Macerated Wines or Orange Wines: a Choice of Quality

Let's clear up any misconceptions right away. Macerated wines are neither white wines nor red wines, let alone rosé or sparkling wines.

Orange Wines, vini macerati sulle bucce, let's discover this different wine together

They are simply different wines.
Certainly of quality, but they have nothing in common with other types.
They are not trendy wines – their origins are lost in the mists of time, going back 5,000 years. White grapes, during winemaking, are macerated (prolonged contact of the must with the skins) from 15 to 20 days up to several months, depending on the choices of individual producers, before being aged in barrel or in amphora for a period of between 2 and 5 years.

Essentially white grapes processed like red grapes.
In cultivation, organic and biodynamic methods are preferred, without the use of chemicals, with great care and selection of the grape bunches. The harvest is done strictly by hand and later than the normal harvest.

It is probably a niche market – few producers who, all together in Italy, produce no more than 500,000 bottles, all concentrated in Friuli Venezia Giulia. In particular between Collio and Carso, where these very special wines were born using grape varieties typical of the territory. But it is in Oslavia, recognized as the homeland of macerated wines, that some winemakers including Gravner, Radikon and Princic have changed the rules of the game, imposing a great product imitated by German and French producers, not to mention the Slovenians.
It is precisely about the macerated wines of Gravner and his Ribolla Gialla that I would like to tell you, to better illustrate how a legend can create a masterpiece.

The wine ferments in terracotta amphorae for 7 months with no added yeasts and no temperature control.
Maturation takes place in 20–70 hl oak barrels.

Orange wine tasting

His Ribolla Anfora 2004, from 100% Ribolla Gialla grapes, presents itself to the eye as very luminous. The nose is astonishing, with notes of chestnut, cocoa, almond, baked pastry, tobacco and dried rose. On the palate it is warm and full, a cloud of spiced notes that linger for a long time. A wine that is difficult to pair, to which I would match structured dishes based on truffle, bottarga or prawns wrapped in smoked pancetta.
The price is high for this thoroughbred, but it is an experience to be had at least once in a lifetime. Prosit.