Celebrate Orange Wine Day with Doreen Winkler of Orange Glou

Welcome to the Sipping Point podcast. Join Laurie Forster, the wine coach, as she guides you through the world of wine, food, and so much more. Laurie brings a fresh and fun approach to the world of wine. So whether you're a seasoned wine lover or just getting started, this is the place to explore how to sip, savor, and live your most delicious life.

 

And now, here's your host, Laurie Forster.  All right, well welcome back to The Sipping Point. I am super excited. I'm excited to be with you guys and back with new episodes. We, as you know, uh, demystify wine one glass at a time, and also explore the recipe for a delicious life. So we'll be talking to great people in the wine, beer, spirits, industry, food, and of course, travel, all the things that go into making, I don't know, everything delicious.

 

So each week I'll have an amazing guest. I am going to introduce in a little bit, uh, my friend Doreen Winkler who owns Orange Glou, a wine store and subscription service in New York City dedicated 100 percent to orange and natural wine. So that's exciting because on October 6th is National Orange Wine Day.

 

So I wanted to get you guys ready. Get you inspired to go out and get some orange wine so you can celebrate, uh, with us online and with Doreen and also find out about an orange wine festival in November that you can attend in New York City. So each week we're going to have a sipping point prior to our guests, a little bit of wine education, Not what I think you need to know, but what you guys ask me, the questions you ask me, whether it be in a live corporate or consumer event, or even if you email me at laurie at the wine coach.

 

com, that's what I want to cover. And this week's question is, what's the best way to store my wine to know it will age well and taste great? Well, that's a great question. And I find that many of us when we don't know, we make a lot of mistakes with how we store and deal with our wine. Um, Wine is just like any other food product is natural.

 

It's developing, it's alive. And one of the most important things when you're storing your wine is a consistent temperature. Ideally between 52 and 57 degrees if it's for aging. Now,  hmm, Laurie, I don't know. I store my wine in my normal kitchen refrigerator. Is that okay? Not ideal actually because your kitchen refrigerator is around 39 degrees, maybe even a little bit below that.

 

Not the ideal temp range.  52 to 57. Your kitchen refrigerator vibrates and wine refrigerators that are built for aging are built in a special way to minimize that vibration. The vibration of the refrigerator actually interferes with the flavor compounds of the wine. The temperature is not ideal. The vibration isn't ideal.

 

And if you're storing wines that have natural corks, right, corks that come from cork trees that are actually breathing, you know, there is an oxygen transfer. Your wine can then take on smells from the refrigerator. So  storing your wine maybe overnight and just to chill it for the next day on your kitchen fridge, no big deal.

 

But if you're storing wine for any length of time, I would recommend maybe investing in a wine refrigerator or finding a nice dark, cool closet or basement where you can have that consistent temperature. If it's 60, that's fine. The more important that it stays consistent. And you want humidity. You want around 70 percent humidity.

 

You don't want it to dry because again, those corks.  In your wines, which hopefully you're lying, the the natural corked wines on their side that keeps the cork wet and stops that cork from drying out. And when you don't have humidity, another chance for that cork to dry out. So think humidity, think temperature.

 

And then the other thing I want you to think about is light. We do not want natural light beating down on your wine because that light can also break down the wine, the flavor compounds. the colors, all the things that we love about our wine. We really want to keep that away from. So a nice dark closet, a dark basement, a wine fridge, any of those places are really, really important and going to be a great way to properly store your wine.

 

So that's our sipping point for this week. And I'm super excited to bring in our guest for this week, Doreen Winkler. She is the founder of Orange Glou. It's a wine store and a subscription service out of New York City, 100 percent dedicated to orange wines. And we're going to find out what those are. Um, but she is a sommelier.

 

She has traveled and the world in learning about wine. but also done harvests in Australia, France, Portugal, and Spain. So she has real life, you know, on the vine experience, but she fell in love with orange wines and really wanted to bring that enjoyment and appreciation to all of us.  And after focusing on many wine lists in New York City and focusing on bringing natural wine and orange wines to life, she decided to find and found her own business.

 

And in addition to that, she founded the An Orange Wine Fair that's coming up in November that she's going to tell us all about. So let's go ahead and bring in Doreen.  All right, so let's welcome to the show Doreen Winkler from Orange Glou, which is a store in New York City specializing in orange wine, as I mentioned earlier, and a subscription service.

