Category Orange Wine

Entries 4 Total

Understanding Orange Wines 4: Abe Schoener’s Scholium Project: The Prince in His Caves 2010, San Floriano Normale 2006

Feb 25, 12 12:39 AM

Abe Schoener, Scholium Project winemaker, as Thor

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Considering the Meaning of the Germanic-Norse God Thor

From the 8th to 12th centuries a campaign to Christianize Scandinavia ensued with missionaries first venturing into Denmark and over time slowly establishing a network of churches through Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and later Finland. During this time period, many people in the regions became nominally Christian but simultaneously showed resistance in other ways. One way in which this is seen is that the god Thor stood as a popular symbol of working against the demands of the missionaries to instead maintain ones own commitments, even while the larger system of Christianity stayed in place. People were seen wearing symbols of Thor to express such interest. In this way, the symbolic history of the god Thor includes working against the larger social system in place without necessarily undoing it.

Thor now is often recognized as a kind of storm god, because of his pictorial associations with lightning, and other cloud formations. However, scholars have found that Thor’s deeper associations actually included family, community and fruitful health of the fields. The god does bring lightning with him as he travels when needed. He is also connected with the growth of oak trees, fertility, and healing. Further, it has been found that Thor has carried a presence across centuries of tradition, reaching from Ancient times all the way into contemporary interest. Over time he has been seen with many nicknames, even while the symbols surrounding him are consistent. (I promise talk of Thor will be relevant in a moment.)

Tasting Orange Wines: Italians Alongside California’s Scholium Project

Several weeks ago several of us tasted five orange wines–three Italian and two from Abe Schoener of the Scholium Project–alongside each other. (For more on the Italian orange wines, and a picture of the wines that shows their rich color and opacity side-by-side check out Thursday’s post. Incidentally, the name Thursday actually originates in honor of the god Thor. Honest.) In tasting the five wines together a family of style showed itself between the Italian wines on the one hand, and the Scholium wines on the other. There was a kind of textural quality common to each set that differed from that of the other. Orange wines vary so much from the kinds of wine most people are used to it can be challenging to describe the experience of tasting them. In seeing how the Italian wines diverged from the Californian it seemed metaphor best captured familial congruence. While the Italian wines drank as if they embodied themselves in the glass, the Scholium wines had a focused, sharp precision as if they were shooting light from the glass before you’d even finished pouring them.

Wine Maker Abe Schoener

Abe Schoener of Scholium Project has become a kind of mythical figure with a strong cult following. His wines deviate so consistently from the mainstream perception of California wine style they take on their own sort of cult of personality, associated with the perceived personality of their maker, but garnering a following of their own. On the wine geek-hipster side of things, much of the passion people hold for Schoener’s wines arises out of their departure from the nominal style of California. He does his own thing within the surrounding region without falling to expected styles of the area, and without changing the way the overall system works either. California is comfortable with what it does in wine.

Schoener also garners a following, however, from his own personal story, and the commitments he brings to his work. Originally a philosophy professor, in the late 1990s Schoener began to grow tired of academia and turned to deepening his knowledge of wine. While touring and learning in Napa Valley he eventually connected with wine maker John Kongsgaard and assisted with him for a year. As the story goes, at the end of the year, Kongsgaard sent Schoener off to begin making wine on his own believing he had gained the knowledge to step into his own production process. Taking a risk, Schoener gave up academic life all together and began funding his wine interests with credit cards and a couple of small financial supporters.

Schoener avoids the claim that he purposefully makes wines that taste different from his area’s surrounding wine makers. But he readily admits that he experiments with various production techniques and describes his wines as a project in which he’ll try something new and hopefully learn to emulate those he admires. Schoener also states that his goals are to let the wine manage itself, so to speak, while also producing a style that reflects the place, the harvest year, and the grapes themselves. However, Schoener’s wines often show such difference from how the involved varieties are usually expected to taste that he avoids naming the grapes on the label and instead offers the name of the vineyard from which the fruit was harvested, and a title he believes captures that particular wine’s personality (most often historical literature references).

