Walk into any wine shop and it’s hard not to run into someone talking about “orange wines,” which have been undergoing quite the renaissance in recent years. But what is orange wine, exactly? First things first: “orange wine” is not a type of wine made from a magical, orange grape. In short, orange wines are produced with white wine grapes but vinified as though they were red wines.

This method results in skin-contact white wines, as the grapes are fermented in contact with their skins and yeast for anywhere from a few days to a few months. This allows the wine to develop tannins, polyphenol, aromatic substances and proteins that render the final wine completely different from both white and red wines from a visual, olfactory, and even textural point of view.