Orange Wine: The Colour Between White and Red

Lunaria Ancestrale Malvasia Orange bottle — Lunaria Ancestrale Malvasia Orange, from our selection.

Orange wine isn't a flavour or a variety. It's a winemaking decision. Standard white wine is made by pressing grapes and immediately separating the juice from the skins. Orange wine makes the opposite choice: the skins stay in contact with the juice for days, weeks, or sometimes months, giving the wine colour, tannin, and a broader range of flavour compounds.

Orange wine isn't a colour or a trend. It's what happens when you make white wine the way wine was made before stainless steel tanks existed.

What makes a wine orange

During skin contact, the grape skins give the wine its amber or orange tint, tannin (hence the slight grip rather than smooth finish), and a broader flavour range. The resulting wine is fuller, more textured, and more complex than a conventional white from the same grape, and it pairs with food in a completely different way.

A very old technique with a recent comeback

Skin-contact winemaking is the original way wine was made, in clay vessels where grapes fermented with their skins for thousands of years. Georgia has been making wine this way for 8,000 years, in underground clay jars called qvevri. The modern revival started in northeastern Italy in the early 1990s and has spread through the natural wine world.

What to expect when you open one

The first thing most people notice is the colour: pale gold to deep amber. Then on the nose: dried fruit, beeswax, something nutty or tea-like. In the glass: more weight than expected, a gentle tannic grip, and flavours that are less fresh-fruit and more dried-fruit, spice, and texture. Orange wines pair beautifully with rich pasta, aged cheeses, fermented vegetables, and spiced meats.

The range is enormous, start in the middle

From 12 hours of skin contact (barely more amber than a conventional white) to a traditional Georgian qvevri wine aged six months on skins, the category spans enormously. The wines we carry sit in the more approachable part of that spectrum: distinctive enough to understand the style, accessible enough not to require a full explanation before the first sip.

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