Orange wines

Macerated or orange wines are wines in which the colouring and tannins are leached from the skins of white grapes.  The basic principle is exactly the same as in red wine production: the skins remain in contact with the must for a certain period of time (sometimes even with the finished wine) and extract phenols, colouring agents, aromas etc. into the wine. How intensive this contact should be is at the discretion of the winemaker. Maceration times vary between 3-4 days and 80 or 100 days, but there are also producers who experiment with longer maceration times.

Three crucial things happen here. Firstly, as just mentioned, the colouring agents are released from the grapes, secondly (as with red wine) the tannins are extracted and, last but not least, there is long-term contact with oxygen. The result is a colour spectrum that covers all possible shades from Buddhist monk's robes to schnitzel panelling (this depends primarily on the grape variety and the temperature), tannins that give the wines a firm and compact structure and an aroma profile that partly reflects the more intensive contact with oxygen, but also benefits from the long extraction time from the skins.