Creating Scholium Project Review Comics

My wine comics generally include some visual reference to an element from the wine label being reviewed. However, the label of Scholium Project wines consistently carry an elegant presentation of the first proposition of Newton’s Principia. I’ve drawn a Scholium wine previously and as such wanted a different challenge of presentation for a comic of these wonderful wines. In reflecting on the original experience I had with Scholium orange wines alongside the Italians the reference to light shooting from the glass stood out. Between the similarity that description has with lightning, and the god Thor’s association with the health of fields, as well as oak, fertility and healing I realized two things. Thor is connected to a range of elements deeply entwined with the wine makers life, and, like Thor, Schoener would seem to have the ability to wield the power of lightning. To put it another way, Abe Schoener–a newly found nickname for the god Thor.

Scholium Project The Prince in His Caves 2010

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100% Sauvignon Blanc

The Prince in His Caves is an orange wine produced entirely from Sauvignon Blanc. It has been an ongoing project of Schoener’s released now for a handful of years. Illustrative of Schoener’s commitment to developing his abilities, the Caves project has been produced with a similar basis of technique–foot stomping of grapes with extended skin contact, thus making it an orange wine–each vintage but with tweaking of the details of production to allow for recognition of that year’s grape qualities. As such, the Cave project is very vintage driven.

The 2010 rendition of The Prince in His Caves is a vibrant, enlivening, and at the same time elegant wine showing a surprising mix of characteristics, as must be expected from any orange wine. The alcohol here is fairly high at 14.02% and thus the wine is warming, but the effect turns out pleasing alongside the medium high acidity and smooth medium tannin. This is not a wine that burns. The flavors here show similarities to ginger-peach tea in a manner desirable from the wine glass. Those notes are expanded by a bouquet and flavor of honeysuckle, touches of white pepper, and a surprising, lovely bite of pickled lemon. For such a range of characteristics, the Prince still shows as well balanced. The finish here is impressively long leaving light in the mouth for at least two runs around the block.

Scholium Project San Floriano Normale 2006

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100% Pinot Grigio

Schoener’s 2006 San Floriano Normale exemplifies his willingness to admit when an experiement didn’t really work out, as well as his interest in seeing what he can do to work with it. As he describes it, the acidity on the original version of this wine was so high it was verging on undrinkable. He reblended barrels and aged the wine in a mix of conditions (in the cellar, outside on the patio, back in the cellar, back outside, etc) for five years before bottling, thus turning a skin fermented pinot grigio into an incredibly textured chocolatey, rich fruit wine with tang, both richness and precision, and sherry or madeira like notes. It shows both the oxidative elements of sherry, and the rich flavors associated with maderization.

incredibly, the alcohol on this wine is high at 16.98%. It definitely carries the heat of such alcohol and yet the body of the wine makes it work. My fear in tasting the San Floriano Normale was that with the high alcohol-medium high acidity combination this wine would burn the mouth as it got warmer. Initially I was certain that it needed to be served partially chilled. In actuality the wine handled drinking warm quite well and remained pleasant, without burning as high alcohol and acid together will tend to do.

Both of the Scholium Project orange wines were liked by the group in our tasting, and a couple of the tasters went on to order some of the Prince in His Caves to have with dinner. They’re wines that are fascinating on their own, and also work alongside food.

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Thanks again to Kim for requesting the orange wine focus. It’s been fun to delve so deeply into the phenomenon, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, Kim. There are numerous other orange wines in the world. I have a few more in cellar that will appear here in the future.

If you’re interested in knowing about other orange wines, check out Dr. Vino’s nice long list that includes many of them.

http://www.drvino.com/2011/10/29/orange-wines-levi-dalton-decanting/

Thank you to Dan for encouraging me to go ahead with the Thor cartoon. I was nervous about doing it but am happy with how it turned out, and appreciate the push to take a risk. I hope Abe Schoener finds it funny as well.

