On an early summer’s evening, customers flock to a bar called Oranj for glasses of wine that range in colour from subtle gold to deep amber. A catarratto from Sicily maybe, with notes of ripe yellow fruit and a savoury, saline edge, or a juicy, glowing pinot gris from Slovakia, or perhaps an intensely mineral blend of indigenous grapes from Italy’s Lazio region – all sell like the proverbial hot cakes.
Oranj, which does not only sell orange wines, started out as a natural wine e-commerce site during the pandemic, and later evolved into this wine bar in Shoreditch, London, in what was its logistical warehouse. It serves “exciting, unusual and unorthodox” wines, 25% of which are orange, says the founder, Jasper Delamothe. This is quite a proportion, given the niche status of orange wine just a few years ago. Delamothe tells me that while it does a roaring trade in orange wine year-round, it does see an upturn in the summer months, alongside rosé.
