Blue wine takes Spain by storm
The world's first blue wine is heading to UK stores in forthcoming months following a group of six young entrepreneurs who have created the new wine, Gik.
The Spanish firm teamed up with the University of the Basque Country and a food research team, Azti Tecnecalia, to design and produce a drink that could revolutionise the Spanish wine industry.
The blue wine is made using both red and white grapes from the Spanish wine regions of La Rioja and Zaragoza, with the vivid blue colour created using a pigment found in grape skin called anthocyanin and indigo dye to enhance the wines natural purple undertones.
The inspiration behind the blue colour came from Renee Mauborgne and W Chan Kim's book The Blue Ocean Strategy where blue oceans were said to have fish swimming freely, whereas, red oceans were tainted by the blood from the fish which had been eaten by the sharks.
The wine has an alcohol content of 11.5% and the producers used non-caloric sweeteners to make the drink ‘healthier and more stable' as well as making it more appealing to a wider age group of 18-70 year olds.
The producers recommend that a glass of Gik would be best served with sushi or pasta carbonara while listening to some indie or electronic music in order to attain the most enjoyment from the wine.
According to the team at Gik, in just 12 months, around 70,000 bottles have been sold in Spain already, with an equal split between men and women, although a large majority of the first customers were aged between 22 and 34. The product is set to arrive in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and France in the coming months.
At a retail price of £8 per bottle, Gik encourages its customers to forget about the lessons learnt in wine tasting courses and ‘ancestral traditions that make wine drinking complicated' as the wine has been made for consumers to ‘make their own rules'.
By Poppy Treadaway
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