You are at a natural wine bar browsing the wine list, and underneath the familiar red, white, and rosé, you see the fourth colour of wine – orange.
Below we tell you everything you need to know about this unique and ancient variety of wine.
The orange-coloured wine has taken social media by storm this month.
The #orangewine hashtag has reached more than 3 million views on TikTok and more than 210 000 tags on Instagram so far, with numbers continuing to rise.
In 2018 IOL Lifestyle reported on the history, taste, and pairing of orange wine.
It was reported that for years, these ‘skin-contact' white wines have fallen under the umbrella of ‘orange' wines.
But as the wine expert Simon J Woolf, author of The Amber Revolution, points out: “The Georgians prefer to call it ‘amber wine’, and they have been making it for centuries.“
In fact, amber wines date back thousands of years in Georgia, where they were made and aged in large clay pots called qvevri (pronounced kev-ree).
White grapes were pressed and left to ferment the juice, skins, pips, stems, and all in the qvevri, then sealed and buried in the ground, to keep the cool temperature constant.
Seeing the recent increase in the search for orange wine, the kitchen design and retail experts at Magnet have taken a deeper look into the trend to reveal what orange wine is and why it is trending.
@kelseyglasser28 🍊🍷🤷🏼♀️ #orangewine #orangewinetok #orangewines #wine #sommelier #winelife🍷 #wino #womeninwine ♬ Just a Cloud Away - Pharrell Williams
What is orange wine?
The team reveals that orange wine is made in a similar way to white wine – but the deepened colour and flavour differences come as a result of leaving the skins and seeds on the white grapes during the production process. After the juice is fermented, it creates a deep amber-hued coloured liquid.
And why is it trending?
They also reveal that orange wine is trending across social media due to its aesthetic and unique appearance, alongside its hybrid taste.
With over 3 million views on TikTok and over 210 000 Instagram hashtags, orange wine has seen 60 500 global Google searches in April, a 22% increase compared to last year, 13 100 searches on Amazon in April, which is a 51% increase compared to the previous year, and 1 500 searches on Pinterest this month, which is a 50% increase compared to last year, according to the team of experts.
What does orange wine taste like?
They reveal that the taste of orange wine is hard to generalise as it can be made from any type of white grape but the flavour tends to have sour and nutty undertones and a rich aroma due to oxidation.