Orange Wines!

We were at the Eel & Bear, 28 Waldegrave Street, Hastings TN34 1SJ (facebook) very recently, and which I first wrote about when they opened 8 years ago (blog), well, it's soon to change hands as a business, and good luck to them for their future adventures! 👍 Anyway, someone came in and asked for "orange wine" and which they have, and quite a few different ones too, and which raised my interest as I'd never heard of them. 😯 If you don't already know what they are, orange wines, or skin-contact white wines, are white wines that have a limited time in contact with the skins of the grapes when fermenting, which can bring tannin notes into the taste. For more about orange wines see, for example, wset.global. 

A friend was interested too, so we decided to share a couple of bottles, Nick kindly agreed to put these 2 bottles back for our next mutual visit, many thanks to him. The first we drank was the 12.5% Salamandre from the French vineyard in the heart of the Costieres de Nimes, Chateau de Saint Cyrgues (website), which has 10-day skin contact during fermentation. Made with Grenache Blanc grapes, historically from Spain, but since grown in the Rhone area of France too. I got plenty of fruit in the aroma, citrus, peach and tropical fruits, and you could sense it would be a dry wine. As you can see, yes, orange in colour, with subtle peach, apricot and orange to taste, quite complex, but refreshing and zesty with a dry finish indeed, nice one! 👍

Then we had the 12.0% Nu Litr Orange from 'wine maverick' Valentina Passalaqua, situated in the Gargano National Park in Puglia in Italy (website), and which has a 5-day skin contact. Made mostly with Italian Falanghina grapes (66%), and 20% Chardonnay and 14% Fiano grapes too (skin contact with Falanghina and Fiano only), orange coloured of course, lighter and more subtle than the Salamandre. This had citrus fruit and apricot in the aroma, and subtle flavours of orange/tangerine, peach and apricot, zesty and refreshing, and so easy to drink! 😁

Well, that was a distraction from my ales, more of which to come soon, cheers! 🍻