 

I was lucky enough to get a couple bottles that we're going to taste and learn about today. So Doreen, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much for having me, Laurie. Awesome. Well,  of course being, you know, a SOM and being in the wine world, I've heard of orange wine for many, many years, but it seems like all of a sudden it's everywhere.

 

So you're, you're hitting on a, you know, a super amazing trend, not only orange wine, but natural wines. I see also in your purview. Yeah. And even one of our wines, um, is considered a natural, maybe both. So you're going to educate us. And I'm just curious, how did you come? Because there's a so huge world of wine out there.

 

How did you come to focus really, you know, solely on orange wines? Well,  it started a long time ago. Um, around 2012, 2011, that I became really interested in natural wine,  um, the whole farming. To me, this is, you know, when I hear trend, um, it's, it's been there for a very long time and orange wine has been made over 8, 000 years ago, originating in the Republic of Georgia.

 

And, um, very shortly, um, after being introduced to a lot of natural wine, and I was very curious as well, because the first thing you do try is flawed wines, you know, wine that, you know, like are maybe not that well made, but in this entire sector of natural wine, there's some really beautiful, fine wines, and, um, it has, it's just getting better, and it has There's some really quality wines and orange wine, you know, it has so many shades and uh, It's just a very very exciting complex category and um, in about 2013 I was a sommelier at this restaurant called Aska.

 

Um, it has now two Michelin stars and the chef is Scandinavian and he worked at Noma. And he basically, he heard about me and we kind of got together and he's like, I'd like you to create a full on natural wine list for my restaurant.  And so that was, yeah. And that was really an exciting time. Um, because people, you know, started to really like a natural wine, but restaurant wanted to go like a little bit like, you know, a few natural wines.

 

Which confused the public even more because we had them to write behind it organic, biodynamic, and, uh, and all these things where people were like, I just want normal wine. Um, it is normal wine. You know, but when you make it abnormal with these things, um, yeah, I'm, I'm totally understand. And it was really back then that I also really wanted to help to, you know, educate everybody on what it actually is.

 

But really with Aska, we had an 18 course menu that had to be paired by yours truly. And, uh, that was really complicated. Because, uh, Scandinavian food often is like smoked, dehydrated, pickled. There are many different ways, um, or many different things that are moving parts of this cuisine, I would say. And that was really not easy.

 

And, uh, I'm a perfectionist. Um, everybody that knows me knows that sometimes that's good and sometimes not. Um, but, um, I wanted to really nail this. I wanted to not, like, fall. I wanted to be. The food was absolutely excellent and the wine needed to be at the absolute same level.  And, uh, I realized very quickly that orange wine actually worked so well, um, with a lot of these, um, dishes.

 

And, like, it just really, like, was exciting. And it's, to this day, like, when you, like, this is my shop, when you look at these little, um, tags, they all have, like, a food, uh, suggestion on them. because it's like, it's just so versatile and there are so many bottles here in this, uh, shop, but there are always, there's always an exciting pairing to be found.

 

Love that. And I'm married to a chef, so I'm super passionate about food and wine together as well. So we are kindred spirits. So if, so, Somebody's tuning in and they have no idea what orange wine is. And this is their first introduction. Um, like you said, it's been around for, you know, thousands of years, but maybe the trend is we're paying attention now.

 

And so if people are just starting to pay attention and hearing these things about orange wine and listening today. How can you describe what is orange wine?  I always try to really make it extremely simple. And I think that also in my sommelier career, keeping things very simple have always actually helped me because you don't want to look down on anybody or talk down to anybody.

 

Which is even worse. And, uh, so I would simply say it's made the same way that red wine is made, just with white grapes. Um, when you crush the red grapes, you can actually make white, uh, white wine out of them and, but then if you keep it on the skins, it basically becomes red and that’s as simple as it is.

 

And, um, that's why also the wine has tannins. As white wine doesn't really have tannins, orange wine does. To me, it's just a lot more fun and like just way more exciting and just really seeing like how many different ways you can actually make orange sparkling wine and how many like, um,  It's just really wide, like you can have something that's really, really light and citrusy, you can have something that's super, like, tropical, you have something dense, layered, um, you can have savory, umami wine.

