Cardedu Orange Wine, Bucce | 2022

This is, as we like to say, orange wine "lite." It's a blend of the white grapes Vermentino and Nasco with Sardinia's noble red, Cannonau. Bucce translates to "skins," and orange wine is white wine made with extra skin contact, allowing the clear juice to gain color, texture, and flavor from the grape skins. How orange a wine becomes depends on a handful of things: the grape variety, the thickness of the grape’s skin, the concentration of pigment, the native yeasts at work, the length of maceration, and the ratio of skins to juice. (And yes, wines can also turn orange from blending, oxidation, or botrytis, but those are different stories.)

Cardedu, named after its tiny village, sits in southeastern Sardinia, about a two-hour drive north of Cagliari. Here, fourth-generation vigneron Sergio Loi carries on a family tradition of chemical-free farming and minimum-intervention winemaking that's been in place since the early 1900s. At Cardedu, natural wine isn't a trend. It's an inherited way of life.  

In the glass, this wine expresses peach and apricot fuzz, rosemary, and that salt-lick tang from the sea that makes you reach for another glass. The palate widens, spilling over into all the nooks and crannies of your mouth, but the wine never feels hollow or heavy. I recommend this wine with plate of curly seafood, salads, or ceviche. Nothing heavy required, for the best of orange wine "lite." ~Allegra Angelo