(Vogue) - Five years ago marked the entrance of “orange wine”—an obscure category that has stirred some very vocal proponents and riled some very vocal detractors—into the international wine scene. Though the style has been produced for quite some time, the “orange” description was purportedly coined in 2004 by a U.K.-based wine importer who encountered a bottle in winemaker Frank Cornelissen’s cellar in Sicily. It refers to certain white wines (yes, they’re made from white grapes) that fall somewhere on the color spectrum of fall foliage. Their flavors also have great autumnal appeal, since many can be downright and broodingly earthy. Orange wine has become somewhat of a derogatory term amongst sommeliers, and some restaurants have taken to listing them as amber, which is a more accurate description of color in many cases. “I prefer skin-fermented,” says Master Sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier of NYC’s soon-to-reopen Rouge Tomate, referring to the method by which the wine is made: fermented on the skins, or “macerated,” the same way a red wine obtains its color and texture.

Think of the wine like tea, with maceration akin to steeping. The longer it macerates, the more character, depth of color, tannins, and bitterness is extracted. It’s the way whites were made in ancient times, before the advent of stainless steel tanks, pumps, and filtration systems. Some producers today are even producing orange wines in clay vessels called amphorae, which are dug into the ground to protect the wine from oxidation, light, and temperature fluctuations.

Sure, orange wines can be challenging for those not used to so much texture in their whites, and some may seem like hippie wines: made in strangely rustic ways, showing their bumps, bruises, and the signature of the winemakers who loved them. But the best examples prove that skin contact can amplify flavors where conventional white winemaking would distill them down to their essence. They’re great if you’re in a bind for something to pair with funkier fare—like sweetbreads, chicken liver mousse, or game birds—as well as with the autumnal bounty of your fall dinner table.

It’s a tradition that is still very much alive in Eastern Europe, like in Georgia, where Lepeltier recently traveled to study up on the technique, and has slowly but surely migrated west and even into the New World, with several prominent wineries in California now practicing skin-fermentation.