The Best Orange Wines

Wine news

Fri 10 Jun 2022

Red wine, white wine and rosé wines were all well represented in this year’s awards, but increasingly the IWSC is seeing orange wines take home more and more medals.

Two gold medals were awarded to orange wines this year, one from Georgia and the other from Austria. Eleven other orange wines also received medals.

But what is orange wine?

Orange wine is created from white grapes, which are crushed before being left on their skins, still with their seeds. By leaving the grapes with the skins and seeds it creates flavours quite different from traditional white wine making, often the flavours are sour or slightly nutty from oxidation.

For this year’s awards, the IWSC received orange wine entrants from an array of countries, highlighting that this production process is not limited to one country or region in particular. Medals were awarded to orange wines from Japan, China, Italy, France, Austria, and Georgia.

The wines were made from white grape varieties including the more familiar Viognier, Grüner Veltliner, Tocai and Rousanne, and the perhaps less familiar Longyan from China, Koshu from Japan and from Georgia the Rkatsiteli, Kisi and Mtsvane grape varieties.

Discover our 2022 medal winning orange wines below.