maceration, and it hardens the tannin.

On food, this is the style's strongest argument. Saša Radikon told RAW WINE that "the nice thing of orange wines is that you can pair them with basically everything". RAW WINE adds that one bottle can carry a whole meal. The reason is structural rather than mystical. Tannin handles fat and protein, and acidity handles richness and salt. The savoury, nutty register meets the dishes that break conventional pairings: fermented and pickled things, smoked fish, hard sheep's cheese, anything heavily spiced. Not every bottle is a challenge, either. Emma Dawson, a wine buyer for Marks & Spencer, described a Kakhetian Rkatsiteli to Decanter as "very approachable", with "the hallmark texture and light oxidative influence" balanced by "a fresh, fruity core".

If you have never had one, start short. A wine with a few days of maceration will read as a white with unusual texture. A Gravner or a Radikon will read as something else entirely, and it is worth meeting the style before you meet its extreme.

See where these wines actually come from

Orange wine is a story about two places, one ancient and one tiny, and it reads better on a map than in a paragraph. Our producer atlas puts every estate we cover on the ground with its appellation, classification and grape set. You can see how close the Oslavia growers sit to the Slovenian border, and why that hillside, not a marketing plan, produced the revival. Gravner and Radikon are both on it, both filed under white, both in the village of Oslavia in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Georgia is not on the atlas yet. We would rather tell you that than draw pins we cannot stand behind.