ORANGE features a selection of macerations which invigorate and excite. Offering examples so filigree and fine they could be classified as genre-defying, alongside those with enough flesh and grip to stand up to the most robust of cooking, few wines are as versatile on the table as these.
VINYER DE LA RUCA
Hapax 2024
Roussillon, France
A blend of Grenache Blanc, Gris and Noir from a parcel planted over schist high in the hills of Banyuls. The varieties were picked together, foot stomped and pressed in an old basket press on the same day. Fermentation and élevage took place in terracotta amphorae, rendering an amber wine heady with resinous herbs, citrus and sea salt.
Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris, Grenache Noir
CANTINA GIARDINO
Adam 2022
Campania, Italy
This remarkable wine comes from ninety year old vines of Greco planted at an altitude of five hundred metres in Taurasi. Five days on the skins, followed by fifteen months resting in acacia casks has rendered a compact, powerful wine where density of fruit, tannin and acidity exist in the kind of harmony that suggests it will reward drinkers for many years to come.
Greco
ORSI SAN VITO
Posca Bianca NV
Emilia-Romagna, Italy
This non-vintage wine is drawn from a big old concrete vat which contains a blend of Pignoletto, Alionza, Albana and Malvasia from different vineyards of various ages, from every vintage back to 2010. The wines are made in different ways, in a variety of vessels. The majority of the blend is made up of wine from the most recent vintage and the vat is constantly being topped up with young wine to prevent oxidation. This is a great trattoria wine that while easy to drink, is anything but simple. While the younger wines are all fruit and flowers, there’s a salty, nutty backbone to this which makes for a wine of real intrigue.
Pignoletto, Alionza, Albana, Malvasia