What is blue wine made from? The world's first blue wine: how, why and for whom? Where does the blue color come from

An unusual sparkling wine - blue champagne - appeared relatively recently, in 2015, and in 2017 it turned out to be at the peak of popularity. Despite the fact that conservatives reacted to blue champagne with a share of skepticism, the youth and female audience accepted the novelty with a bang, as evidenced by numerous photos with a glass on Instagram. Today you can buy blue champagne produced in California, Spain, Italy.

Production features and flavors

Blue champagne is made using the shortened champagne technology, the Sharma method, adding vegetable dyes at the final stage of fermentation.

• Californian winemakers offer a dry version - blue Chardonnay Blanc de Bleu champagne, using blueberry extract in the production of the drink.
• In Spain they make sweet sparkling wine from white muscat. The azure color of the wine is the result of the use of natural food colors anthocyanins obtained from grape skins and indigotine.
• The Italian version is based on Moscatel grapes - the same Muscat, and similar organic dyes approved for use in the EU.

Blue champagne has a light pleasant taste and aroma, in which fresh tones of fruit are guessed. In some wines it is melon and apricot, in others it is a subtle lemon and notes of lychee with hints of rose petals. The aftertaste is pleasant, absolutely not cloying, despite the sweetness. The recommended serving temperature is 5-6 degrees Celsius.

Blue champagne, the price of which does not bite at all, will be the highlight of the festive table, will give any party a special intrigue and will definitely give you an anticipation of something unusual. Surprise your guests, buy the perfect aperitif - blue champagne in our store. Winestyle presents only original drinks, the quality of which is beyond doubt.

Manufacturers resort to various tricks to sell their goods. However, if some are limited only by bright packaging or non-standard advertising, then others are trying to cross the generally accepted boundaries in this matter. Gik is a wine created by such lovers of original solutions.

Product Description

Nowadays, it is difficult to surprise lovers of alcoholic beverages with something. Therefore, manufacturing companies are constantly looking for new ideas to draw attention to their products. But the Spanish winemakers from Bierzo have found a very interesting solution to this problem. They created a product called Gik. The wine is truly extraordinary.

The main feature is the blue color of the drink. Moreover, the manufacturer claims that his goal was not only the desire to shock the buyer. According to psychologists, the color blue itself characterizes the desire for movement, change and all sorts of innovations. Therefore, Gik is a wine for those who strive for change and are not afraid to embrace everything new.

I must say that such a marketing move by the company was a success. The product really caught the attention of the mass buyer. In addition, the unusual name has another secret. As you know, "geeks" are called young people with not quite ordinary and sometimes even strange hobbies. They are not afraid to be eccentric and misunderstood by others. Therefore, Gik is a wine aimed more at a youth audience. Among them there will definitely be those who want to impress their comrades, colleagues and acquaintances.

Buyer opinions

The outrageous blue drink is produced at Baco Vinos in the city of Cadiz, located in Spain on the border of the intersection of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It was from here that Columbus went to discover the New World.

The unusual product created by specialists has become in some way the successor of the national tradition. Gik - wine, reviews of which the majority of buyers have developed, mostly positive.

In principle, this is a completely ordinary product, which is made from a mixture of white and red grapes. It tastes a bit like a Riesling. This is a lung that contains only 11.5 percent alcohol. To obtain the desired shade, manufacturers used two substances:

• food coloring "indigotin";
• "anthocyanin" (pigment isolated from the skin of red grapes).

True, many are confused by the unreasonably high price of the product. A bottle of this drink costs 10 euros. It is expensive even for Europe. True, the domestic consumer can only buy this wine there. But in the future, lovers of unusual sensations hope to still see it on the shelves of our stores.

Good intentions

Those who have not yet been lucky enough to try a new product wonder why the producers created Gik (wine)? Spain, in fact, is a country that is already famous for various alcoholic beverages. Many of them are still leading the market today. What made local winemakers go for such an experiment? The producers claim that all this was done purely for fun.

The new product Gik Live has become just another development of local specialists. Perhaps those who like certain varieties of Spanish wines will not appreciate it properly. Nevertheless, there will certainly be those who will be ready to accept a shocking novelty for themselves.

By the way, it is worth noting that the blue color does not affect the taste of the product. It just draws more attention to him. This factor is especially important at the initial stage, when the buyer is just beginning to study the product and is ready to pay for it not even a completely justified price.

