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Orange wine

Orange and skin contactObserved typical

A white grape fermented on its skins for weeks or months. Comes out amber, tannic and savoury, and the tannin makes it far more oxidation-tolerant than a normal white.

The numbers

Each bar drawn against all 30 styles

Alcohol

11.5-14%

11.5% - 14%

Titratable acidity

5-7 g/L

5 - 7

pH

3.2-3.6

3.2 - 3.6

Residual sugar

0-4 g/L

0 - 4

Serve at

12-16 C

Worth opening after

1 years

and it keeps improving to roughly 6 years

Sulphite at pH 3.40

32 mg/L

free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular

What goes wrong

Choosing the wrong grape. Neutral varieties make dull orange wine; aromatic thick-skinned ones like Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer are where the style works.

No legal definition sets these figures. They are typical published analyses of commercial examples, compiled as a planning aid.

Make it

A recipe on this site made to this style

Every figure below is computed from the ingredients and checked against the ranges above before the page is built.