What Does Blue Wine Mean For The Industry?

Jun 26, 2016

(Forbes) - Those who may have an aversion to alcohol the same colour as toilet cleaning products may have a problem with the new wine that is being released this summer by Gik — a Basque-based startup that is a screaming, startling shade of electric blue. Wine traditionalists may take issue with the marketing: the website declares “We are not vintners. We are creators. So we sought the most traditional and closed minded industry out there.”

Gik’s creators are far from the first to declare rebellion against the confines of the wine industry, and not even the first to conceptualize a blue wine (Italian Futurists, a prosecco from Fratelli and writer Guy Gavriel Kay’s famed third glass of the night as a sign of remembrance in his novel Tigana all call out to shades of blue.) But, perhaps emboldened by a new consumer surge towards rosé, they are pushing the boundaries when it comes to appearances — both of the wine itself and the person holding the glass. Gik, drawing from wineries in La Rioja, Zaragoza and Courthèzon, claims no denomination of origin, but rather boasts about how it doesn’t add sugar — not for traditional reasons in winemaking, but because “non-caloric sweeteners are a healthier and more stable choice.”

Dubious health claims and marketing aside, the blue wine shows a demand from consumers to consider new ideas in wine. The group most often praised or maligned for changing tradition — the millennials — is also taking the hit for wine “innovations” such as wine in a can. “22-to-34-year-olds aren’t just wine consumers—they’re wine influencers. That’s the great thing about wine: It leaves one hand free for texting,” writes Erin Blakemore at Smithsonian magazine. And this audience is a prolific wine drinking market: a study by The Wine Market Councilearlier this year said that millennials are not only “highly involved drinkers”, but that they outdrink their adult counterparts by 40 per cent. But does the world really need a mancan (marketed directly to men, with three options of red, wine and fizz) or black light labels onhipster wine (lest you think I am being facetious, the wine itself is called The Hipster Edition Chablis from William Fevre)?


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Comments:

 

Napa Boy
Jun 27, 2016

Artificial sweetener? Really/1 Ugh

 
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