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Skin contact
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Orange and amber wine: white grapes on their skins, from Georgian qvevri to Collio and Goriška Brda.
Seasoned89 min13 stepsAbout Skin Contact White Wine / Orange Wine
Part of Winemaking
Skin Contact White Wine / Orange Wine
Start with the style: white grapes fermented on their skins, known as orange or amber wine.
Set it beside the red-wine practice: extended maceration leaves skins, seeds and any stems in the wine after fermentation to shape color, flavor and tannin structure.
Skin Contact White Wine (Orange Wine): Short (Days), Medium (Weeks), Extended (Months)
Time on the skins runs from days to months, and in 2020 the OIV recognised 'white wine with maceration' with a minimum maceration of one month.
The vessel: Georgian qvevri, large egg-shaped clay vessels buried underground where white grapes ferment and age on their skins, seeds and often stems.
Georgia: The Ancient Cradle of Wine
Georgia, where researchers have traced grape wine to about 6,000 to 5,800 BC, and which cites more than 525 local grape varieties.
Kakheti, eastern Georgia's most important winemaking region, where in the traditional method all the chacha (skins, stalks and pips) takes part in fermentation in qvevri.
Rkatsiteli, Georgia's dominant white grape, takes on amber color and honey and apricot notes in qvevri.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia: Collio Goriziano / Collio DOC
Cross to Collio in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where Stanko Radikon and Josko Gravner turned to long skin contact in the mid-1990s and, per Decanter, the orange wine revival began in Oslavia.
Ribolla Gialla, the Friulian grape with a starring role in the orange wine movement.
Over the border, Slovenia's Goriška Brda formed a single wine region with Collio before the border was imposed in 1947, and produces white and orange wines.
Pinot Grigio is one of the darkest-skinned grapes producing white wine, and Friuli's ramato is a skin-contact style made from it.
Pinot Grigio Ramato: Friuli's Copper Skin-Contact Style
That style has a name: ramato, from the Italian for copper, a short skin contact that gives Pinot Grigio a copper to pink colour and more texture than the familiar untinted wine.
Rosé: Direct Press Method (Provence; Pale, Delicate Style)
End with the opposite approach: direct-press rosé takes the juice off the skins quickly for delicate wines that are pale in colour.
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