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Have a wine focus you’d like to see explored here through comics and write up? Please feel free to email me at lilyelainehawkwakawaka (at) gmail (dot) com . I enjoy the challenge, and hearing from you too!

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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Understanding Orange Wines 3: Italian Orange Wines: Gravner Breg, Vodopivec Classica, Bea Arboreus, Coenobium Rusticum

Feb 23, 12 7:11 AM

Gravner Breg; San Floriano Normale Scholium Project; The Prince in His Caves Scholium Project; Vodopivec Classica; Paolo Bea Arboreus

The photograph of five of the eight orange wines reviewed in this four part feature on orange wine gives you a sense of how rich the color and opacity of these wines can be. Remember too that each of those five wines shown above was made with what are otherwise thought of as white wine grapes.

Italian Orange Wines

In the orange wine phenomenon Italy stands among wine geeks generally as the most well-known, and desired center of production. Producers like Gravner in Friuli, and Bea in Umbria are famous and followed among wine geeks, seen as the originators of a new tradition of unusual wine.

Interestingly, as recently as the 1950s what we now call orange wines were being made by various producers in Italy simply as one possible way to make wine with white grapes. However, by the 1960s such practices were dwindling with the idea that more contemporary methods, including removing skin contact, was the more appropriate, technically correct way to make white wine.

As will be discussed further, in the 1990s Georgian Amber wine making tradition reintroduced the orange wine making process to Italian wine makers leading to the reintegration of extended skin contact (maceration) and the possibility of using earthenware fermentation vessels (called kvevri in Georgia, anfora in Italy). Though the use of clay is sometimes mistakenly taken as fundamental to orange wine production, in actuality it is not necessary to the process. Maceration with white grapes is definitive of orange wine, with the use of anfora being only one possible way to produce such wine.

Paolo Bea 2006 Arboreus

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100% Trebbiano Spoletino

In the Umbria region of Italy, Paolo Bea‘s farm uses 80-100 year old, pre-phylloxera vines that exhibit a unique constitution. They’ve been trained to grow like trees with the canes on the vine pointing up allowing a great space underneath. The tradition of growing vines in the arboreus fashion reaches back to pre-tractor farming when crops were planted mixed together. By teaching the vines to grow up like trees farmers could better utilize the ground underneath to produce other crops. It was not until the introduction of motorized tractors that arboreus vines were commonly removed and differing crop types were regularly planted separately.

Bea is well known for his interesting and high quality, low production, artisan style wine. His Arboreus named wine is made with full skin contact entirely of one grape–Trebbiano Spoletino–and fermented with partially dried grapes mixed in as well to add richness of flavor. Once the wine has fermented it is aged in stainless steel tanks without temperature control for 4 years. The resulting wine is rich, clean, and lovely.

Bea’s style is known for being hugely vintage specific. Because of his low intervention style of wine making, and commitment to biodynamics, the ripeness of the grapes from year to year, as well as other factors like how wet the season has been, show strong impact on the resulting wine. Incredibly, the 2006 vintage included only 80 cases, further emphasizing the low production aspects of Bea’s wine making.

Bea’s 2006 Arboreus was both lightly flavored and full body-textured in the mouth. It carried a strong soft palate focus so that the flavors of the wine hit at the back and top of the mouth showcasing the fullness. The flavors included white peach and pear alongside light passionfruit, and white flowers, filled out by anise, maple, and distinct bergamot. The acidity here is medium high keeping your mouth watering over the medium tannins. This is a sexy wine with pleasing texture.

The Bea was the favorite of at least two of the ten people that participated in a private tasting of this and four other orange wines. Everyone present (that was willing to select favorites) included it in their top two.

