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| Blue wine is having a name change |
Traditionalists originally dismissed Gik as a marketing
gimmick, but it was still able to sell over 100,000 bottles across 25
countries; proving to be a hit with hipsters and dilettantes.
Cue the Spanish wine lobby who insist on being spoilsports.
They want to curb the success of Gik by declaring that Gik isn’t wine, and
should not marketed or sold as wine.
The official regulations hold no category for blue wine in
the 17 listed wine products for Spain. This list can be found in the Annex VII
part II of Regulation 1308/2013. As such, there’s no way for officials to
categorise Gik as a wine. They insist that it be marketed as something else.
They even coined the category “99% wine and 1% grape must”.
The producers of Gik are not happy about the decision of
course. They spoke to the Local and said that drinking Gik is about more than
drinking blue wine. It’s about drinking innovation and creating your own rules
and traditions.
They did at least concede that every revolution comes with a
counter-revolution; which is a great way to sum up how everything has gone for
Gik since it first drew the attention of wine inspectors last summer.
If time has taught us anything, however, it’s that Gik is
likely to benefit from the controversy and the publicity. It will take Gik from
being a gimmick wine to being the driving force behind a brand-new category of
drinks. It’s now more likely that the “not-quite-wine” market explodes with
similar drinks as demand grows and celebrated at festivals and events in Spain.