 

It's just really, I think it's just really broad, like, and when people say it's one little thing, I'm like, it's so big. There's so much to discover. I know, and speaking of that, you sent me two fabulous examples of orange wine. Just wanted to show these two glasses because the color is very, very different from one to the other.

 

I'm assuming we're going to start with the lighter one and then move on to, you know, our more neon orange as it was in the notes. But I just wanted people to see sort of the difference in color and variation you can get. Um, and then if you wanted to just walk us through, and I know people, obviously if they're in New York city, they can come visit you at orange Glou, but they also can be part of your subscription service.

 

Okay. across the country and have these delivered to their home like I did. So let's talk about this lighter color one. Um, I, I snuck, snuck a little sip already and I'm in love with it, but tell me more about it. Yeah. So this one is called a Notre Terra. This is from the Languedoc in France, um, made from a lot of different grape varieties.

 

Um, so some Muscat, some Marsanne, some Grenache Gris, Carignan Blanc, Thierry Gris. All the, literally all the grape varieties that are white that grown, uh, that are grown in the Languedoc. And also there's a little bit of Pick Pool in there. And even the winemaker says, then there might be something else in there.

 

But you know, the kitchen thing from Languedoc, so it's all indigenous varieties, which I always get so excited about because there's more than Chardonnay.  Yes, thank you. So only about, um, Seven days on the skins and then it's aged in an amphora for about four months. I think this is a really great wine.

 

We created like this, this box for Orange Wine Day and I just thought it like would be a great way to kind of like if somebody hasn't had orange wine before kind of start with this one and then move on to the Peter Murata wines. Yes, and thank you for bringing that up. October 6th is Orange Wine Day and so we're giving you all fair notice and all the info you need to get your orange wine so you can celebrate on October 6th.

 

Um, hashtag national orange wine day, so you can use that as well. So this one, um, reminds me, obviously different, but a little bit more like a rosé. Is that, is that crazy in my way of thinking? Or tell me a little bit more about what, how you would describe to people this wine. I really think, I wouldn't describe it as a rosé, um, but I would say, I mean, I, I just love, like, there's an amazing minerality.

 

in this wine. There's some layers. It is on the lighter side. It has some citrus notes, but really it has just really a little bit more flavor than your, than your average white wine, so to say. I also have been tasting a little bit of like Mayo lemon, apricot, and yeah, oyster shell. It's just really delicious.

 

And I really think it really is a wine that fits in the terroir and I know it's orange wine, but it fits in the terroir of Languedoc.  Yes. And, and I know you have your, um, food pairing ideas for, for everything. What would you, what would be your ideal pairing for this wine? I really would like to serve it with some shellfish, like a little shellfish.

 

Oh, I love that.  Some steamed lobsters, some cocktails, some oysters. I think it would be really good with that.  I'll be right over.  Um, I'm actually here. I live on the eastern shore of Maryland, so we're all about oysters and crabs and, uh, seafood. So I'm right on board with that idea. And, um, Um, I do love the brining, the brining minerality of this and and those citrus fruits and it, I guess as far as orange wine goes, would you say this is on the lighter style color and stylistically?

 

I would say it's on the lighter.  On the lighter side. I would like to add just that there are about 20, 000 white varieties. You already know that, um, and they're all very different when it comes to genetics, the way they look and so on. And really like about orange wine is really about the grape variety.

 

And, um, like how the genetics of the specific grape are. That's really what, you know, is the end result. Not every, like, everybody has this myth that as long as you put like the orange wine, uh, on the skins for like a very long time, it will get darker. But it's actually not the case. Um, Okay. After latest a month you have everything extracted out of the grape, but I've actually heard that it's much less, um, perhaps a week.

 

Yeah. It really, the color has everything to do with how the grape color is and the, uh,  of the skins.  What would something like this retail for?  Obviously, I mean, this is, you know, small production, really well made. Orange wine. What are people looking at for a nicely made bottle of orange wine in general?

 

Two are 69.  Okay. A nice little tip. Together they're 69? Yes. Okay, alright. And separately, yeah, this is about 35. All right, great. So wonderful and wonderful presentation too. That's just like such a lovely gift to give to someone, especially if you have that wine geeky friend, because people are always asking me like what to get someone that has everything.

