Fashion, trend, discover, re-discover, innovation, renewal of traditions. Call it as you like, but what sure is that Orange Wines became today an integrated part of the wine world and find their epicenter in Italy.
For less wine-experimenting people, orange wines are basically (and for the more experts, please forgive me the extreme simplification) white wines made in a similar way of the red ones, with prolonged maceration and long maturation, often in contact with oxygen. These winemaking techniques give to the wine the typical colour going from orange to amber, plus a extreme diverse and specific range of flavours.
Technically speaking, orange wines are not at all a recent invention. This type of winemaking goes after the antique techniques for producing wine in Georgia and Armenia used already thousands (thousands!) of years ago. In recent times they have been resumed on the border area between Italy and Slovenia, drawing since then the attention of wine producers all over the world.
When a product is on the wave of success it becomes a trend and, every trend, its life is similar to a parabola, with a growing phase, one of stability and, finally, a decline. True. But not properly right. Every product, in every sector, live seasons of increased or decreased success, short or long. The limit in considering orange wines a temporary phenomenon is the though of these wines being a modern innovation, which make them more similar to a marketing operation rather than something different. The reality is that these wines have always been here, winemakers simply lost willingness and interests in producing them for a very long time. Now they’re back and are finally earning the deserved interest.
An element that take orange wines away from a passing trend is experimentation. This is the basic for this kind of wines and is related to used grape varieties, maceration times, maturation times, longevity checks and in general everything related to winemaking. If some of these wines have already a sturdy market position, thanks to a few forward-looking producers, for many more we’re still in the experimentation phase. I recently heard statements like “it’s not time anymore to experiment, the phenomenon is already defined and the market is tired” and I definitely disagree.
Experimentation in the wine world is a daily task, never-ending, essential for the progress and for the innovation of the products. It’s due to experimentation the ever better quality of wines arriving of the market in general and the solid commercial position of wines became icons (of which too often we just accept they exist, not thinking of also them are result of experimentations). Experimentation is part of the winemaker DNA and of everyone involved, with different roles, in the wine market.
For sure, is much easier identify the orange wine world as an experimental world as, to the sight of the most, these are a recent invention if compared to white or red wines already established. But, when in the 1980s a group of winemakers in Langhe area started using barriques instead of big traditional wooden vats, was this an experimentation? This about Barolo is just one over the countless examples that can be produced about this.
In my opinion, orange wines won’t end up on the most hidden shelfs of the wine shops but will live side by side to other types of wine, even in the restaurant wine lists (where today they are still insufficient). Certainly, the moment of greater media visibility is about to progressively diminish – but this is a common process of all “new” products – while their presence will strengthen in the consumer’s mind, who is still in the discovery and comprehension phase. This strengthen will need to be supported by professionals, able to communicate the real phenomenon entity, avoiding to relegate it as a passing trend. As in every aspect of life, experimentation is the fundamental ring of progress and, pushed by curiosity and by research, leads to the identification of new paths to be walked on, each of them always has surprises and lead us to discover new experiences.