What is orange wine?

Orange wines are made using the same methods as red wine production. Grapes of white grape varieties are left in contact with their skins for an extended period of time.

This extended maceration results in wines with deeper colour, more complex aromas, and higher tannins levels compared to traditional white wines.

Fermentation temperatures are higher than for white wines to extract compounds from grape skins. The higher the temperature during the winemaking process, the greater the phenolic extraction, resulting in more colourful, more tannic and more intense orange wines. Malolactic conversion almost always happens for orange wines.

Ribolla gialla is a white grape variety known for producing orange wines in Friuli wine region, Italy, and Brda wine region, Slovenia (where is it known as rebula).

Georgia, considered as one of the oldest wine-producing regions in the world, is also renowned for the production of orange wine fermented and matured in traditional clay amphora called Qvevri.