 

Um, this is something interesting to give, you know, a friend who's really into wine who maybe has never really experienced this before. So I love that. All right. That was our number one selection. And then, um, we have, you know, down the color, at least spectrum, we're going into more of, they, they described it as a almost neon, uh, color.

 

And this one, I mean, of course I've had wines from France many, many times, but the Czech Republic, I'm saying this is my first time. So I'm super excited for you to tell us all about this one. The country is just really exploding when it comes to natural wine at this point. And I've been obsessed for the last three years.

 

And this year I finally got to visit. I also hung on, like, I was like, want to go to just check. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, let's go to Austria too. And Italy and Slovenia. I don't know what happened there, but I intended to. I love Austria and Italy, of course. So that's amazing. So, and I visited Peter Morada.

 

I'm a huge fan. And, um, yeah, he's actually attended our orange blue fair, um, over the last years, but we get to that later. Yes, definitely. We want to give people the date on that before we go. Yeah. It's the Tramina grape and Tramina grape is a white grape, but it has pink skins. Um, it can really like look in a different way.

 

Like it's always a little pinkish, but it has several iterations. And, um, I sometimes just call it like that. It has almost like pink freckles on a white grape. Um, I've seen it and yeah, and so the pigment, um, as we talked about earlier, just gets a lot stronger. And so this wine looks like a rosé, but really it's made from a white grape that has some pink freckles, so to say.

 

Wow. Now also a little cloudy in looking at this, where, where does that all come from? Well, everything that we work with is unfiltered and unfined. Okay. So, the wines often have sediment in them, which is actually really helping with aging of the wine. And, uh, there are some unethical ways of filtering and fining, and so I'm really not a fan.

 

So, I continuously only work with natural wines that are unfiltered and unfined. All right, great. So, what, how would you describe, this wine to someone if they've never tried this one before and this So much more intense on the nose already. I'm getting that from the last one What would be your best way of describing?

 

So this one is really a little bit more fuller in body. So I would call it still medium bodied It has some beautiful floral notes, but really some blood orange, some raspberry, like more like reddish kind of fruit, even like some plum, and then yeah, some really intense peonies. There's also an intensity on the palate of those phenolics that you were talking about, the tannin or the, you know, the little bit of astringency there.

 

It seems way more pronounced on this one than it was on our last one. And that has to do with the grape itself, you believe? The grape itself, but also these vines are a little bit older. I think they're at least 25 years old. I just got to see them on a two hour tour of the vineyards, because apparently they're everywhere else.

 

Um,  and, um, the last stop was the Terminer, which was, um,  The best stuff, of course. The finale, the finale, of course. This is going to be paired, I'm assuming, with something a little bit bigger, right? Because we have more intensity here. What would, what would be your favorite pairing for this? There are so many things.

 

Um, I feel like a duck breast. Like a roasted duck breast would be gorgeous with that, but even like something spicier, like some japchae. I hope I say that right. And, um, different Asian dishes, dishes. Oh, great. Or a seafood boil, a spicy seafood boil. Something with a little kick or even something a little bit meatier, maybe even.

 

I mean, I guess if we can go duck, we can go pork, uh, tenderloin or something as well. That would be great. So, um, we're going to celebrate Orange Wine Day in just about four days here on October 6th, but I know it was one of your, um, dreams to put together an all orange wine fair, an exclusive orange wine fair, and you did that.

 

So tell me a little bit about that and when that is happening so people can mark their calendars. Of course, we want your website as well. So I have this thing that I always want to be the first. The first orange wine club, the first orange wine store, and the first orange wine fair. And so like, I just really, Got so excited about that idea in my head, but also really we need more education We have people coming in here every day asking me when the oranges are added into the wine Where things like in Florida, there should be a lot of orange wine being made I'm like, there's not like a wine region and they're like Yeah, but there are a lot of oranges, Uhhuh,

 

This is all made from grapes people. Yes. And uh, so I really thought like, it, it, I've done so much for orange wine already. There had to be another step. I li I been also consulting a lot of New York City and I've really put orange wine on every list that I've created and they were many over the last 10 years.

 

And so like, I was like, we have to just like start it and we have to start it really slow. The first fair only had about 20 wineries. And I thought nobody would be coming, but then 300 people showed up. And so basically the winemaker will be in town. There will be different kind of styles that he has, whatever he's making.

