Where White is Orange, Orange is Ramato, and Old is New
The fascinating wines of Friuli are the next stop on our Winter Whites tour.
This the fourth installment of our Winter Whites reports (published each Friday in January). The first three covered Loire chenin blanc, albariño from Galicia, and pinot blanc from Alto Adige. Now we turn our attention to the wines of Friuli, with a report by David Master, a wine educator and Italian language teacher who writes about the wines of Italy. David previously wrote for us about Aglianico del Vulture.
The wine culture of Friuli is best known for two things: 1) indigenous grapes like ribolla gialla, friulano, verduzzo, refosco and schioppettino 2) orange wine. Both things have much more to do with history than trends.
Orange wine is not new. After all, making skin-contact white wine predates the Roman Empire by thousands of years. Some of the oldest recorded wines ever made were orange—8,000 years ago, in the country of Georgia, they macerated white wines on the skins, then aged them underground in clay amphora.
Still, many credit the wine culture of Friuli, in northeastern Italy, with modern revival of skin-contact wines. In Friuli, ramato, or coppered, is what they call orange wine. Here, skin contact has been around too long to be a flash in the pan. The magic of orange wine was born out of necessity.
The region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is no stranger to change, and nothing causes more change than war. The area of Gorizia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to World War I, was the scene of constant battle along the Isonzo River. This river separates Italy from modern Slovenia and it is the location of Italy’s two-and-half year offensive against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Though Italy ultimately won the war, this offensive ended with the largest loss of life in Italian history. In the aftermath, Italy annexed Gorizia, officially becoming part of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in 1920.
Fast forward to post World War II, when many Italians went off to war and never came back, leaving Italian industry abandoned. Gorizia and its wine industry was hit particularly hard. As a result, harvest was a slow, difficult process. Due to limited manpower, the grapes would sit in cellars waiting to be pressed into juice while the rest of the vineyard was harvested by hand. With fewer people to work vineyards, the cultivation of grapes took much longer; days, maybe even weeks. With all that down time in the cellar, the white grapes naturally started to ferment on their skins.
Hence, ramato was born. Wines were made in this way because it was the logical thing to do, given the limited resources. One practical benefit of skin-contact fermentation was that the grapes were easier to press afterwards, alleviating the hardship of pressing the grapes by hand. They also discovered that skin-fermented grapes developed new aromas, flavors, and even tannins.
Then in the 1950s, the industrial boom of Italy hit, bringing more economic resources to Friuli. The industrial boom also brought winemaking equipment that hadn’t been affordable prior to the wars—including temperature-controlled steel tanks. By the 1960s and 1970s, the ramato style gave way to white wines that were clear, almost colorless. As industrial winemaking took over, growers ripped out indigenous grapes in favor of international varieties like pinot grigio, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc.
It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that certain producers began recreating wines in the ramato style of post-war Italy. Producers like Radikon, Gravner, and Damijan, to name a few, drew inspiration from their parents’ generation, and reinstated the old techniques. Today, they are recognized as pioneering what we now know as orange wine. They took it to the next level, with extensive barrel aging and skin contact. Just as importantly, these producers also began using their native grape varietals, like ribolla gialla, friulano, verduzzo and others. These wines are simply magnificent, and demand a sort of rethinking of what white wine can be.
Friuli now produces among the most diverse range of white wines in the world—from incredibly crisp to full-bodied, from both indigenous and international grapes. It’s a testament to resiliency and change, and what it means to innovate, adapt, and work with what you have.