Orange wine is white wine that was made like a red.
That is the entire idea. Everything else — the colour, the grip, the arguments — follows from it.
You are allowed to not like it.
Orange wine is the most divisive thing on any wine list. People who love it really love it, and there is a certain evangelism attached that makes disagreeing feel like failing a test.
It is not a test. Some very experienced wine drinkers dislike orange wine, consistently, on purpose. That is a preference, not a gap in your education.
Try a glass. If it is not for you, we will pour something else and never bring it up again.
The skins stay in.
To make a normal white wine you press the grapes and take the juice away from the skins immediately. To make a red you leave the juice sitting on the skins for a week or two, and the skins give the wine its colour and its tannin.
Orange wine is white grapes treated the second way. Days or weeks on the skins instead of minutes. The result is amber rather than pale yellow, with a faint grip on the finish — like weak, cold tea — and a savoury, sometimes nutty edge.
That is the whole method. There is no additive, no flavouring and no orange involved anywhere.
It is the old way, not the new one.
It reads as a modern fashion because it arrived on wine lists recently. It is the opposite. Leaving white grapes on their skins in a clay vessel is how wine was made for thousands of years, and the tradition survives unbroken in Georgia, where wine is still fermented in buried clay qvevri.
What is new is the marketing term. "Orange wine" is a recent English phrase for a very old practice, which is why some growers dislike the name and call it skin-contact white instead.
For the food that defeats white wine.
That tannic grip is not decoration — it is what lets an orange wine handle food an ordinary white cannot. Artichoke, anchovy, olives, mushrooms, anything bitter or strongly savoury.
It is also the bottle to open when somebody at the table says they do not like wine. It tastes far enough from what they are refusing that the objection stops applying.
Serve it cool but not ice cold. Very cold hides the aromatics, and the aromatics are most of what you came for.
Come and form an opinion.
One glass, with something bitter or salty next to it, is enough to know where you stand. We stop at a hundred pizzas a day — the earlier you come, the better your chances.
The things people actually ask.
Q.What is orange wine?
Orange wine is white wine made using the red winemaking method: the juice stays in contact with the grape skins for days or weeks instead of being pressed off immediately. The skins give it an amber colour, a light tannic grip and a savoury character. Nothing is added and no oranges are involved.
Q.Is orange wine the same as rosé?
No. Rosé is red grapes with short skin contact, which is why it is pink and light. Orange wine is white grapes with long skin contact, which is why it is amber and has tannin. They are opposite operations.
Q.Where can I drink orange wine in Cyprus?
Filomena Pizzeria Napoletana, at 1 Aristotelous in Larnaca, Cyprus, pours orange wine including Meinklang’s biodynamic Weisser Mulatschak from Burgenland, Austria, alongside Neapolitan pizza. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 6pm to 10pm.