Over the last several years “orange wine” has become increasingly popular, particularly within the natural wine scene. There are exceptions, but for the most part orange wine is made by the smaller natural/organic/biodynamic wineries that focus on edgier raw styles of wine. These types of wineries don’t produce huge volumes overall, so their orange wine production is fairly allocated. The orange genre overall gets a lot of hype on instagram and in mainstream foodie publications like Bon Appetit or The New York Times, but there isn’t all that much volume produced, and most of it gets bought by restaurants. All this draws people’s curiosity and I get countless customers asking me for orange wine to try out, but unfortunately we often don’t have much in stock. But today is different! We have 2 really great orange wines available in this week’s feature! But because I always get so many questions about this, first a little primer if you’re newer to orange wine:

1) It is not made from oranges, it doesn’t have any orange flavour added, nor anything to do with oranges (the fruit). It is an ancient style of white wine making, when white wines were made the same way red wines were, fermented with its skins in contact with the juice. All grape juice is white to begin with, a red wine gets its red colour and tannins from the skins hanging out in the vats of juice during fermentation after its crushed. You can make white wine from red grapes, you just need to press the juice off right away from the skins into a separate vat and ferment the fresh white juice on its own. If you leave those red skins in the juice for a little bit (a matter of hours) you’ll get a rosé. And if you fully ferment the juice with the red skins in it (usually a couple weeks) you have red wine. And if you leave white grape skins in contact with the juice, it will tint orange with increasing intensity depending on how many days contact. Colour, tannin, and flavour are what we we get from the grape skins. Tannin is a natural preservative in red wine, and back in the day before advances in winemaking with filtration and sulphate additions when wine needed to preserve itself as much as possible on its own, so white wine was made like red wine with skin contact during fermentation. And this is why many orange wines are labelled as “Skin Contact” instead of expressly saying “Orange Wine” on the label to avoid confusion about oranges. It’s usually made from grape varieties that have a bit more pigmentation to them, and some are technically considered grey rather than white, like Pinot Gris for example. But Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, Vermentino, Macabeau, Malvasia, Trebbiano, Ribolla Giallao, and even Vidal are popular as well.

2) Most orange wines are a little funky. Some drink a little more like an edgy natural cider than classic wine. If you like super clean, fruity, polished, pretty wines, most orange wines might not be for you. There’s an earthy, savoury, and sometimes rustic or even gritty character to many of them. There are of course exceptions to that, but the majority orange wines you see in the market come from smaller natural wineries who prefer the raw/unfined/unfiltered style of wine that gives a richer texture and leaves the wine a little hazy, zippy, and earthy. And because they’ve been fermenting on the skins, they extract some tannin as well, making them drink a little more like a red wine…So expect light to medium tannins on most orange wines as well.

3) Also because of the nature of their production, they aren’t cheap. There’s no such thing as a $15 orange wine in Ontario…well not that I’ve seen yet. If you can find one under $20 it’s a steal, but I’d wonder if it’s any good? Most seem to be at least $25 - $30 if not $40 pushing $50. And unless it’s something random coming through a vintages release, I don’t think you’d find one at the LCBO either. Suffice it to say, they’re a bit elusive, and most consignment stock usually get sold to restaurants.

So all that to say that we have 2 really great orange wines to feature this week for home delivery:

TAWSE WINERY, SKIN FERMENTED PINOT GRIS, 2019 | $24.99 x6

Beautiful copper hue of Tawse Pinot Gris orange wine.

Tawse is housed in a beautiful gravity flow winery outside of Beamsville in Niagara, and they were Canada’s second certified organic and biodynamic winery back in the mid 2000’s. They make a range of outstanding wines in Niagara as naturally as possible. But winemaker Paul Pender is not a big fan of rough, funky wines. Even as one of Canada’s biodynamic pioneers, he strives for clean, precise wines so much so that even his zero-sulphate unfiltered wines remain clean cut and super refined. This is something Tawse does really well: making natural/biodynamic wines that are clean, precise, and pretty.

