The qvevri are sealed with a wood or stone lid and the fermentation is allowed to proceed naturally for several months. The idea is that the earth both supports the fragile clay jars and helps keep the vessel naturally cool. These jars are buried in the ground, traditionally in the cellar or ‘marani’ of the house. This technique has a history of around 8,000 years, and it involves crushing the grapes and pouring the lot (juice, skins, pips and stems) into large egg-shaped clay jars called qvevri (sometimes spelt kvevri), which have been scrubbed and lined with beeswax. The most traditional recipe comes from Georgia where qvevri winemaking was listed in 2013 by UNESCO as ‘intangible cultural heritage of humanity’. This period may be anything from a few days to many months (which is in fact far more extreme than almost any red). In simple terms, making an orange wine means vinifying white grapes in a similar way to making red wine, so the fermenting juice spends time macerating in contact with the grape skins. Qvevri winemaking has an 8,000 year history Orange wines are not for everyone – but well worth exploring for a truly fascinating and intriguing wine experience. Don’t think about them as white wines but as a new style all together. These are also wines that can be incredibly long-lived, helped by that phenolic structure, and because they don’t rely on fragile, fruity aromas and flavours for their personality. These are food wines par excellence and can be amazing matches with foods like asparagus, fennel, mushrooms and cheeses, or when you’re looking for a white wine that has the intensity and structure to go with a meat dish. Orange or amber wines tend not to be fruity but are complex, layered and structured, often with notes of dried fruit, herbs and spices, tea and a savoury umami quality. In drinking terms, orange wines can be a little bit of a shock at first to anyone used to clear, pale-coloured, fruity white wines. There’s sometimes an overlap between these two categories but not always. Whether you call them orange or amber, such wines have recently gained an enthusiastic following, alongside the rise of the trendy, but ill-defined, cult of ‘natural’ wines. The winemaking method that results in these deeply-coloured wines is probably the most ancient way of making white wine, a technique that has undergone a revival since the mid-1990s (especially led by producers in northeast Italy such as Gravner and Radikon and joined by neighbours over the border in Slovenia). Some countries, notably Georgia, prefer the term ‘amber’ to avoid exactly this confusion. After much debate and detailed tasting notes, these are the most highly recommended bottles to buy right now.This doesn’t mean wines made from citrus fruit, but white wines that are much deeper in colour than usual, ranging from pale amber to deep orange. We gave our panel of wine experts 11 bottles of orange wine and told them to get pouring. Most are still super dry (although we’ve also found a deliciously sweet dessert wine you should try too!) How we test orange wine Orange wine is known for having quite mild stone fruit flavours, honeyed notes and strong, grippy tannins. When finding the right bottle for you, look out for how long the grapes have been left to macerate – the greater length of time often produces the wackiest results. In other words, the white grapes that are used during the fermentation process are left in contact with their skins from anything for a few days to a few months. Orange wines (named after their colour, not their ingredients) are essentially white wines that have been fermented and aged in their skins. However, with such variety between bottles, even if you’ve tried one in the past and decided it wasn’t for you, we’re confident we can change your mind with this selection. Punchy and often surprising, we’re not going to lie, skin contact styles are the marmite of the wine world and not everyone loves the stuff. You've heard of white wine, red wine and rosé wine, but are you familiar with orange wine?
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