Thursday 16 February 2017

Spain’s Blue “Wine” to Have Name Changed Following Fall Out with Wine Lobby

Spain’s Blue “Wine” to Have Name Changed Following Fall Out with Wine Lobby

Blue wine is having a name change
The idea that wine is wine, whether it’s red, white, or pink, has been proven wrong. Or at least kind of wrong. Five young Spanish entrepreneurs launched Gik last year. Gik is a blue wine made from Spanish grapes infused with anthyocyacin. This natural pigment of grape skin combines with natural dye from the woad plant to form an electric blue colour.

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.