 

It is only orange wine. Really, there is no red, no white. Um, the wines are all hand selected by me prior to, um, the tasting. Great. And also like, this is an affair that's really by invite only. So like I have an idea and this year it is like every show is really different and so this year I really wanted to talk about Slovenia, Austria, Italy.

 

Your new friends. Yeah, so just these three countries we did a lot of with Czechia last year. Um, we had like a lot of producers there and so I was like, you know, let's talk a little bit more. This is really old country in Austria. There's just so much happening, um, in the natural wine scene. And Slovenia is more like, you know, they've done orange wine for a very, very long time.

 

And Italy is the most densest country with orange wine. So I was like, this year we're going to do this show, so to say. And I invited like the best of the best. And I'm really excited. It's going to happen on Sunday, November 3rd. The space is near Union Square. So it's very easily accessible. That's really important to me.

 

And we're going to have also some really exciting food vendors there. And we get to taste over a hundred orange wines. And yeah, I'm really excited. Um, I'm, I'm not really sleeping that much because, um, it's six weeks before the fair and there's just so much still  that, that there's to do. There's communication and, um, yeah, but I'm very excited and, um, I hope it will be as good as last year or maybe even better.

 

I'm sure it will. And where can folks go, uh, on the web to find out more about Orange Glou and your wine fair coming up in November? So the best is probably to just go to, uh, orange blue. com. The orange blue fair website is also linked on that same website. So you basically get to see both. So, and that's orange, G L O U.

 

com. And that'll have all the information about Doreen, her subscription service. If you're in New York city, you have to go to her store and pop in and say, hello, tell him, tell her the wine coach sent you and you were listening to our podcast. And then of course, check out all the information. On the November wine fair, but in just four days, folks are going to be celebrating, um, national orange wine day.

 

And Doreen, this was the perfect way to get everybody excited, get everyone ready. And I just wanted to thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Laurie. Cheers. Cheers.  Wow. I feel like I know so much more about orange wine. And after tasting these two, I hope you are also intrigued to get out there, find one, try one, celebrate orange wine day on October 6th.

 

And I'm sure if you go out on social media, you're going to see. See hashtag National Orange Wine Day. Check out Doreen in her store at Orange Glou. That's orange, like the color, G L O U. com. And you can also find out more about her Orange Wine Fair on November 3rd. Also, I'd like to put this out there. I have a couple of events coming up on November 3rd.

 

In Memphis, if you're a Memphis, uh, resident, I'm going to be doing a great wine masterclass series at the Brooks Museum. And you can go to vintage901. org to find out more about it. We're going to do bargain versus bling, which is a blind wine tasting where we have the affordable wine and a little bit more expensive wine.

 

I'm going to teach you how to blindly taste them not knowing which is which, and then you're going to take your chance at seeing if you can guess which is the bargain and which is the blind.  And then in the afternoon, I'm doing a holiday sparklers series. So sparklers that take you through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and beyond.

 

It's sure to be an amazing day.  Vintage901. org and then mark your calendar for Wednesday, December 4th. Of course, every couple of months, I do virtual tastings called Wine Down Wednesday, and this is going to be our bubbly bash of the year. You can go to the wine coach.com/events, get all the details, register, get your tickets.

 

I'll send you the list of wines so you can taste along with me, and we'll just have a great time. If you love this podcast and I hope you did, please text somebody you know who loves wine. Let them know to tune in to the sip point. We're available on Apple iTunes podcasts. We're available on iHeartRadio and anywhere else that you listen to your podcast.

 

Check me out on YouTube at The Wine Coach where you can get clips from all my interviews going forward. And then don't forget I have a free video series called Sommelier secrets that you can download everything you need to know about tasting, serving, and pairing wine, just go to the wine coach secrets.com.

 

Give me your email and I will send you all the videos and make sure you know about upcoming events. Well, as always, I love having you guys here at the Sipping point. If you have ideas for future guests or episodes, email me at Laurie@thewinecoach.com and until then, cheers.  Thanks for joining us on the Sipping Point Podcast.

 

We hope you enjoyed this fun and flavorful look at the world of wine, food, and beyond. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with your fellow wine lovers. Until next time, keep on sipping!