If you love orange wine listen up!!! In the spirit of Dirtoir, we have a brand new wine to share with y'all! ORANGE EMOJI! We got offered this AMAZING, 5-year-old orange wine a few months ago and we're not sure what to do with it all... For a number of reasons but mainly the extreme expression of the style it did not quite fit into our Dirtoir range so we decided to release it as a one-off... but what to call it?

As mentioned, it is an incredibly extreme orange wine... it has long, extended 150 day maceration and is comprised of Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Gewurtz with a deep, dark copper hue so it truly is orange, orange wine. The first word that came to mind when I tasted the wine was "EMO". Emo orange did not sound right but then I had the idea of putting a bloody big emoji on the front label. ORANGE EMOJI was born! 

What of the wine? I love long extended skin ferments and macerations but unlike our peers in the old world who often age these wines before release in NZ and Aussie, the wines are too often released way too young to drink. With ORANGE EMOJI you get to try a kiwi expression of this style WITH suitable bottle age. The wine bursts out of the glass with almost candy fruit flavours (one taster described it as opening a bag of starbursts). After this it has slippery tannins and layers and layers of flavour: stonefruit, citrus, smoke, honey and nutty almond meal.