Wines made from the skins of ripe dates (4)
I believe the answer is:
reds
'wines' is the definition.
'the skins of ripe dates' is the wordplay.
'the skins of' means to remove the middle letters (I've seen 'skin' mean this).
'dates' becomes 'ds' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'ripe' with its middle taken out is 're'.
're'+'ds'='REDS'
'made from' is the link.
(Other definitions for reds that I've seen before include "Scarlet communists" , "Colourful communists" , "Colours for communists" , "First snooker balls to be potted" , "Scarlet and crimson, say" .)