While cultural trends tend to annoy me for their potential pretentiousness, the orange wine wave is fascinating. The wines are now popular all over the world and very much so in Quebec. There are plenty available in private import, and more and more on the shelves of your local SAQ. And while this ancient winemaking technique is now all the rage, it wasn’t always the case.

When we introduced our first “skin-contact whites” in 2006, Stanko Radikon’s 2002 Ribolla Gialla, Oslavje and Jakot cuvées, they were the first of their kind in Quebec. The term “orange wine” didn’t exist yet and this ancient winemaking style was quite unknown at the time outside of Georgia, Slovenia and Friuli.

We organized a tasting with Veronique Dalle (who LOVED the wines) at the Pullman Bar à Vin and invited a bunch of sommeliers to try the Radikon wines. I was very pumped to have these naturally –made wines with no added sulfites and long aging in cask finally available to the burgeoning wine scene in Montreal. We poured the vibrantly glowing amber wines for our friends, and while they seemed to like them no one was very enthusiastic. They felt they were odd. Had too much VA. White wines with tannins? Clients won’t get them. What do you pair them with? Too expensive. Too weird. Fuck, I thought. I HAVE A BOMB ON MY HANDS.

With a lot of effort and help from a few clients, we managed to move the allocation but I was terrified of bringing in another lot. We soldiered on however and continued bringing in Stanko’s wines, as well as his son Saša’s cuvées. They picked up steam as more and more clients appreciated their uniqueness and outstanding versatility on the dinner table. Levi Dalton, a well-known wine journalist, had coined the term Orange Wine and Eric Asimov of the NY Times was spreading the good word.Here in Montreal, Eve Dumas, a champion of these wines, had published a piece in La Presse and was creating a buzz. These wines started arriving from all over the world for sale in private import, including the OG of orange wines from the Republic of Georgia. Restaurants were now including orange wine sections on their lists.

We thought it was a good time to introduce “orange” wines to the SAQ and in 2012 we proposed the COS Rami. It hit the shelves in 2013 and was insanely popular. The SAQ wanted more. We proposed La Stoppa’s Ageno and that also flew off the selves. Bill Zacharkiw of the Montreal Gazette wrote enthusiastically about these wines and the response was great. We pushed the envelope further and got Radikon’s Ribolla Gialla into the SAQ Signature in 2015. Yes, Signature. And while the conseillers there were at first reticent (who will buy this?), the wines sold well.

The popularity of these wines is on the rise and has gone from a trend that was hard to grasp to a category that is growing. Even winemakers in Quebec and Ontario are now making them. At some point the SAQ will have to introduce an Orange section along with the Red, White, Rosé sections. Love them or hate them, they are here to stay.

Who would have thought? I certainly didn’t at first!