A lesson in wine this week:
You make red wine by picking grapes like Cabernet or Merlot, leaving them in contact with their skins as they ferment, and then pressing the juice and (hopefully) aging it in barrels or tanks. For white wine, winemakers use lighter-skinned grapes like Chardonnay or Riesling, and the process is the same, except there’s no skin contact during fermentation. Rosé is made from red wine grapes with the skins in contact with the juice until a pink color is reached. In the 80’s pink wine may have been sweet (remember white zin?!), but today Rosé is usually dry with ripe fruit flavors and is always a spring favorite. Move over Rosé… its time for Orange wine! Orange wne doesn’t come from actual oranges but from white wine grapes that have been left in contact with the skins for any amount of time. The amount of time the juice sits with the skins results in a variety of colors… soft amber, bright orange or melon tones. Because of the variety of dryness from the tannins in the skins, flavors can range from big chalky bottles aged underground in ancient clay amphora for years, to light, refreshing floral sippers that sat with their skins in stainless steel tanks for all of three hours. Many of today’s orange wines fall under the natural category of wine… a category that I am not always a super huge fan of, as I think many natural wines have a vinegar or kombucha like flavor and the acid levels are too high. Many wine nerds or cork dorks as I like to call them, my hubby included, enjoy these geeky wines. My palate is still growing but I prefer riper fruits and balanced softer acidity. Most “old world” wines (which I do love) are made “naturally”. However, due to the old vines and the technique of years of finessing the wine making process these well-made wines are usually more balanced. After many tastings, I finally found an Orange I could get behind! We’re featuring Le Cigare Orange this week, made from Grenache Blanc, Pinot Gris & Chenin Blanc, to name a few. The wine impressed me with its balance of acid to fruit. Ripe apricot, cantaloupe and lime zest were some of the tropical flavors I smelled and tasted. Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards has been producing funky fun Rhone style wines in California since 1984 and I have been a fan of this art loving hippy winemaker since the early 2000’s. In fact, if you look in the hallway you will find a painting that my niece and I “doctored” that may or may not have been influenced by Randall’s wine labels. Let’s just say he might have a thing for aliens. I hope you enjoy his wines as much as I do… Cheers! Sharon
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