Orange wine

Orange wine — better called skin-contact or amber wine — is white wine made like a red: instead of pressing the juice off the skins, the winemaker ferments and macerates white grapes on their skins, pips and often stems for days, weeks or months. That extended contact draws out colour, tannin and aromatic compounds, turning a would-be pale white into a burnished gold-to- amber wine with the grip and structure of a light red. The result is dry, savoury and textured, with the fruit pushed from fresh citrus toward dried apricot, orange peel, honey and quince, wrapped in nutty, tea-like, gently oxidative notes and a firm tannic bite. Ancient in Georgia and revived on the Italian–Slovenian border in the 1990s, it has become one of the most versatile and famously food-friendly styles in modern wine — the go-to bottle for the dishes that defeat conventional white and red alike.