The Case Against Orange Wine

Orange wine enthusiasts will tell you it harks back to ancient Georgia, to wine aged in buried qvevri and liberated from modern interference. Archaic methods, the thrill of the authentic for a wine more alive and expressive. A purer conduit for terroir and truth.

What began as an earnest flirtation with low-intervention winemaking has curdled into something faintly cultish: oxidized, seditious liquids sloshed from reclaimed carafes in Bushwick, Kreuzberg, or in Hackney, praised in reverent tones by men in harem pants and cycling caps.

Against better judgment, I have tried these orange wines, egged on by sommeliers with the sort of facial hair that suggests either deep conviction or an elaborate dare. These wines appear smugly on menus alongside foraged disappointment served on filament-lit sharing plates. Cider, aged in a dried boot. Redolent of barnyard regret.

Orange wine is a low-sulfite con—a prolonged student prank passed off as enlightenment, and like many student pranks, it smells of manure and failure. There is a juvenile glee in rejecting filtration, stability, or even consistency as moral virtues. Murkiness isn’t a feature, it’s a flaw.

This is not progress. It is a collapsed scaffolding of taste.

Real wine is civilization bottled— transfigured by soil, sunlight, and savoir faire into a triumph of memory over impulse. One of the few things humanity has tangibly improved upon with age, error, and the exquisite tyranny of tradition. Real wine is the triumph of method over mayhem. Under the stewardship of monks, vintners, and noble hoarders, craft became culture.

Natural wine’s unpredictability fatally obliterates one of wine’s most important uses: It acts in concert with food. A great bottle can solo, but it harmonizes best in symphony, as part of an orchestra. Orange wine does not reliably present as red or white, nor as light or full-bodied—it is a roulette wheel of tannin and acidity.

A zealot wine bar will persist in a charade of specificity, stage-whispering elaborate tasting notes and rules about pairing, when in truth the outcome is a potshot. By contrast, in the high temples of good wine, like Le Bon Georges in the 9th arrondissement, the sommelier never misses. Every bottle earns its place. Here, nuance and humility reign. The wine list is longer than a glam rocker’s mercifully shelved erotic memoirs and its vintage likely more appropriate. Quality rules here; sometimes this includes orange wine, but it is offered in context, not blind zeal.

Natural wine, by contrast, is curated anarchy—a celebration of faults dressed up as flavor. Volatile acidity, oxidation, Brettanomyces: all indulged and all rebranded as “expressive.” One might as well declare damp plaster “textured” or stale bread “whimsical.” Drinking orange wine is like being mugged by a wellness retreat.

A wine that tastes like unwashed radish water may well be sincere. That doesn’t mean it deserves a second glass—let alone a movement. Wine should elevate, not assault. There is no virtue in the sensory equivalent of a slap.

Wine need not be reinvented. It needs to be protected—not as a relic, but as a repository of accumulated excellence. That’s not elitism; it’s gratitude.

So the next time someone pours you something that smells like silage and insists it’s “alive,” feel free to agree—and banish it to oblivion.