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Alcoholic drinks from Georgia

Orange wine (white wine with maceration, amber wine)

Orange wine is white wine made the way red wine is, with the crushed grapes left to ferment and soak on their skins and seeds for at least a month. The skins give it an orange to amber colour, more phenolics and a tannic grip. The international definition cites the old Georgian method of making wine in clay qvevri.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks30 daysWhite wine with maceration, OIV International Code of Oenological Practices, definition 4.9 (resolution OIV-ECO 647-2020)Family: Red wine

Recipe

Orange wine (white wine with maceration, amber wine), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Lantus ( talk ), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceAmounts from a 27 L tank trial at the Iași University of Life Sciences, Romania. The trial inoculated commercial yeast (Zymaflore X5); the sources used here give no recipe for producers.
White grapes, destemmed and crushedJuice and pomace kept together at 3 parts liquid to 2 parts solids by volume in the trial[crisan2026]
Potassium metabisulfite5 g/hLAdded to the crushed grapes at once, against oxidation and spoilage[crisan2026]
Wine yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)20 g/hL[crisan2026]
Starterinoculated wine yeast (Zymaflore X5 in the Romanian trial)

Total time across the recorded steps: 30 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: White grapes are destemmed and crushed, and the skins stay with the juice

Step 1 of 5
Destem and crush white grapes
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts

Output: crushed grapes with skins and seeds.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Orange wine is white wine made the way red wine is, with the crushed grapes left to ferment and soak on their skins and seeds for at least a month. The skins give it an orange to amber colour, more phenolics and a tannic grip. The international definition cites the old Georgian method of making wine in clay qvevri. Made in 5 steps over 30 days. The longest step, keep macerating after fermentation, takes at least 30 days (OIV 2020). Saccharomyces cerevisiae does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 30 daysReported[oiv647][crisan2026]Keep macerating after fermentation
Temperature10–12 °CReported[crisan2026]Ferment on the skins
AciditypH 3 → 3.32Measured[crisan2026]Keep macerating after fermentation

What makes this one different

A white wine is pressed off its skins before it ferments. Orange wine keeps white grapes on their skins, seeds and sometimes stems for at least a month, as a red wine would be, which is why it is filed here under red wine.

Grapes
White grape varieties only
Maceration
At least one month in contact with the pomace (skins, seeds and sometimes stems)
Colour and taste
Can be orange-amber in colour with a tannic taste

Related ferments

Variants

  • Georgian qvevri wine (Kakhetian style)The traditional method the OIV definition cites; see the qvevri entry.
  • Short skin contactOrdinary white wines get at most a brief skin contact before fermentation, for aroma in some aromatic grapes; that is not white wine with maceration.

Safety

Long contact with the pomace raises volatile acidity. In one trial it peaked at 0.65 g/L after six months, still below the 1.20 g/L limit for white wines.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The OIV adopted the definition "white wine with maceration" in November 2020, citing the ancient Georgian method of winemaking in qvevri, which is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

  1. [oiv647] OIV 2020, Resolution OIV-ECO 647-2020, White wine with maceration (International Code of Oenological Practices, definition 4.9)spec
  2. [crisan2026] Crișan (Buican) B.-C. et al. 2026, Phenolic evolution during extended skin contact, effects of harvest maturity on "orange" wine composition and color, Foods 15:3334, doi:10.3390/foods15183334paper
  3. [kostecka2026] Kostecka-Gugała A., Stanula J., Żuchowski J., Kaszycki P. 2026, Optimizing wine production from hybrid cultivars, impact of grape maceration time on the content of bioactive compounds, Molecules 31:179, doi:10.3390/molecules31010179paper