Coenobium Rusticum 2009

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45% Trebbiano, 35% Malvasia, 20% Verdicchio,

Just 30 miles north of Rome, the Coenobium wines are produced on site at Monastero Suore Cistercensi. There the nuns of Cistercensi tend the grapes and make the wine by hand. The nuns are invested in very low intervention practices allowing fermentation to occur based on only naturally occurring yeasts, and completely organic practices. Amazingly, the nuns draw on the talents of Giampiero Bea, son of Paolo Bea, maker of the Arboreus wine just mentioned to develop their wine making techniques.

The blend on this Coenobium Rusticum 2009 is pert and showy. It leaps from the glass ready to dance strong floral, woody, apple skin scents. The truth is this wine needs some age to really celebrate what it has to offer. Currently the youth shows as fume-y making the bouquet almost medicinal. However, the structure is there in this wine to support time in the bottle. Also, the Coenobium Rusticum has a respected recent vintage history that shows it tends to do well with some age, becoming more layered and grounded with time. That said, there are clear notes of yellow apple skin, and Macintosh apple along side vegetal characteristics and white tropical flowers here. The tannins are medium high, drying the mouth over the medium acidity.

This wine is also known for doing very well after opening. As Alder Yarrow explains on his blog Vinography, the extended maceration (skin contact) fundamental to orange wine production makes orange wines, and certainly the Coenobium Rusticum, more resistant to the negative effects of oxygen exposure. That is, while most wines will keep only a couple of days after being opened, according to Yarrow’s article on a previous vintage of the Coenobium, this orange wine can keep for several weeks after being opened when kept cool. He also recommends decanting the wine early in the day for drinking in the evening to allow the flavors to really open properly.

For those of you interested in purchasing some orange wines, the Coenobium Rusticum is available at a lesser price than the other Italian orange wines (though the Georgian orange wines reviewed Monday are of similar price, if you can locate them–they are harder to find) and so is a good value. The nuns produce the wine as part of their spiritual practices and also to support their facility but also purposefully keep their costs very low all around.

Vodopivec Classica 2005 Vitovska

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100% Vitovska

Everything about this wine is sexy. The texture is rich, and the flavors are subtle and evocative. As ridiculous as it might sound, this wine carries the soft intensity of a woman whispering she wants you–the intimacy and sensuality of such a moment captures the feeling of giving yourself to this glass. The wine carries light oxidation offering subtle sherry-like qualities with very light fruit. The oxidation effect here pumps up the mineral-like elements and with the smaller fruit focus the glass has a lot of refreshing sea air and mineral to it. All of this is rounded out with spice notes of clove and licorice. What a lovely wine!

Paolo Vodopivec is an exciting man to study–video interviews of him online show his focused passion for the wine he makes and the land he cares for. This passion is further expressed through his commitment to a rather obscure grape indigenous to the Fruili-Slovenia border. Vodopivec’s wines are made with the Vitovska grape, which is so uncommon it appears in only one English language wine book. The grape originates from Slovenia but is now grown more over the mountain range in the Friuli region of Italy.

Though Vodopivec does make anfora wine, the Classica is made using Slovenian oak. Vitovska is kept on skin contact for two weeks in oak, then once fermentation is complete (using only indigenous yeast and no temperature control) the wine is aged for two years in Slovenian oak barrels.

This wine was one of my favorites in all the orange wines tasted–it is a lovely, approachable wine, that is also intriguing to drink, and effectively pushes all my love-for-grape-obscurity buttons.

Gravner Anfora Breg 2004

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45% Sauvignon Blanc, 30% Pinot Grigio, 15% Chardonnay

Josko Gravner is the most famous of the world’s orange wine makers. As the story goes, in 1996 a friend of Gravner traveled to Georgia and witnessed wine makers there making Georgian Amber wine in kvevri–earthenware vessels. The friend was certain Gravner would enjoy experimenting with making wine in the Georgian fashion and so purchased a kvevri and sent it to Gravner in the Friuli region of Italy. Gravner spent several years learning, and experimenting with the kvevri and orange wine making techniques.

