A liter of orange wine for around twenty dollars sounds like a gimmick until you taste it. Gulp Hablo built a cult following by being exactly that approachable, and it now ships tens of thousands of cases a year to drinkers who would never call themselves natural wine geeks.
Backstory
The brand is the brainchild of New York importer T. Edward Wines, co-founded by Tom Byrnes, who identified a gap for affordable, well-made orange wine around 2015 and launched Gulp Hablo in 2017 with white and red bottlings. The skin-contact orange wine arrived in 2021 and sold out in under two months. By 2024 the line was importing roughly 25,000 cases into the U.S. with around 150 percent year-over-year growth.
The Region
Gulp Hablo is produced in Castilla-La Mancha, the vast high plateau of central Spain. The wines come from Bodegas Parra Jimenez, founded by the Jimenez family in 1993 and home to one of Europe's largest blocks of continuously certified organic vineyard.
Vineyards & Farming
The fruit is grown organically across the estate's expansive holdings, and the wines carry organic, biodynamic, and vegan credentials. The scale of the certified-organic plantings is central to keeping the price accessible without cutting corners on farming.
Winemaking
Juan Antonio Ponce of Bodegas Ponce consulted on the project, lending technical weight to a budget-friendly line. The orange wine blends Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc with skin contact tuned for freshness rather than heavy tannin or funk. It sits at a gentle 11.5 percent alcohol and is packaged in the signature one-liter clear glass bottle.
The Wines
The orange Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc is the flagship, an aromatic, juicy, easy-drinking style designed to win over newcomers. The range has expanded toward chillable reds and lower-alcohol expressions, all built around the same idea: serious organic farming in a format made for sharing.
