Making Contact

Traditionally, to make a rosé, you take red grapes and limit the amount of time the juice stays in contact with the skins. Doing so, you limit the amount of tannins and color that make it from the skins into the final wine. There, however, is a reverse practice, in a way.

You can take white grapes and increase the amount of exposure their juice has with their skins and seeds. Though the colors and tannins are milder than with dark-skinned red grapes, you still see and taste a difference in what would’ve been white wines. We call these wines skin contact wines, amber wines, or — more commonly — orange wines.

Amber wines have a long history. They’ve been a part of Georgian winemaking going back thousands of years. Their tradition is to age their orange wines in earthenware amphorae called Qvevri. For hundreds of years in northern Italy’s Friuli region, winemakers would make a skin contact version of Pinot Grigio wines called Ramato (“copper”) wines. The practice faded in the 1960s, when non-Italians were exposed to white Pinot Grigio and, thus, created new markets for it. However, about 30 years ago, north Italy winemakers reinvigorated their ramato game and sparked what is now a worldwide interest in orange wine.

This Wednesday, please visit guest pourer Rosa-Anna from distributor Well Crafter Wines as we indulge our interest in orange wines. This tasting is a free, walk-up tasting that you’re welcome to join any time in the hour and a half.