NewYorkers Now Have Everything: WineShop of Only OrangeWines

Those NewYorkers are soooo luck. Now they have a wine shop devoted exclusively to “orange” wines:

opened by DoreenWinkler. Apparently she hasn’t heard of the “ViniMacerati” term which more accurately describes
what many call “orange” wines. Some/many VM have virtually no color at all unless made from “gris” grapes, if the skin-contact time
during fermentation is relatively short, though they can still show plenty of phenolic character.

The best part is that all the wines will be “natural, organic, and biodynamic”. Which mean you’re gonna have to kiss a
lot of frogs to find a prince.

First they get AliceFeiring. Now DoreenWinkler. Those NewYorkers get to have it all !! 'Tain’t fair.
Tom

Calling skin-contact wines in English as “vini macerati” makes as much sense as calling red wines “vini rossi”.

Furthermore, as I’ve said before, “vini macerati” includes also red wines, since the term means “macerated wines” and both orange wines and red wines are made by macerating skins in the must. Thus, a stupid term for skin-contact whites / orange wines.

Finally, complaining that some orange wines are not orange sounds as silly as somebody complaining how their yellow-green white wine isn’t white, or their inky purple blockbuster red wine isn’t red.

Tom, I get your general objection to the “natural wine” thing, but this seems a bit unfair. Some is opening a small business targeting wine geeks, spreading the word to get people to try wines they’ve never tried, and offering another outlet for small wineries. Why would you ridicule her entrepreneurial efforts?

Let’s hope this store is a runaway success. It’s hard enough to get a business off the ground here in the first place and launching a niche business in NYC right now takes real guts. I’m not a big orange wine fan but I’m gonna make a point of stopping by to try a bottle.
Alex

We are indeed quite spoiled here in NYC. We also have a relatively new wine bar with a big focus on skin contact wines, eponymously called ‘Skin Contact.’ It got started on the eve of the pandemic last year by my friend Salma and Eben Lillie (son of David Lillie from Chambers St). They managed to survive through the challenging times and now seem to be thriving as more people get comfortable going out.

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I love orange wines, there I said it :slight_smile:. Just tasted three from Paolo Bea last week and each one was fantastic

Tom

Santa Chiara is awesome

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Well, Otto…in BobbyStuckey’s book on Friuli Wines & Food, he only applies the term ViniMacerati to wines made from white or gris grapes, not to wines made w/
red grapes. It goes without saying that red wines are ViniMacerati. Bobby doesn’t use that term for reds.

To some folks, me included, “orange” wines describes a wine that is orange in color. This was the terme originated by LeviDalton to describe any white made w/ skin-contact during fermentation. But there are plenty of skin-contact whites that are near colorless, and certainly not orange in color. And there are many that are brown in color, not orange. Some w/ clear oxidation, some not so much.

When somebody describes an “orange” wine, I understand that to mean in Levi’s original term…a skin-contact white. Even if the color is not orange.

But ViniMacerati has nothing to do w/ Bobby’s original coining of the term as applied to reds. To me, VM is a more accurate description of the wine than “orange”, when it may not be orange
in color at all. But I’m comfortable in people using “orange” wine when it refers to any skin-contact white.
Tom

yet still have that phenolic character

Could be, Marc. I have no real objection to “natural” wines, all philosophy aside. We have a wine distributor here in NM whose soul focus is on “natural” wines.
I try almost all of their wines that show up here. I would have to say I’ve had more of their wines I’ve found to be undrinkable & had to go down the drain
than any I’ve tried that are “unnatural” wines. Maybe it gives you a nice/warm/fuzzy feeling to drink a wine loaded w/ mousey/hantavirus knowing it’s a natural
wine, but I drink wine mostly for the having a pleasurable drinking experience. There are plenty of “natural” wines out there that are not loaded w/
mousey/hantavirus character. Maybe others are much more tolerable of that character, but I’ve unstacked too many woodpiles to dev elop an appreciation
for stale mouse pee & turds.
Tom

I still don’t get why use an Italian term for wines made all around the world. Perhaps Winkler has heard of the term “vini macerati” (or “ViniMacerati”) but chooses not to use the term because a) using a foreign term as a catch-all term for different styles of wines doesn’t really make sense; b) there are lots of terms that are more widely known; c) “vini macerati” still includes red wines as a term, even if Stuckey and you don’t use it to describe such wines. If an Italian came to a wine shop selling “vini macerati”, I don’t see why they wouldn’t expect to see red wines there.

If the term “orange” is what bugs you, what’s wrong with “skin-contact whites” or “macerated whites”? To me, “orange” nevertheless makes the most sense to me, since all the other styles of wine are described by their color (or closest approximation, even if the wine isn’t really of that particular color): red wines, white wines, rosé wines, yellow wines.

I’m also a big fan of the Bea Santa Chiara, orange wine done well.

-Al

And there I was thinking this was about the wine shop in the Trump Tower.

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:joy:

Of course.

The best part is that all the wines will be “natural, organic, and biodynamic”.

gave the lie to that

Well, Otto… I guess I just have a personal preference for the term ViniMacerati as to being more accurate than “Orange” wines.
When Levi first coined that term, it was almost exclusively for Friuli & Georgian & Slovene Wines. And they were almost always orange in color, to varying degrees. So it was an accurate descriptor. And often with oxidation present.
But as use of skin-contact during white wine ferments spread around the World, I noted that many were very pale in color, and not orange in color. So I didn’t feel " orange wine" was an accurate description.
So in all of my early posts, I almost always labeled them as “skin-contact whites”. “Orange wines” is much more succinct, but not always an accurate descriptor.
So when BobbyStuckey’s book came out and he used the term “vini macerati” as applied to (only) white wines, I immediately seized it as my preferred term for those wines.
But you are correct:
vini macerati =skin-contact whites=macerated whites= (sorta) orange wines. As long as we all know what we’re talking about.
But I will continue to use ViniMacerati (and VM is an easy abbreviation), probably it gives my posts on those wines a high-falutin’ cachet that I can only aspire to.
But we’re all in agreement that we’re talking about the same wines, no matter what terminology we use.
Tom

friend visited this weekend from brooklyn. New ten bells brooklyn outpost opening in bushwick soon. he told me they had some rose at dinner recently and the server told him it was the first glass of rose they served in at least 48 hours. everyone is ordering orange wines instead. thought it an interesting tidbit.

I personally love these wines and buy them often. being 10-12% alcohol is a huge plus.

Best comment I saw from a pretty geeky group of ITBers was 2014 called and wants it’s idea back.

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I’ve never loved an orange wine the same way I’ve loved great reds or whites.

But I sincerely hope she succeeds- launching a business like this in NYC is no easy task. I wish her the best.

FTW

I did not invent the term orange wine. It was already in use in America and in Europe when I planned what I originally called the “Show Me Some Skin, Skin Contact Dinner” over a decade ago now. What became clear is that orange wine was the term that people preferred to use, which is how terms should be judged anyway, and so I went along with that.

For one, Italian Wine Merchants was referring to orange wines before I did that dinner. For another, there was an orange wine festival in Europe.

Anyway, until I see people complaining that Super Tuscans should be renamed because those bottles cannot fly, I’ll assume that people’s objections to whatever name have to do more with their dislike of the category, more than any fault with the name. As has been shown in the world of podcasting, where people used to use up all kinds of oxygen arguing about the name podcast, it mostly doesn’t matter what the name is. It matters whether the category is finding success or not. If the nomenclature isn’t hurting anybody, let’s move on.

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