Red, White and Orange

What’s the difference between white wine and red wine?  That’s easy: the colour, of course!  But there’s a basic difference in how the 2 are made: to make white wine, you press the ripe grapes, separate the skins from the juice and ferment the juice alone.  As almost all grape juice is colourless, you can use white- or black-skinned grapes and you will get a white wine.  (Champagne is probably the best-known example of a white wine which is often made using some red grapes).  Red wine is different – here you need black grapes; you crush these and ferment the juice and the skins together.  The skins stain the juice red but also produce tannins which you don’t generally find in white wine.  So far, so simple!

But you can use the red wine method (fermenting juice and skins together) to produce a white wine – provided you only use white-skinned grapes.  Indeed, historically, almost all white wines were made like this but the technique gradually fell out of favour and, until recently, was only used in a few isolated places.  It’s still not widespread but it is starting to become fashionable.  It’s even been given a name: Orange wine (though most are not remotely orange, just a little darker in colour than a ‘normal’ white wine).

A bottle we opened recently showed just how good and distinctive wines made like this can be.  Aslina’s ‘skin contact’ Chenin Blanc from the Stellenbosch region of South Africa (Wine Society, £18.50) is made by one of that country’s most awarded winemakers, Ntsiki Biyela.  She has left the crushed grapes with their skins to ferment for 7 days before separating the juice and finishing the fermentation in tanks – no oak involved.  The result is a delicious rich white, full of lovely lemon- and orange-peel flavours and with a long dry honeyed finish.  Any tannin from the skins is barely detectable but the complexity the skin contact brings makes the wine very adaptable to a range of foods – we enjoyed it with roast partridge but also with some soft, creamy cheeses that followed.

Skin contact whites don’t always work – you sometimes find strange, off flavours – but here, you have a good example of why a few innovative winemakers are moving back towards this ancient technique.

The Class of 78

It was our wedding anniversary recently and, to celebrate, I was looking for a wine from ‘our’ year.  Sadly, most would be long past their best and the few still worth drinking are way beyond our budget (even for a very special occasion).  So, we dined out (very enjoyably) instead.  But a couple of days later, by chance, I noticed a bottle in our wine rack.  The neck label said that the wine was made from grapes from a Heritage Vineyard planted in 1978, so 45 years ago, precisely the length of time Hilary and I have been together.  We had to open it, of course!

Darling Cellars (an appropriate name!) Old Bush Vines Cinsaut from South Africa (Waitrose Cellars, £16.99) was very deeply coloured for the variety (normally spelt Cinsault in France) and had lovely juicy red fruits and a hint of vanilla oak on the nose.  In the mouth, the fruits were more black than red – ripe blackberries in particular – and the oak, though still there, was very subtle and well-integrated.  A lovely, big, mouth-filling wine, despite ‘only’ 13.5% alcohol and with a long, fresh, dry finish.  A perfect partner for a rib-eye steak but surprisingly very drinkable on its own before the meal.

I’ve noted before how much South African wines have improved in the last 20 years but this vineyard planting in 1978 – still during the years of Apartheid isolation – showed remarkable foresight and must have been quite an economic gamble.  Even now, Cinsault isn’t a particularly popular grape – in its native South of France, it’s often grubbed up and replaced with the more fashionable Syrah – yet this example proved its quality, helped, no doubt, by the intensity of old vine fruit.

Tasted blind, I’d never have picked this as a Cinsault, nor as South African.  My best guess might have been a good quality Malbec from Argentina.  So, if you like those, do give this a try instead.

A Daunting Match

Salmon is one of the most wine-friendly foods I know.  Its relatively neutral flavour will pair happily with most whites, many rosés and, depending on how it’s cooked, even with some lighter-bodied reds.  But a recipe that we tried recently changed all that.  We coated our salmon steaks in a Thai-influenced marinade of lime juice, Thai fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, brown sugar, chilli, fresh coriander leaves, ginger and garlic.  With this daunting contrast of salty, sweet, sour and spicy flavours penetrating into the fish, I had to match the wine to the marinade, not the salmon. Quite a challenge as the wine had to have its own character if it was not to be overwhelmed. Tasting the marinade on its own didn’t help although 2 elements of it stood out: the lime juice and the sugar.  So, I was looking for a wine with good acidity to balance the one and a hint of residual sugar to take care of the other.  And definitely white; I couldn’t see a red or rosé working at all.  A Vouvray Demi-Sec?  A Riesling Kabinett from Germany?  Both possibilities but, as luck would have it, we had neither on our wine rack – my responsibility, mea culpa! 

But we did have Paul Cluver’s Riesling from Elgin in South Africa (Wine Society, £13.50) and I opened that.  Described as ‘dry’ but, according to the producer’s website, with 12 grams per litre of residual sugar so, technically ‘off-dry’.

It made a delicious aperitif with its vibrant aromas and flavours of lime, green apple and floral hints.  A classy wine with real intensity and length and tasting properly dry despite the residual sugar.  But then we tried it with the food.  The marinade had flavoured the salmon beautifully but it had become much more restrained and subtle with cooking and, really, a fuller-bodied wine would have worked better with the dish – something from southern Burgundy, perhaps.

Proof, once again, that food and wine matching isn’t an exact science, more an art.  But we enjoyed the food and left the rest of the wine for a little later in the evening.