Duck liver, bacon and onions with orange wine

There’s still a lot of suspicion about orange wine with many in the wine industry taking the view that it’s faulty rather than, what it actually is, a different style of wine.

Basically it’s a white wine which has been left on and picked up colour from the grape skins in a similar way to a red. That gives it more tannin and body than the average white.

Becky the co-owner of our favourite local restaurants Birch is a great fan and produced this wine off the list for us to try: a Bianco Testalonga from Antonio Perrino in Liguria which is made from Vermentino grapes. It was very dry but refreshing and had that lovely quince character that makes orange wine so interesting with food.

I thought it paired well with several of the dishes we ate including a ‘snack’ of rye crispbread and smoked pollock’s roe and a caramelised onion tart but was particularly good with a starter of duck liver, home-cured bacon and onions cooked in cider (no cheap jibes about orange wine tasting like cider anyway please . . . )

You need to think of orange wine as another option on the wine list like rosé - and arguably better suited to this time of year than many crisp fresh whites depending on the food you're eating. (It's not so good with seafood, IMO.)

For other suggestions as to what to eat with orange wine see Donald Edwards post here.