Orange wine - the new white - is appearing on menus at the world's finest restaurants

Red, white or rosé - the three categories we expect to see on every wine list. But now something called orange wine is appearing on menus at the world's finest restaurants, and being stocked at specialist wine shops across the globe. What is orange wine, and is the growing thirst for it, as some critics claim, just a passing fad?

Nothing to do with the citrus fruit, orange wine is white wine made as if it were a red. That is, it's made from white grapes, mashed up along with their skins and seeds. While white wine is produced with no, or very little, contact from grape skins, it's the red skins of red grapes that give the colour to red wine during the maceration process. The skins of white grapes impart an amber glow, hence the moniker orange wine.

Far from being a new fad, orange wine production goes back as far as 6,000BC, when it was made in the Caucasus, in modern-day Georgia. Wines were fermented in large subterranean clay vessels called qvevri, pronounced "kev-ree", which were closed with stones and sealed with beeswax. The reinvigoration of this ancient process has come about in the past 20 or so years. Orange wine is now being made, usually by small, independent and often experimental winemakers in countries as far afield as Georgia, Slovenia, Italy, the United States, Australia, France, South Africa and Austria.

Slovenian winemaker Aleks Klinec switched to producing only orange wines a decade ago. His orange wines, created on his small, yet venerable, six-hectare estate in the Goriška Brda region of western Slovenia bordering Italy, are some of the world's most respected.

"It's the traditional way of making wine in this region," Klinec says.

"I never liked modern wines. I've always preferred the taste of old-style wines. They are more authentic - you can feel the fruit, feel the grape in the wine. Modern wine all tastes the same; all this vanilla and tropical fruit - it's not real fruit, it's the casks and additives." Skin-contact maceration adds more than just colour. It also adds tannins - that dry taste we often associate with red wine. So in an orange wine, expect the intense astringency of a red, but balanced by freshness. As with all wine, orange wines differ wildly according to grape species, terroir and style of winemaking, but as a general guide, they are robust and bold with honeyed aromas of jackfruit, bruised apple, juniper and dried orange rind. They often reveal flavours of hazelnuts, brazil nuts and linseed oil, as well as sourdough.

The nuttiness and sour notes can be attributed to the wine-making process. Orange wine is not just a term that denotes another shade on the wine spectrum; it also generally, but not necessarily, suggests that the wine is "natural" - created with minimal technological intervention or use of chemicals.

Most orange wines are fermented only through the yeast that's already naturally present on the grapes. It's this wild yeast that imparts a sourness, reminiscent of fruit beer, to the wine. The nuttiness results from oxidation - many orange wines are made in open-top fermenters that allow for plenty of contact with oxygen. The wine is usually then sealed up after fermentation to mature. Most orange winemakers eschew the clarification process before bottling, meaning the wine can be cloudy.