No wine demonstrates Australia’s flourishing artisanal winemaking scene better than skin-contact white wines. Commonly referred to as orange wines, the winemaking process leaves white grapes in contact with their skins anywhere from a few days to months or even years, resulting in a wine style that’s generally more tannic, richly flavored and textured than a typical white. The technique has, in the space of a decade, gone from divisive outlier to an important part of Aussie wine culture.
While integral to the ancient winemaking cultures in areas like the Republic of Georgia and, later, Slovenia and Northeast Italy, skin-contact whites didn’t take hold in Australia until the early 21st century. Mornington Peninsula producer Kevin McCarthy is credited for crafting Aus’s first so-called “skinsy white” for his label T’Gallant in 2008. But…
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Wine Enthusiast (Digital) - 1 Issue, August/September 2022