In 2015, the Spanish company Gik released the world's first blue wine (11.5% ABV), and at first it made an unprecedented sensation. Unusual blue wine flashed everywhere: in print media, blogs, social networks, and the manufacturer quickly arranged deliveries to 25 countries around the world. True, it turned out that the non-standard shade is almost the only advantage of the drink, since the taste and aroma are mediocre.

In testing, the tasters described the blue wine as “unimpressive” at best, but the reviews even included the definition of “disgusting.” In addition, Gik violated European rules by calling its product "wine", and the sale of products became difficult.

The problem is that the blend of white and red wine became the basis of the drink, and the addition of anthocyanin and indigotin dye gave it a blue color. The last ingredient has become a stumbling block: the EU does not allow the content of any dyes, flavors, etc. in wine. Such a product may be referred to only as an "alcoholic beverage", or it may be designated by its own name. Moreover, the manufacturer added an artificial sweetener to the drink, due to which the wine became truly cloying. Gik recommends chilling the blue novelty before serving and serving it with Mexican guacamole, pasta and sushi.

French entrepreneur René Le Bail took into account the mistakes of his Spanish predecessors and created a blue wine called Vindigo (wine + indigo). This drink is made on the basis of 100% Chardonnay, and to give the alcohol a blue tint, it is passed through a pulp of anthocyanin-rich red grape skins. The result is a sweet, medium-bodied wine that fully complies with European legislation.

Windigo has a strength of 11%, it has a fruity taste, notes of cherries, blueberries, passion fruit are felt in the bouquet. The drink is distributed throughout Europe. The manufacturer recommends serving it with oysters and other seafood.

Positioning

Blue wine producers position their product as a revolutionary new product designed to stir up the traditional and "snobby" world of "noble" alcohol. Innovative winemakers argue that wine can be an attribute not only of social events, but also of fashionable parties, and directly declare that the main audience for their development is young people and women.

Criticism

Professional tasters took the new drink critically. The American newspaper Independent argues that blue wine is only suitable for spectacular photos on Instagram and is popular only among the generation of millennials who generally have difficulty growing up. In the article BLUE WINE IS A THING – AND PEOPLE ARE CONFUSED (“Blue wine is something, people are confused”), the journalist calls the product a “caricature”, “a hyped mouthwash” and notes that manufacturers of a fashionable drink there is no winemaking experience, and Gik does not even have a real office, only a virtual one.

The almost unanimous verdict is that blue wine is good for pretty photos and perhaps as a cocktail ingredient. The drink turned out to be extremely sweet, but for the category of dessert wines, it lacks body and aftertaste.

The Spaniards have found a way to create natural wines in almost any color, from sky blue to green and even orange.

It all started last year when Spanish startup Gïk unveiled the world's first blue wine to the public. The researchers worked for two years with scientists from the University of the Basque Country and food developers Azti Tecnecalia to try to use anthocyanin, a natural pigment in grape skins, to manipulate wine color.

The research was a significant commercial success, and the company reported in January that it had sold over 100,000 bottles in six months. But the competition is growing as other Spanish wineries are already using a similar technology to create wines with unusual colors.

Winery Bodega Santa Margarita in the Spanish city of Caudete, offers a variety of shades of blue wine, as well as green, orange and rosé wines within the Passion line. They are already enjoying incredible demand in several European markets such as the Netherlands and the UK.

Winemakers use anthocyanin for their Passion Blue wines, but it's not clear how they make their wines orange and pink. One can only assume that such colors are the result of mixing different wines and adding one of the grape skin pigments. One thing is for sure - all components are exclusively of natural origin.

Says Windsen Janssen, spokesman for Dutch wine importer Share-a-Bottle: In the past few weeks, multi-colored wine has been flying away. As you can see, color matters to people, but this wine also tastes very good. So we support this idea«.

Bodegas y Viñedos Amaya also blends tradition and innovation to create what they call tecnovinos. So far they have a collection of bright reds, yellows and greens made from a variety of Spanish grapes.

These winemakers fuel the curiosity of people who want new images and sensations. In this way, they create a new customer base, and also change centuries-old stereotypes about wine. But legislators did not like this kind of change.

Startup Gïk said this year that Spanish authorities banned them from selling their blue drink as wine because lawmakers said it was the “wrong” color. There is no category for blue wine, so even though it is 100% wine, Gïk was forced to sell its product under the "other alcoholic beverages" category.

