A high-profile start-up marketing Spanish wine in an unusual color has run head-on into rules that they say are stifling innovation. Wine traditionalists hope so.
Five young Spaniards began marketing their blue wine, called Gik, last summer and had sold close to 100,000 bottles to customers in 25 countries when the grapes hit the fan on what was starting to become a hot product among hipster tipplers.
The blue wine is created from a number of grape varieties and gets its blue color from anthyocyacin, a pigment extracted from grape skins, and from indigo, a plant-based blue dye. Their pitch: “Drinking Gïk is not just about drinking blue wine. You are drinking innovation…”
But the innovation is not covered by Spain’s careful wine laws, which specify what can and can’t go into the barrel and the bottle. For now, after an August visit by government inspectors, they are limited, at least in Spain, to labeling it “99 percent wine and 1 percent grape must.”
Editor’s Note: I haven’t had a sample, but frankly—it looks a lot like anti-freeze.