By the second half of the 1990s Gravner was already considered one of the best white wine makers in all of Italy. His abilities were famous and as a result he had numerous wine makers from around the country that would travel to Friuli to study with him. At that time his celebrated abilities were focused primarily on making white wine in a contemporary fashion (no skin contact) with fermentation and aging occurring in oak barrels. However, after several years experimenting with wine making in clay, Gravner shifted his wine portfolio completely and released his first all anfora wine collection in 2001, made too with extended skin contact, thus making them anfora-based orange wines.

In the same sweep from oak to anfora, Gravner also moved deeply into biodynamic practices speaking of the poisons created by non-biodynamic wines on the one hand, and the spirit of the wine on the other. Gravner’s website explicitly states that he bottles on the waning moon, a practice integral to fully-vested biodynamic treatises. The initial public response to Gravner’s shift was that he was crazy. His wine sales dropped, and his wines were deemed atypical to the regional type, further impacting his marketing credibility. By 2006 though orange wine had become a major geek-wine fetish with Gravner as the mystical head shaman of this cult world.

Tasting Gravner’s Breg Anfora makes clear that his work with orange wines is not merely a matter of wine-geek paradise. Gravner is doing something special here. In the private tasting that included this wine, 10 of us all in or connected to the food and wine industries tasted five orange wines side-by-side. While there was strong interest in each of the five wines, the Gravner received the most all around appreciation for its balance and complexity.

The Gravner Breg has a rich, warming effect in the mouth. It shows beautiful complexity offering dried fruits with floral characteristics, alongside leather, and forest floor with spice. This is a savory wine that would do well with salty foods. The unusual nature of these orange wines meant the group was willing throughout the tasting to fall to metaphor and brief story elements to explain the experience of drinking these wines. The regular “tastes like apple” type notes simply wouldn’t suffice. With Gravner’s Breg the comment was that this wine is like drinking oysters next to a man that had just finished a pleasantly sweaty work day. The savory aspects of this wine are seafood and sweat delicate in the most wonderful way.

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Friday we’ll complete the series focusing on orange wines by looking at a couple of orange wines from California.

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Thank you to Garret at Italian Wine Merchants for his help in locating the Gravner, Bea, and Vodopivec wines mentioned here.

Thanks again to Kim for writing to ask if I’d do an orange wine feature! I hope you’re enjoying it!

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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Understanding Orange Wines 2: Georgian Amber Wines; Pheasant’s Tears Rkatsiteli, Vinoterra Kisi

Feb 20, 12 5:42 PM

To properly tell the story of the orange wine phenomenon one must begin in the country of Georgia. While discussions of orange wines famously focus on Italian wine makers (primarily Gravner and Bea) and their influence on wine making in  both their own and other countries, their orange wine-making techniques actually originate in their discovery of Georgian wine making tradition.

Archaeological evidence currently points to the longest known history of wine making resting in the area now known as Georgia, with clay wine making vessels, there called kvevri, dotting the countryside, many still containing seeds of ancient grapes.

Today, Georgian wine making still follows tradition with many people across the countryside actually making wine for themselves in their own back yard. And by that I literally mean IN their own backyard. Kvevri work importantly by being buried in the ground. On the western side of the country kvevri are often buried in sand outside, however in the East where temperatures are higher, wine makers tend to construct wine cellars in which the kvevri are buried. Wine cellar ground burial is seen to keep the ambient temperatures cooler around the lid of the kvevri, and also to protect the structure more fully.