And that clean cut classiness is on full display in their 2019 Skin Fermented Pinot Gris. I know I had just said that most orange wines aren’t as clean and precise, but leave it to Paul Pender to make a great one! This is his first vintage of this wine and he’s given it a very light filtration which gives a clear translucence the beautiful copper orange colour. Even though orange wines have no actual oranges in their production, they often do have some orange notes in them, and there’s interesting hints of orange blossom, mandarins, earth and raisins in this one. The savoury, rich mid-palate is supported by medium tannins and nice fresh acidity. This could go equally well with grilled seafood, pork, salads, or just chilled on its own…even room temp this wine is fantastic. It’s also a really great price at $24.99. I doubt you can find a better quality orange for any less than that, and this is local too! This wine would easily cost in Ontario $40 if it were imported from anywhere.

LE SOULA, ‘LA MACÉRATION’, ROUSSILLON, FRANCE | $62.99 x6

Le Soula vineyards in the Fenouillédes: Terroir d’altitude

I first met Le Soula at RAW WINE in London, England back in 2015. They were making some of the most interesting and well-made wine in the room. It would be a few years later that their path would cross again with a colleague and we would start importing them to Ontario. Le Soula is an all-natural, biodynamic, off-grid winery perched high in the Fenouillédes, which are the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France. Le Soula was born when famed natural winemaker Gerard Gauby brought a series of vineyards to the attention of his English importer Mark Walford. Gerard found some very old vineyards that had been relevant 50-100 years ago when vermouth production was incredibly fashionable and most of the grape growers in the area sold their grapes to the local distillery. If you’re a vermouth fan, you might have had Byrrh Vermouth, which is made in their local town. But since the decline in popularity of vermouth those difficult to access vineyards high up in these hills lost relevance vs the rest of the wine scene that was exploding in Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France. Gauby saw an opportunity to purchase some old vineyards with the potential to make extremely elegant wine from that high up in altitude and sought partnership from his English importers. Mark loved the idea and in 2001 they had their first vintage of Le Soula.

The ‘19 is about to arrive, but the ‘16 is still drinking amazing!

Even though they are within the Roussillon, they give this wine a Vin de France designation because it goes significantly against the grain being a multi-vintage orange wine. This is their 19th lot of this wine and it blends a bit of each of the past 5 vintages back to 2014 that have been aging and gaining in complexity. It is a blend of 76% Vermentino and 24% Macabeu left on the skins for 15 days, from vines up to 52 years old from granite vineyards, hand harvested off the steep slopes of the Fenouillédes. There was only 430 cases made of this wine and only 10 cases for Ontario at the moment. I consider this to be the Cadillac of orange wines and I’ve had several top sommelier clients say it’s the best they’ve ever had too…which helps justify the steeper $62.99 price point. Le Soula has quite a detailed website, click here to check that out, or click here for their detailed tech sheet.

While I think that Le Soula is a top example of skin contact orange wines overall, it is still meant to be a more raw, unfined, and unfiltered style. Compared to the Tawse, the colour is a similar copper orange hue, but the unfiltered character gives it more of a hazy matte finish copper colour in the glass. It has a rich minerality with stony and herbal notes of bruised orange, earth, and dried fruit. It is as elegant as it is raw, and that juxtaposition is one thing that makes this wine so interesting. This is a wine that you can drink cold and crisp, at room temperature like a red, drink now, cellar for at least 5 years and pair it with a wide variety of seafood, lighter meats, charcuterie and cheeses.

Lastly, we also have some new mixed packs to share with you! Here’s this week’s new offers, and click here to see our other available mixed packs.

*IMPORTANT* If you’re interested in anything this week, please order by noon on Tuesday for Ottawa delivery and by Monday at noon for Kingston/Prince Edward County delivery. The shortened week with Canada Day on Wednesday means we don’t have much flexibility in delivery and will have to push any late orders to next week. Please submit any questions in the Contact form and I’ll get right back to you!