The New Yorker on Orange Wines

If you hit a paywall, this might give you a hint of the tasting notes: “A wine with a finish like sucking on a grapefruit rind is not a wine to drink for enjoyment. It is a wine to suffer through—the suffering is proof that the drink is morally improving—and then to enjoy talking about. The talking is the proof of the drinker’s good taste.”

Also: subscribe to the New Yorker. The cartoons are great.

Wow.

I like this Troy Patterson! He’s good.

Thanks for the new discovery (for me) Glen! Great read.

“While I waited for the wine’s acrid smack to wear off, I meditated on how this chic but peculiar elixir reflected the terroir of the urban social landscape.

Having now infiltrated the cellars of fashionable new restaurants and the home-entertaining arsenals of people who don’t consciously define themselves as “foodies,” orange wine has moved from a novelty act to a regular character in a particular social niche.

. . .

Its color ranges from an amber as clear as the peal of a bell to the bold gold of a questionable urine specimen. I looked askance at an Austrian blend resembling a poorly stirred portion of Tang.”

It sounds like he tasted all those wines under conditions where light was present.

Can’t wait to read the article from that guy when he discovers scotch. I thought it tasted like vomit too. When I was 13.

The second paragraph starts: “Each bottle of wine on offer was a natural wine…”

The vintage of the sparkling Greek wine he cited, his “favorite by far”, is quite good. To me, it doesn’t reach the ideal of what a skin contact wine can be. The rest of what he tasted range from extremely styled to amateurish to badly flawed, by his own description. Hardly a true representation of what this sort of wine can be…

So, imagine a clean, non-oxidative white that hasn’t lost any of its wonderful aromatics, and is exactly your preferred ripeness level. Add in some complexity, added notes from compounds in the skin. Add in a level of tannin appropriate for that particular wine. That gives you a wine with more, no compromise.

Interesting article indeed - and funny at times. He obviously has some strong opinions about the category - and in some cases, I truly agree. I often find orange wines to speak more of the process than of the individual varieties - and that is ‘challenging’ to me. Have had some ‘interesting’ ones? Yep - but have they been ‘enjoyable’ rather than ‘intellectual’? Not necessarily . . .

Cheers.

This has provoked some interesting responses from people in the industry - Levi Dalton had a twitter thread about it that others have picked up on.

Personally it reminds me a lot of the discussions between my wine friends - they argue I drink boring wines, I argue I drink good wines. I’m the end, we’re both right.

Very, very entertaining read. Thanks for sharing.

I find orange wine can be compelling — sometimes poorly made, but almost always interesting. The pretension surrounding orange wine is not necessarily different than the pretension abounding in other wine fandoms.

Carter this isn’t directed at you but I detect an awful lot of pretension from the ‘non-natural wine camp’ towards natural wines as well, as witnessed here. Yes, they can be poorly made. They can also be fantastic. For me they are almost always interesting. I’ve enjoyed most of them, and not just not just intellectually - they were just flat-out good wines.

^That

I see the piece about as fair as claiming all wines with oak show nauseating degrees of vanilla, caramel and dill, with brutal woody tannin.

That is, to say, oak is a tool in the craft of winemaking. So is skin contact. Just because some people do a very poor job with stem inclusion doesn’t mean others don’t make fantastic wc wines.

It does seem pretentious to subject a restaurant’s customers to a list of solely one controversial niche style of wines. But, maybe it’s a fit for their customers…? Bold choice backed by someone else’s money.

Where’s Otto? He should have some interesting points to add here. Plus, this is exactly why I’d prefer we only use the term “orange wines” to wines that are actually orange, as a sub-category of skin contact whites.

My point there was the author’s premise (not mine) is natural wines are garbage. He’s then claiming that all orange wines are natural, and so on.

Hey Wes - apologies for not being more clear. My comment was absolutely not directed at you.

My frustration is that it seems like every time one of these articles is posted, there’s a collection of folks who use it as an opportuntity to paint the entire ‘category’ (if it can be ‘categorized’) with a broad (negative) brush. It gets old.

Wes - obviously I agree with you and it’s not fair to paint with too broad a brush.

Usually.

But this guy was pretty funny. And that crowd he’s talking about? He was spot on.

“This stuff pairs well with the conflated ethics and aesthetics of bien-pensant food culture. The intrinsic emphasis on abstruse methods of production and challenging nuances of terroir suits going fashions for the sustainable, the “authentic.” You get the sense, when gripped by the vinegar-ish bite of an extra-ripe wine, that it is ideally consumed at a reclaimed-wood table in the dining room of a Hudson Valley weekend home, while listening to a proud host holding forth on how best to decant it and describing its intricate flavors and idiosyncratic kinks with the haranguing passion of an indie-rock record collector.”

He nailed it. And clearly he was exaggerating for effect. But my hunch is that he’s probably a pretty fun guy to have some wine with and would be willing to try some good stuff.

I get the fun he was having, but his “natural writing” will leave the vast majority of the readers will come away with an ill-informed impression. A more interventionist editor could have helped craft a more balanced, easy to consume piece of writing that would retain the humor without the off-aromas.

Greg, there’s nothing boring about Faurie Hermitage.

Hah! My fiend drags me to Ten Bells, I open Janet for him. The way I think about it, he wins either way. [cheers.gif]

Travelling in Georgia, drinking orange wines - ranging from pale straw yellow to deep amber. [wink.gif]

Plus, this is exactly why I’d prefer we only use the term “orange wines” to wines that are actually orange, as a sub-category of skin contact whites.

Why then not call some white wines “green wines” and some “golden wines”? None of them are white, really.

I think red wines should have their own subcategories for black wines, purple wines and pale garnet wines as well. neener

…and ascribe it all to “phenolics”! [dash1.gif]

If you ask me it is a pretty bad article despite his amusing writing style. Orange wines are actually my favorite category within the Natural genre. And yes I realize not all Orange wines are natural but I think it is safe to say most are. One issue I have is that he does not give enough examples of Orange wines he does not like so I have know reference points to try to understand his point.

As an aside I was at the 2009 Levi Dalton tasting, can’t believe it was 10 years ago!

That was a great tasting, but 10 years? I was practically young back then.