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Georgian Amber wine production utilizes white wine grapes indigenous to the Georgian region, but instead of using them in the way traditional to contemporary white wine making, as discussed on Friday, the grapes are left in contact with the skins during fermentation. But, the Georgian Amber wine tradition goes even further–juice is not only left in contact with the skins, but also the seeds, and the ripest stems as well. By including so much of the grape plant in the process, Georgian wine makers have found that the wine remains more stable, allowing what would now be called a natural process in the production of these wines. That is, preservatives are not utilized in making Amber wines. Instead, the tannins introduced from the various grape parts (when all included in fermentation called the chacha), and the naturally high acidity of the grapes themselves work together to allow for a wine making process without the introduction of petro-chemical, or human made, such as biodynamic, additives. Further, by being buried in the ground the kvevri provide a cool environment in which fermentation can take place, allowing a slower process.

Kvevri are made of earthenware (terra cotta type clay) that is then lined in beeswax as a kind of natural light sealant. The material allows for micro-oxydation to occur in the wine but does not heavily influence the taste of the wine itself, as other materials such as oak would. During the fermentation process the egg shape of the vessel encourages a natural circulation process of the chacha to occur. As the materials circulate the seeds slowly sink and get caught by the pointy bottom of the kvevri, thereby largely removing their influence on the flavor of the wine.

When fermentation is complete, wine is transferred into another kvevri leaving sediment behind in the first. This is done repeatedly as desired by the wine maker leading to a natural filtration process as the wine moves from one vessel to the next. In this way no chemicals are used for fining or filtration. Once the final kvevri is in place with the wine, it is left to age for anywhere from one to eight years buried in the ground, and covered with leaves, a simple natural product (like clay, or cork) lid, and then sand.

Traditionally, Georgian Amber wine has been made with the indigenous grape Rkatsiteli, but today some wine makers are producing Amber-style wines with other indigenous white grapes as well, such as Kisi. In either case, with the extended skin, and stem contact the tannins on Amber wine are higher, and for both grapes the natural acidity is also higher, leading to a wine with loads of structure.

Note: many orange wines around the world are made in amphora in a manner similar to that described here for Amber wines. However, Georgian wine makers emphasize that their earthenware vessels are unique. In their view kvevri have properties not typical to all amphora. As such, I have made a point of continuing to call them kvevri here. Many wine discussions on orange wines (of which Georgian Amber wines are included) will speak of kvevri or amphora interchangeably.

Pheasant’s Tears 2009 Rkatsiteli Amber Wine

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As the story goes, a wine maker has succeeded when he makes a wine so good it brings a pheasant to tears, thus the name of this Georgian winery.

In recent history, Georgian wine making served the area’s local people, with many producing wine for their own families, or, with higher production regions, went to what was at the time the Soviet Union. However, when Georgia became independent again the economic exchange situation changed.

After the separation of the two countries an international political incident occurred. In 2006, four Russian officers crossed into the Georgian countryside and were picked up by local authorities accused of being spies. It turns out the incident caused offense to then Russian ruler Putin, who retaliated by cutting off all travel and exchange links to the smaller country of Georgia. Needless to say, the Georgian economy was significantly affected, and the area’s wine making exports were hampered as well. Interestingly, soon after an American painter that happened to be traveling through the region helped redirect Georgian wine exports to new regions of the world.

In 2007 painter John Wurdeman paired up with Georgian wine maker Gela Patalishvili, after the two met by chance when John was painting Gela’s vineyards. Together they started the winery Pheasant’s Tears focusing on Georgian wine making tradition with marketing and export heading West. (Their story is utterly charming-you can read more about it on their website.)

Pheasant’s Tears Rkatsiteli Amber Wine follows the long standing tradition producing an importantly unique wine. The grape is indigenous to the region, and combined with amber wine practices creates an intensely floral-perfumed wine with rich texture, and an impressively long finish. “Ripe” is the best way to capture the simple effect of this wine in the mouth. But its characteristics are complex–the floral qualities are most impressive, but they are grounded with ripe fruits, and nut characteristics all on the body of medium high tannins, and medium high acidity. This wine first waters your mouth, and then dries it out again.

