Despite the name, there are no oranges involved. Orange wine is one of the oldest winemaking techniques in the world and one of the most misunderstood.
The first thing to get out of the way: orange wine has nothing to do with oranges. No orange juice, no orange zest, no fruit other than grapes. The name comes from the colour, a spectrum running from pale gold to deep amber, and that colour comes from something that happens in the winery, not in a fruit bowl.
Orange wine is, at its simplest, a white wine made using red wine techniques. Specifically: the grape skins are left in contact with the juice during fermentation. Everything else about what makes it interesting, the texture, the tannins, the complexity, the food-matching possibilities, flows from that single decision.
The oldest winemaking technique in the world
Here's where the story gets genuinely old. Georgia, the country at the eastern edge of Europe, has been making wine in buried clay vessels called qvevri for approximately 8,000 years. These are large, amphora-shaped pots, sealed with beeswax and buried in the earth. The ground temperature keeps the wine cool during fermentation and storage. Grapes go in whole: skins, seeds, stems and all. The juice ferments together with everything for weeks or months, and the result is what we now call orange wine, though Georgians would never use that term for something they've been making since before recorded history.
The technique was widespread across the ancient world. Clay amphora were used across Greece, Rome, and the broader Mediterranean. The shift to wooden barrels, which allowed for easier transport and slightly different wine chemistry, gradually displaced the skin-contact method in most regions over the course of the medieval period. Georgia never made that shift, and the tradition continued there unbroken.
The modern revival: Friuli in the 1990s
For most of the twentieth century, skin-contact whites were a regional curiosity in Georgia and a few other pockets of Eastern Europe. The technique that brought them to the attention of the international wine world came from an unlikely corner of northeastern Italy: the village of Oslavia in Friuli, on the border with Slovenia.
Two producers changed everything. Josko Gravner visited Georgia in 2000, encountered the qvevri tradition, and returned to Friuli committed to replicating it. He sourced qvevri from Georgia, buried them in his cellar, and released his first qvevri-fermented wine in 2001. Stanko Radikon, working in the same village at the same time, arrived at extended skin contact through a different route, but the result was similar wines made on the same philosophy: long maceration, no additions, no filtration, wine that tasted nothing like what the market expected from northeastern Italian whites.
The term 'orange wine' was coined in the early 2000s, attributed to English wine importer David Harvey. It's a loose term, and its looseness is part of why people find orange wine confusing: it covers everything from a wine with 24 hours of skin contact (barely there) to one that has spent six months on skins (deeply structured, almost port-like in its tannins). The colour, the texture, and the flavour intensity all vary enormously.
How to read an orange wine
When you pick up a glass of orange wine for the first time, a few things might catch you off guard. The colour will likely be darker than you expect for a white wine, anywhere from light burnished gold to deep copper or amber. Don't mistake this for a fault.
The texture will be different. Because tannins come from the grape skins, and this wine was made with skin contact, there's a grip and structure that you won't find in a conventional white. This is the characteristic that makes orange wine so interesting with food: it has the textural weight to stand up to dishes that would overwhelm a regular Chardonnay.
Some orange wines are cloudy. This is also not a fault. It's a sign that the wine wasn't filtered, which the winemaker chose deliberately to preserve texture and complexity. If it bothers you, you can let the bottle sit upright for a day before opening and the sediment will drop.
What to eat with orange wine
This is where the conversation gets practical, because orange wine's textural qualities open up pairing possibilities that conventional whites simply can't reach.
Spicy dishes: The tannins in orange wine do something interesting with heat and spice: they create a friction that highlights the food's complexity rather than fighting it. Thai green curry, Korean bibimbap, or a Sichuan dish with numbing pepper are all worth trying.
Umami and fermented flavours: Miso-glazed dishes, soy-marinated proteins, kimchi, aged cheeses. The oxidative character of a long-maceration orange wine finds common ground with the deep, savoury qualities in these foods in a way that clean, crisp whites don't.
Rich vegetarian dishes: Roasted root vegetables, mushroom ragù, butternut squash risotto. Orange wine has enough weight to make sense of a dish that needs more than a light white but less than a full red.
Grilled and salty proteins: Grilled lamb chops, roast chicken with herbs, salt-cured fish. The tannin structure works with the fat and protein in the same way a light red would, but with the freshness of a white wine alongside it.
Samm vs Hoi Polloi: two approaches to skin contact
If you want to explore the spectrum, See Saw's Samm and Hoi Polloi's orange wine make a useful comparison. Samm, Sauvignon Blanc and Marsanne, wild fermented and unfiltered, sits at the lighter end: the skin contact brings texture and a slight haze, but it drinks more like a rich white than a structured amber wine. It's a good entry point.
Hoi Polloi's take on orange wine is longer on skin contact and deeper in structure: more tannin, more colour, more of that grip that makes it particularly interesting with food. It's the wine to open when you're making something with soy or miso, or when you're eating Korean.
Both are worth trying. They're made differently, from different grapes, and they land in different places. That's orange wine's range in two bottles.
