You’d think it would take a lot to shock Paul Grieco, veteran wine slinger for Gramercy Tavern, Hearth and, since 2008, at Terroir in Tribeca. But as he walked up to four-tops in his restaurant, post-COVID, he noticed a change. “A guest would say to you, ‘Do you have any orange wine?’ It shocked me. If we’d had this conversation two years ago, I’d have answered, ‘Well, orange wine is a brand-new category for me.’ But now it’s an overt single page on my wine list. I never would have thought that.”
He’s not the only one. Richard Hargreave opened Underdog wine bar in Austin, Texas, toward the tail end of the pandemic. “Having worked on the East and West Coasts and not knowing exactly what the market was like in Texas, it’s all been a little unexpected. But I was shocked at how many people were asking me for orange wine—from day one. And not just wine people; it’s everyone, all demographics. It’s been our biggest seller, even in the summer. Orange wine is established. It’s here now.”
“I think some people ask for orange wine, and they don’t really know what they’re getting into, so I give them a prettier style of orange. If it’s too astringent they’re going to take a sip and say, ‘I actually don’t think I like orange’” —Jen O’Neil, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Seattle
“I would say it’s gained traction by, like, 100,000 percent,” says Chanel Ruffin, of Obelisk in Washington, D.C. Many in the industry seem blindsided by the interest in skin-contact wine, but in retrospect, it appears to have come from three concurrent trends. First, it’s part of the youth movement in the wine industry. “It’s very much a young drinker’s choice of beverage across the board, forty and under,” says Ruffin. “I’ve maybe had two guests who were over the age of fifty order a glass of orange wine.” Next, orange wine seems to have ridden the wave of rosé in the early 2010s, a wave, most observe, that has crested and crashed. “Skin-contact or orange wines have taken the share that rosé once enjoyed,” says Ryan Kraemer at Majordomo in Los Angeles. Finally, interest in natural wine has also steered drinkers toward amber and orange, categories that are “handcuffed to the natural-wine movement,” says Kraemer.
This has sommeliers navigating their guests’ tolerance for “the funk.” “They want to feel the flavors, not the flaws,” says Kamal Kouri of Molyvos in New York. Jen O’Neil, of Seattle’s The Walrus and the Carpenter, is pouring what she describes as a delicious Slovenian wine from Vinoteka Kobal: “What I like is that it’s not a very dark, astringent style of orange. I call it ‘orange light.’”
For many restaurateurs, skin-contact wines provide a unique combination of acid, fruit and tannin, which makes them terrific pairing tools. Sam Bogue, at Flour + Water in San Francisco, cites Unsung Hero from the East Bay winery Subject to Change. “It’s got a generous amount of skin contact,” he says; “it’s a perfumed, dynamic orange wine”—and it’s his second-highest-selling wine by the glass. “It’s got the fresh acidity to pair with pastas with white sauce, or cacio e pepe.”
Many sommeliers read the interest in skin-contact wine as emblematic of a new sense of adventure among diners and drinkers. “I’m excited to see people messing around again,” says Chris Horn of Seattle’s Purple Café, referring to the trend. Paul Grieco suggests that it might be seen as a positive, coming out of the pandemic. “People had more time and interest and energy to explore different things during those COVID times,” he says. “Now they are open to everything.”
Mise en Place: Emily Seifert, line cook at Rose Mary, halves lemons as the kitchen readies for dinner.
The next essay in our sommelier interview series, Portugal’s Momentum, details the rise in popularity of Portuguese wines.
Patrick J. Comiskey covers US wines for Wine & Spirits magazine, focusing on the Pacific Northwest, California’s Central Coast and New York’s Finger Lakes.
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This story appears in the print issue of Spring 2024.
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