750Daily: The Diversity of Orange Wines

Rather interesting summary of the Diversity of Orange Wines by Remy Charest in 750Daily:
750Daily: Orange Wines

much of which I agree with.

I don't much care for the use of the term "orange" wine to characterize skin-contact whites. Because many of them are not the least bit orange. I much prefer BobbyStuckey's term "Vini Macerati" to characterize these wines. But I'm afraid I'm losing this battle.

He correctly points out that many of these VM wines are made by natural winemakers. Supposedly, they embrace that style because the higher tannin levels in these wines allow them to use little or no SO2 additions. Alas, many of the most miserable VM I've tried are made by natural winemakers.

He correctly highlights the importance of using aromatic varieties (Muscat/Riesling/GWT/etc) in making VM that are interesting from the get-go. He also suggests that American hybrid white grapes are good candidates for making VM...though I've seen very few of these wines.
VM made from more neutral grapes (Chard/RibollaGialla/TrousseauGris/etc) tend to be not as interesting when young than those made with aromatic grapes. However, they (like their aromatic counterparts) can oftentimes/sometimes become fantastic/complex wines w/ btl age. And sometimes not...they keep that hard/austere/tannic character for their entire life.

But anyway, I think Remy's emphasis on the diversity in styles of VM is an important point of this interesting article. A good read.
Tom

[Jenise]

Somewhat in defense of the word 'orange': 1) many I've had were indeed some weird shade of orange, and 2) it's really really useful on Cellar Tracker to pictorially define type of wine in addition to the descriptions. That is, if you pull up all wines made by Kelley Fox, say, who is not a natural winemaker, you'll see a white wine glass icon next to all her chardonnays and pinot gris and a red one next to all her pinots. Though the wine is a bright pale pinkish red, you'll be able to identify her skin-contact pinot gris (with muscat) by the orange wine glass icon. People like me who are often trying to ID the right listing for the wine I'm searching for when digging through a pile of foreign words find those icons extremely useful.

I don't much care for the use of the term "orange" wine to characterize skin-contact whites. Because many of them are not the least bit orange.

Fair enough. But most 'white' wines are not the least bit white.