Winophilia

Adventurous winemakers and wine lovers are increasingly exploring “orange wines”—i.e., wines made from white varieties that pick up color (and tannins) from extended maceration of the freshly crushed juice on the grape skins (think Gravner, Radikon, Edi Kante, Wind Gap, Scholium Project, etc.). Do you use these wines in your program? If not, why not? If you do, how do you pair them with food, and what are your favorite producers and bottlings?

Jake Kosseff, Company Wine Director, Wild Ginger (Seattle). At Wild Ginger we love orange wines: the complexity and depth that extended skin contact provides for whites is often a treat. But they aren’t always a perfect fit for our restaurant, so we are very careful in our choices. Many of these wines also have pronounced oxidative character (i.e., nutty, caramelly, even occasionally volatile or vinegary notes) that aren’t delicious with the clean, bright flavors that are the building blocks of Southeast Asian cuisine. We have had some great luck in Friuli in Italy, and just over the border in Gorska Brda in Slovenia. Usually it’s a matter of choosing wine by wine (even vintage by vintage) rather than by producer. When we do have this type of wine on our list, we pair it with dishes that have rich, straightforward flavors, rather than dishes that have lots of vinegar, spice or fruitiness.

One of our favorite pairings along these lines is the 2001 Castello di Lispida Amphora Bianco (a tocai from Friuli macerated for six months on the skins in sealed amphora) with Wild Ginger Crispy Fragrant Duck. We’ve also had a lot of luck with various “orange” wines from Scholium Project. We also have had luck with some extended skin contact whites from the South of France. Though not quite “orange,” the Maxime Magnon Le Begou Blanc from grenache gris in Corbières sees gentle skin contact that provides much of the complexity without some of the oxidative side effects that are difficult with our food.

Chuck Furuya, Master Sommelier, DK Restaurants (Honolulu). Without a doubt we are and have been intrigued with “orange wines.” As is the case with many facets of our lifestyle, wine is subject to what’s in fashion. The question for us then is: “is this just another craze?” The key for me is that we still expect the wines to have balance, whether they are white, red or orange.

Currently at the top of our list are Gravner, Vodopivec and Radikon. We have found over the years, however, that these wines take some getting used to, because they are so different. We suggest that one needs to approach these wines with an open mind. They are like no other wines and are very unique in terms of texture, mouth feel and tannins. This should also be considered when pairing them with food.

In the “orange” wine category, we have worked with Gravner’s wines the most, at our VINO restaurant. In the past we have paired his ribolla with trofie (a Ligurian style of eggless pasta and therefore more dense and chewy) which has been sautéed with some crispy pancetta, fennel, onions, cremini mushrooms and sage brown butter. The pancetta and brown butter help offset the wine’s tannins and the fennel works wonders with the wine’s idiosyncratic earthy nuances. We also find this wine can work magic with fish preparations using a little saffron accent.

Jeremy Quinn, Sommelier, Telegraph, Webster’s Wine Bar, The Bluebird (Chicago).  What a well-timed question! Last month, I gave “orange wines” their own category on my list at Telegraph (Chicago); please check it out at: http://telegraphchicago.com/to-drink/recent-vintage-wine/. I also blogged about orange wines for our new Telegraph website: http://telegraphchicago.com/2011/12/19/red-white-orange-wines/.

So, yes, I offer eight orange wines by the bottle and more to come by the glass. I love to pair them with savory foods, often slow-roasted, not too fatty, with lots of umami, and sometimes with spice. I’ve enjoyed bottles recently with roast pheasant stuffed with almond, croissant, currant, and celery; pan-seared, roast rabbit with cinnamon; and fried goat sausages. My very favorite bottlings definitely include Jean-Yves Péron’s Cotillon des Dames, Vodopivec’s Vitovska Anfora, and Paolo Bea’s Santa Chiara.

Emily Wines, M.S., Sommelier, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants (San Francisco). I personally am not a fan of these wines. I find them to be a bit of a curiosity. Sometimes they are interesting in pairings, but I don’t find them to be delicious. I prefer my whites without tannins and I sometimes think the skin contact masks some of the fresher fruit characteristics.

Chris Deegan, Wine Buyer, Nopa Restaurant (San Francisco). At Nopa we have embraced these wines to varying degree over the past six years. I think they are very exciting and important wines that help to expand the minds of wine drinkers. They are wines that show process—and process is intriguing. They make one rethink the accepted boundaries and definitions of wine, and this is a good thing. Wine is too stuffy and square; it has a formulaic personality among many of today’s wine drinkers, and in fact it is a natural process that is at once more simple and more complex than most people understand.

The problem with these wines, for me, is that sometimes they are too intellectual. Sometimes they remind me of a museum film, the kind you find humming along in a small screening room off the main gallery of modern art. No one in the room is sure when it began, when it will end or what it is about, but it is beautiful to watch for a short span of time. As with the museum film, orange wines lack some sort of accessibility, and maybe the accessibility I am talking about is just pure tastiness. Exciting, yes; intriguing, yes; weird, yes; but not always delicious enough to want to come back to again and again. This is not always the case, of course. And as more and more winemakers experiment with the style, I think that middle ground is being filled in. There have to be the Gravners and Radikons out there doing the fully orange, four months of skin contact or all amphora stuff, but now we are seeing people using the same techniques but being more judicious about the process with very cool results. I think this is important.

The other issue I have with these wines is the price point. They tend to be very expensive—and it’s hard to get people to experiment on a bottle of wine that is admittedly obscure and strange and over $100. But this too is changing and this middle ground is also filling in.

As far as pairing with food goes, I think these wines are great: white wine flavors with tannic structure. It is a little bit like the coarse cousin of riesling as far as that goes. Riesling is great because it has acid that helps it get along with so many types of food; the tannin in these orange wines serves the same purpose. There are nuances with each wine that will favor certain dishes, but things like grilled pork shop or porchetta—dishes with fat and protein but lighter flavors—are perfect.

The one other point about these wines that I am on the fence about is ageability. I know they are strong and will last a long time, but do they evolve? I am not sure that they do. I have had some very cool older bottles of Radikon, but I think they were bottled after extended time in wood and the evolved flavors were already there. I have had ten-year-old Gravner and it did not taste all that different from five-year-old Gravner. Perhaps given their seemingly impervious nature they need an extra-long time in bottle to show evolution. It is also very possible that I just don’t have enough experience with them.

Some of my favorite producers using skin contact for whites include Radikon (if you can get ahold of a bottle of 1997 Oslavje Reserva Ivana, do it), Natural Process Alliance (extra kudos for doing supercool, experimental wines at extremely accessible prices) and Dettori.