Representatives of the startup Gïk gave the following comment: “ In order to continue selling our own products, we had to stop labeling Gïk as wine. Instead, we had to put a second-class category on the label called "other alcoholic beverages." Cause? Historically, there is no suitable category for blue wine. We had to change the composition to 99% wine and 1% grapes in order to adapt the product to current legislation«.

Despite the obstacles, it is unlikely that the revolution of colored wines will find itself on the sidelines of history. Customers are drawn to unusual colors like blues and greens, even if they make the wine more like energy drinks. However, most consumers are little concerned about such trifles as the category in which these drinks are sold.

Casal Mendes Refreshing Blue - the first Portuguese blue wine

The first blue wine was produced just a couple of years ago, but in such a short period of time it has already managed to make a lot of noise. The phenomenon of this wine also attracted our attention. After offering this product to our key customers in February 2018 and hearing a lot of positive feedback, we decided to start working with it.

The key group of our potential clients is today's youth under the age of 35. Today's young people have a fast pace of life, they do not like to sit still, they love experiments and non-standard things, and they always strive to follow the latest in any field.

Company profile

• The Aliança company was founded in 1927 in the Bairrada region and at the initial stages built its business, focusing on the supply of wines to Brazil and the countries of Africa and Europe, where about 50% of the company's products are still sold.
• In 2005 Wine Spectator magazine included Aliança in the list of TOP 20 wineries in the world, and there was not a single winery from the Iberian Peninsula in the list.
• In 2007 Most of the shares of Aliança were bought by Senor Jose Bernardo and included in the Bacalhoa group, which is one of the largest wine companies in Portugal. With a history dating back to 1920, Bacalhoa produces and markets excellent Portuguese wines, each representing a specific wine region in the country. Company Bakalhoa is proud of its range, as a result of the work of a highly professional team and the ability to implement innovative technologies, while maintaining the tradition of wine production. The geography of the company includes seven wine regions, 1200 hectares of vineyards, 3 large wine centers. Bakalhoa wines are produced in accordance with the highest quality standards, as evidenced by numerous international awards, and most importantly - the recognition of customers.
• Aliança currently has its own vineyards in the main wine regions of Portugal: Alentejo, Douro, Dao, Bairrada, Beiras, totaling 600 hectares. Recent investments in production halls and modernization of the cellars have increased the level and purity of vinification. The company paid special attention to high-quality oak barrels for aging its premium wines.
• Casal Mendes was born out of the growing popularity of Vinho Verde in Portuguese restaurants. The brand was launched on the market in the early 80s of the 20th century. For the production of white wine, selected grapes from the northern regions of Portugal were used. A few decades later, the brand expanded to include red and rosé wines. And since 2017 there was also a blue version of Casal Mendes, made on the basis of Vinho Verde wine.

The blue wine phenomenon

• The blue wine phenomenon began in 2016. in Spain. The first official wine produced appeared under the name "Gik". Unusual wine owes its appearance to six young entrepreneurs who had no experience in winemaking before. According to them, they tried to shake up the traditional food industry and create a completely new product, primarily for fun.
• According to the authors of the project, the concept of blue wine was born thanks to the book on business strategy The Blue Ocean Strategy. In particular, it compares business markets to "red oceans" full of bloodthirsty sharks that destroy small fish and turn the water red, and blue oceans where there is no competition and fish swim calmly. So the idea was born to turn the traditionally red liquid into blue.
• The grapes for this unusual wine are grown in several Spanish and French vineyards. Gik is based on white wine, to which the organic dye E-133 is added. As the producers say, developing wine, they consulted with researchers from the University of the Basque Country (the only public university in the Basque Country, an autonomous region in northern Spain). Blue wine meets European food standards.
• During its 2-year existence, about 15 different brands of blue wines have already appeared on the market, mainly created in Spain and France, but at the same time, the blue wine market itself is still quite modest, even the pioneer wine “Gik” was sold in only 25- ty countries of the world in quantities not exceeding 100,000 bottles. per year at a retail price of 10 EUR.
• The strength of Casal Mendes Refreshing Blue is a much more honest price: unlike its Spanish and French counterparts for 8-12 EUR per bottle, its cost is only 3 EUR on the shelf in Portugal. The strength of the drink is also "friendly" - 10%, as opposed to 11.5%, and in terms of sugar, the drink is rather semi-dry than semi-sweet, unlike many competitors.
• Since wine can only be called a product of fermentation, and not other food technologies, blue wines are classified as "flavoured wine-based drink".