When high-end, wine-centric restaurant Rouge Tomate reopens next month in New York’s Chelsea district, there will be plenty of “orange” wines on the list.
Traditionally from Georgia in Eastern Europe, these tannic white wines—made like reds, with grape skins left in during fermentation and aging—have been trending for four or five years as vinous exotica, touted as the fourth wine color. Have they finally become more than novelties?
“They’re here to stay,” says Rouge Tomate Chelsea wine director Pascaline Lepeltier, who sent me a long list of her favorite producers.
2013 Channing Daughters Ramato ($25)
In the Hamptons, former chef Christopher Tracy makes this dry, exotic, spicy white with apricot and honey aromas from pinot grigio grapes. Ramato is an Italian term used in Friuli for skin-fermenting the varietal to create a copper-colored wine. This one spent only 14 days on the skins, so it’s a great orange wine introduction.
—Elin McCoy
