Orange wine may be the oldest wine category. Destemming was not realistic in the early stage of the emergence of wine. The ancestors of mankind collected white grapes that were easier to mature for brewing, and fermented with fruit grains and stems to become orange wine. In the 1950s, the age before the wine industrial revolution, Italy, Slovenia, and Georgia still made this kind of white wine with soaked skins. When mechanical equipment, stainless steel fermentation containers, and temperature control devices are widely used in winemaking, the white grapes that have been soaked gradually disappeared. There are no phenolic substances in the structure, and the acid supports the wine body. The flavour is based on the fruity flavour produced during fermentation. The main dry white has become the mainstream. Only parts of Georgia, which were relatively isolated from the outside world, continued to use Kvevri/Qvevri to make orange wine.
In China, orange wine should have been quite common. It is not easy to directly squeeze white grapes, especially white grapes with relatively low maturity and very hard grains. Quite a few white wines are fermented directly. Xiaopu should be the earliest batch of brewing deliberately with orange wine as the goal. The initial cause was the relatively weak flavour of Noble Fragrant Grapes. Then I discovered that for Ningxia, where the acidity is relatively lacking, why bother to brew dry white with acid as the main structure? The Orange Wine Project is an exclusive brand of orange wine developed from Xiaopu. This year we not only made orange wine using grapes from Ningxia, but also made orange wine using grapes from Huailai and Shangri-La.
The Before trilogy is the first batch of wines planned to be released in this orange wine project. Inspired by the movie of the same name: Before Sunrise love before dawn, Before Sunset love at sunset, Before Midnight love before midnight. The wine label design comes from the colour of the sky. From blue at midnight, to orange at noon, to red at dusk. The colour of the sky also gradually changed over time, repeating itself again and again.
Coinciding with the release, the seventh brewery presents a Georgian electronic music Mixtape on BAIHUI with DJ Frau. Georgia is not only rich in orange wine but also electronic music. The capital Tbilisi is becoming the Techno capital of Eastern Europe.