Skin contact. What!

Skin contact. What!
"To call a spade a spade": is it a lost clarity?

This is a question that is at once philosophical, linguistic and profoundly contemporary. Does it touch on this shift in our time where simply naming things seems almost subversive?

What if Workerism was already influencing the terminology of wine, or rather its "post-identity" version? Because saying "skin contact" instead of "orange wine" is not an act against the "woke" movement. It is a choice of lexical neutrality: avoid terms loaded with identity, nationality or emotion. A post-woke language that seeks neither to provoke nor to militate, but simply to describe. Some even claim that this term clarifies the notion for the general public, so that "orange wine" is not confused with "orange-based wine". Wait really! I revolt, don't take the world for idiots, please.

The language of wine remains political, and the choice of words is never neutral. To say "orange wine" claims an artisanal and European culture. Saying "skin contact" takes a technical and global view. One expresses an identity, the other dilutes it in a globally standardized language. This is perhaps a way of avoiding the ideological terrain, illustrating the tension between living language and neutral language, between local culture and the global market.

So, what is the right term politically and ethically?

We live in an era of voluntary vagueness, where everything remains open, moving, interpretable. But this flexibility can backfire: a vague word produces a vague thought. In wine, as in art or gastronomy, this can erase the meaning, the terroir, the origin. When you don't name clearly, you can no longer see the obvious. So the answer requires evaluating the facts and the linguistic norms that can be quantified, and agreeing to decide for the more etymological of the two.

The word "wine" is defined in oenology (the science and study of wine) as follows:

While "Orange Wine" is a relatively recent term, it has established itself as an identifiable category for wines made from white grapes vinified in skin maceration, this practice has existed for more than 6,500 years. In the past, it was called "white wine" or "amber wine", in Italy some wines were called "Ramato". In other regions, the grape variety followed by "skin maceration" was referred to, such as Riesling or Gewürztraminer: historically in Germany and Alsace, they were called "Riesling mit Maischegärung" or "Gewürztraminer mit Maische", in Eastern countries, as in Georgia, it is called "karvisperi ghvino" (ქარვისფერი ღვინო), literally "amber wine", but never "Skin Contact Wine".

Skin maceration is a process common to all wines for red, rosé or orange. The difference lies in the duration and intensity of skin/juice contact, modulated to obtain light or intense wines, with unique characteristics. As for white wine, it is the result of the fermentation of grape juices without contact with the skins. Thus, "skin maceration" is a technical term, describing a winemaking method, not a type of wine. "Orange wine" refers to all wines produced by macerating the juice of white-skinned grapes in prolonged contact with their skins.

Let me say "Orange": for the color, for the emotion, for the artisanal aesthetics. But also, for the imagination: nature, experimentation, authenticity. A subtle challenge to the Workerism system, to give back to "Orange Wine" its place and integrity in the great family of wines, and to "Skin Contact" wines the right to be more specific through their "techniques".

So, nah to “Skin Contact” and yeah to “Orange Wine »