After tasting the Pheasant’s Tears, I drank it along side roast chicken breast, mixed vegetable filo pastry, and a feta vegetable pasta salad. The wine went equally well with all selections, and I am certain would pair even more broadly. The structure on this wine means it can stand years more aging, and I’d be curious to taste either an older vintage, or this one again in several more years to see what it does to the floral and fruit characteristics.

Incredibly, Rkatsiteli is one of the oldest known grape varieties with many of those seeds found in kvevri around the Georgian countryside dating back at least 3000 years. It also naturally shows incredibly high acidity with wine makers having to work to make wines from it more drinkable–most often either through aging, or later harvesting–as a result.

This wine is one I was thoroughly intrigued by, and have certain respect for, but I have to admit the ripe tart tang of it combined with such heavy floral elements were strange for me, and I felt a limit in how much I wanted to drink. I wanted to taste it but continuing to certainly demands food alongside. The finish on this wine is so long I could honestly feel its effects in my mouth as much as 30 minutes later.

Vinoterra 2006 Kisi

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Wine maker Gogi Dakisvili employs Georgian Amber wine making traditions producing several varietal wines of different white grapes indigenous to the region. While he does produce a rkatsiteli amber wine, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to taste from another grape local to the area–Kisi. Kisi garners far less international attention, and is a lesser produced varietal as well. In fact the grape’s reputation is small enough it shows up in few wine books.

In Georgia, Kisi is more commonly found in the Kakhetian region of the East (where both these wines originate), and there is often treated to a blended wine or a sweet wine process. Here, Dakisvili instead chooses to produces a dry style single varietal with it.

The Vinoterra Kisi offered impressive balance giving elegance to what is certainly a richly textured wine. The flavors here are both floral and fruit driven with the thickening of date flavors and smoke showing as well. The acidity on this kisi is medium bringing a nice complement to the medium-plus tannin. So, here you have a wine with pleasing mouth feel, that dries your mouth but keeps it just watered enough to allow the wine’s flavors to show through.

After tasting this wine I drank it alongside the same dinner described above, but I also added on at the end a piece of traditional Yupik-style hard smoke salmon just to experiment. The wine honestly complemented the fish, which is no small feat. Alaska native style smoke fish is incredibly firm bodied, with rich oils, and strong smoke plus salmon flavors. You stink good for hours after eating it. The oils of the fish helped the tannins of the wine, while the smoke notes and acid of the wine complemented the fish. I’m impressed.

(If you want to read more on salmon styles from Alaska, including the smoke fish I mention here, check out a newer blog from an Alaskan fisherwoman, wine drinker and skier that discusses the yumminess of these things: Fish*Ski*Wine. She’s super knowledgeable on both salmon-wine pairings, and different seafoods, so feel free to ask her questions there. I know she’d love to hear from you!)

Of the two Georgian wines I enjoyed the Vinoterra best, but I recognize too that it has the advantage of age over the Pheasant’s Tears. Reviews of older vintages of the Pheasant’s Tears imply that the pert qualities of the Rkatsiteli calm as it ages. Both wines are certainly capable of extended cellaring, and both also prefer to be served with food.

Neither of these wines wants to be a cocktail style wine drunk alone. They’re lonely for food, and your palate will do best with them respecting those needs.

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Again, thanks to Kim for writing and asking me to do an Orange Wine Focus.

If you want to read more on what makes an Orange wine, well, orange, check out my explanation of them from Friday. There you’ll also see more of an exploration of the importance and effects of tannin in wine.

http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/02/18/understanding-orange-wines-a-quick-and-dirty-look-at-how-theyre-made-and-what-their-tannins-do-to-our-saliva/

You can also read more about Georgian Amber wine specifically by exploring the numerous links embedded throughout this post.

