“Maresa” 2016 from Masseria Starnali. Orange or Not?

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Emma Bentley

June 18, 2018

2–4 minutes

I’ve spent the last few days with Simon Woolf, a personable and knowledgable wine writer with a particular passion for orange wines.

Now, we all know that orange wines can be rather divisive and you won’t be disappointed to know that there were plenty of in-depth discussions but also lots of friendly jibes on the subject.

Knowing that many drinkers don’t find massively tannic, powerful macerated wines to be their cup of tea, some winemakers have started maintaining “but I don’t make orange wine” even though their grapes are kept on the skins for at least part of the alcoholic fermentation.

We’ve ended up in a situation – at least here in Italy – where there’s an ‘is it or isn’t it?’ grey area and where ultimately whatever is said is based on an arbitrary decision rather than widely recognised consensus or actual facts.

As with so many other things however, time has proven itself to be a great healer because as the category becomes more established, an expert will emerge and a particular definition will prevail.

Simon’s definition (and I’m hope I’m not revealing too many secrets from his upcoming book Amber Revolution) is that you should think of an orange wine as another technique in a winemaker’s armoury.

Rather than widely accepted three, we should think of four categories.

Red wines are the result of red-skinned grapes with lengthy skin-contact maceration. Rosé wines are red-skinned grapes with barely any time on the skins. Whites are white grapes but the grapes’ skin never comes into play. Orange wines are made with white grapes and their skins were used (for an indeterminate length of time) during winemaking. Each of these different “colours” can lead to different styles of wine – some oxydised, others clean.

As it happens, I have a ton of open bottles of wine underneath my computer table this evening. (It’s one of the unavoidable consequences of organising a tasting of 215 wines!)

I was thumbing through the bottles, much as most people flick through a recipe book wondering what to make tonight, when I came across “Maresa”, a wine from Masseria Starnali in Campania.

It’s 100% Falanghina – a local white wine grape – aged only in stainless steel tanks and bottled with very few added sulfites.

The colour, well, I would describe it as golden. It’s not a shade of amber which would scare off the uninitiated but the hue is just deep enough to raise suspicions.

Because I’ve drunk this wine with Maria Teresa and her son Luigi several times, I know that this wine has been made with a couple of days of skin-contact maceration.

Let it be said, this is a superbly elegant wine. There’s fruit – ripe bergamot, citron, and plums; and there’s salt and sapidity – surely coming from the volcanic soils and the proximity to the sea. But there’s another layer too: the maceration, albeit brief, gives structure and soul to what could have been just another crisp, mineral Italian white wine. The maceration gives a chewiness and a fullness to the mouthfeel which coats your taste buds and leaves you begging for more.

It’s also a perfect example of how a technique which doesn’t originate from that region (at least, I hope that’s not the twist in the tail of Simon’s book!) can be implemented succesfully in a place without the history.

If this is orange wine, I’m 100% on board!

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2 responses to ““Maresa” 2016 from Masseria Starnali. Orange or Not?”

Simon J Woolf

June 18, 2018

Hi Emma,

Thank you for a fantastic couple of days tasting all those great Vinnatur wines.

As I explain in the book, I can’t take any credit for the definition, but yes I think it is helpful to think of four colours – and really each colour is a different technique (different combination of grape colour and winemaking method).

I think it helps if people remember that orange wine is a broad church – just as red, white and rosé are. Not all orange wines are tannic bruisers with months of maceration, just as not all reds are 16% Primitivo with 24 months of new oak.

Wines such as Maresa are edge cases, definitely flirting with the “orange” category but perhaps not fitting into it wholeheartedly. Here, the skin contact concentrates and intensifies the fruit, but doesn’t crossover into red wine texture. Still, it is close to impossible to know where to draw the line sometimes.

It isn’t only orange wines that present this conundrum. Anyone who has tried Pinot Noir from Alsace, or some of the lighter Jura red wines will know what I mean. Technically, a rosé wine is a wine where the skin contact was only hours rather than days – but again there are plenty of edge cases.

Pinot Grigio is the one where it all comes unstuck. I know of many skin fermented Pinot Grigios that are sold and enjoyed as rosé wines. Even though technically Pinot Grigio is regarded as a white grape.

These things are never simple!

As to the twist in the tail, you’ll just have to wait a few more weeks . . .

Simon

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dccrossley

June 19, 2018

I agree with Simon, whose book I have pre-ordered, that skin contact is merely another tool in the armoury.

That said, whilst I accept “orange” as a description, I am very aware that not all of these wines are very orange (in colour), just the same as there are skin contact wines that actually taste as if they haven’t had much skin contact (this is not necessarily a consequence of shorter time on skins).

I am wary when people say they don’t like skin contact wines. If you try enough of them you soon come to appreciate that this is a category within which you find great diversity, just like in the other categories.

We must always remember that Winemakers make wine to express their terroir, their grapes and themselves. It is we observers who are prone to use blanket categories which (and I know Simon won’t do this) eradicate the nuance and complexity in the resulting wines.

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