ORANGE WINE

In a revival of a Jazz Age Vanity Fair column, one writer explores how a modest experiment in winemaking has fermented into a nightmare

- -BYRON HOUDAYER

Orange wine enthusiasts will tell you it harks back to ancient Georgia, to wine aged in buried qvevri and liberated from modern interference. Archaic methods, the thrill of the authentic for a wine more alive and expressive. A purer conduit for terroir and truth.

What began as an earnest flirtation with low-intervention winemaking has curdled into something faintly cultish: oxidized, seditious liquids sloshed from reclaimed carafes in Bushwick, Kreuzberg, or in Hackney, praised in reverent tones by men in harem pants and cycling caps.

Against better judgment, I have tried these orange wines, egged on by sommeliers with the sort of facial hair that suggests either deep conviction or an elaborate dare. These wines appear smugly on menus alongside foraged disappointment served on filament-lit sharing plates. Cider, aged in a dried boot. Redolent of barnyard regret.