Wednesday we’ll take a look at several Italian orange wines, including those made famous by Gravner and Bea.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

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If you have a feature you’d like investigated and comic-ed out too, feel free to email me and let me know. I’d love to hear from you!

lilyelainehawkwakawaka (at) gmail (dot) com

Copyright 2012 all rights reserved. When sharing or forwarding, please attribute to WakawakaWineReviews.com

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Understanding Orange Wines: A Quick and Dirty Look at How They’re Made and What Their Tannins Do To Our Saliva

Feb 18, 12 4:02 AM

Kim wrote and asked if I would do a feature on Orange Wine. She’d read about the phenomenon online and hoped I’d take some time both to explain what the heck orange wine is, and also to review some orange wines. Thanks so much for asking, Kim, and I’m so happy to do a feature on the subject for you!

So, today we’ll cover both the general process through which orange wines are made, and the basic qualities of grapes that get presented differently in the orange wine making process, and thus make tasting orange wines interesting.

Next week we’ll look at a whole series of orange wines from various parts of the world, reviewing the tasting notes of each, and the more specific story of how each are made.

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Knowing these points about the basic parts of the grape–the skin, seeds, and pulp–will help explain what is importantly different between a typical white wine, and an orange wine of the second sort. (Though I would eventually like to taste a Vino Naranja and admit I haven’t gotten to do so yet. For those wine geeks that are interested in such things–vino naranja is aged in a solera method and as a result shows qualities like sherry. The rest of this post ignores vino naranja and assumes that the designation “orange wine” refers to the second version of this designation.)

So, first, let’s look at the quick and dirty basics of how a white wine is typically made these days.

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In white wine production the skin is quickly separated from the bulk of the juice. Though the skins are then pressed again to gain more juice from the grape, the liquid from the first press, and that from the second are kept separate during fermentation. In this way, the wine maker can then carefully select the right proportion for mixing to create the final bottled wine. By keeping the first and second press juice separate the wine maker is also able to reduce the color, and tannin influence in the wine. In both, the skins are kept away from the fermentation process, and the seeds are filtered out of the liquid before fermentation as well.

The reasons for keeping the skins and seeds separate from the liquid rest primarily in the flavor and textural effect they impart to the wine. Understanding how the tannins present in the skin, seeds, and stems impacts the quality of the wine will better show the difference between a wine made with their influence and a wine made without their influence.

An orange wine is made with a white grape variety, but in a process more like how red wine is typically made.

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Though orange wines are made with white grape varieties, because orange wines are produced in a manner more like how red wines are made, orange wines have textural and structural qualities closer to a red than to a white wine. While the free run and the press juice are kept separate in white wine production, in orange wines there is only the initial pressing done firmly and then skins are fermented within the juice. In this way the skins impart both color and tannin to the wine. The richer color quality of the wine caused by the skin is where the designation “orange wine” originates.

The basic commonality of orange wine production is the extended contact of the skin with the juice. However, different orange wine producers vary other aspects of the production process, most notably how long the skin contact continues. For some wine makers, the skin contact is as little as several days, while for others it continues for several months. Besides the choice of extended skin contact, orange wine producers also differ in the type of fermentation vessel used. This aspect of orange wine production will be considered further next week when we review specific orange wines.

Because of the extended skin contact, orange wines not only have a richer color quality, they also have higher tannin content than typical white wines, while still showing many of the sort of fruit and floral tasting characteristics of a white. As a result, many consider orange wines a difficult food pairing challenge. Tannins create a textural quality in wine that feels both drying and bitter in the mouth, and changes how we experience the flavors of whatever we are tasting, be it wine or food.

Since white wines are produced to keep them sediment free and tannin low, we experience not only their particular grape profile but also a different textural quality than wines made in a red wine fashion. Orange wines, retain their particular white grape profile but gain the structure of a red wine. But also, with the higher tannin levels of the orange wine, the grape’s flavor profile does shift some what along with the texture. Interestingly, in fully blind tastings (where the wines literally could not be seen in the glass) orange wines have actually been mistaken as reds.

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