Orange wine. Expert advice needed.

[Whitbeer]

We have a couple of dozen Seville orange trees growing in our yard and we live in a Valencia orange growing region. I'm hoping to develop a regional wine based on these fruit, and recently bought the domain name Naranyah.com with that in mind.

Has anyone made wine from oranges? I tasted some at a Farmer's-market in Andalusia (Spain) where vino de naranja (pron; "Naranyah") is a local specialty. I was very impressed with the taste.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Vino de naranja is a sweet fortified wine* flavoured with bitter orange peel. There is a complication in that the orange is added to the fortifying spirit and aged before it is added to the wine. This will create legal problems in Australia due to the way the excise is handled.

Contact me offline if you want to pursue this further.






* wine without qualification being understood in the legal sense eg product of grapes only. In Australia you would be required to label vino de naranja as "flavoured wine".

 

[Airgead]

I've tried to make orange wine before. In my experiments I have found that orange zest is a great addition to wine after fermentation. Orange juice when fermented tastes like bad oranges.

I'd say a white wine or mead flavoured with orange zest may well be a winner. Trying to ferment orange juice would not.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Whitbeer]

Both interesting and useful comments. Thanks.

My understanding is that orange wine is not commonly available commercially, but is more of a farmhouse product in Spain, Southern France and Italy, so there are lots of recipes and interpretations including the one mentioned that uses orange spirit to flavour wine. I guess that my thinking is more towards a country wine that replaces grape juice with orange juice.

last night I racked a sample 10litre batch made with 2 tsp sumac powder and two bananas in the mix along with boiled Seville orange juice, lightly caramelised sucrose, two handfuls of orange zest and some tannin powder. To my surprise it tastes pretty good even at this stage. I didn't include any grape juice but take the point that most country wines benefit from its inclusion.

it is interesting that the ATO have such a big say in how wines and beers are defined. What would the ATO make of African Banana beer that doesn't contain either malt or hops?

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

If it contains no hops or other bittering principle it cannot be a beer per Australian regulations. I think the ATO would lump it under the "Alcopops" legislation and make it pay full excise, currently around $1 per standard drink.

If you intend doing the orange thing commercially get an opinion from the ATO before you commit.