Can Blue Wine Replace Rosé?

Stop us if we’re repeating ourselves, but there are plenty of reasons spring is the perfect season for off-color wines like rosé. Guzzling something that’s not red or white come springtime isn’t just trendy, it makes a lot of sense given the temperatures and dishes that spring brings. Unique wines suit a unique season.

Not too long ago, however, a new off-color wine (made from red and white grapes) entered the scene. This juice was created by winemakers who “wanted to create an innovative and daring product in tune with the changing world…” because  “the wine industry needs a little revolution.”

Gik is the name of this wine. (Yes, it’s an odd and somewhat unappealing name, but it’s Basque so gets a free pass.) Gik isn’t one of those rosés, orange wines, Vinho Verdes or copper-colored hybrids that have become so hip. This wine is blue. Not blue like Miles Davis, or Van Gogh’s periwinkle infused Starry Night. This wine is blue like a neon sign in a strip club, or like the frontman of Eiffel 65.

Woah.

A bright blue wine, made from red and white grapes and designed for those who think the wine industry could use a little shaking up? In principle, sounds enticing- perhaps even like the perfect spring wine. But is it? More importantly, how did Gik get so blue?

Well, the young Spanish entrepreneurs who decided that the world needed an incandescent blue wine knew they couldn’t do it alone. In fact, they had no winemaking experience whatsoever (foreshadowing perhaps?) prior to the “invention” of Gik. Over the course of two years, the wine was developed in collaboration with the Basque government’s food research bureau and experts at the University of the Basque Country.

All of this might lead you to think that making blue wine is like cracking the DaVinci code, but in the end, the blue-ification of wine isn’t all too impressive. A base wine is created, then anthocyanin and indigo pigments” are added.

In other words, these rookie winemakers threw some grapes together and then filled the resulting wine with food dye. But that’s not all, the final step is to “soften” the wine with added sweeteners. This is not a good sign. In fact, the wine is so sweet that its makers recommend serving it cold, not chilled.

Now, the only case in which a drink (especially wine!) should be served super cold is if it tastes awful. Based on the fact that this is a hodgepodge wine made of unnamed grapes, soaked in food dye and then filled with sugar, it’s highly unlikely that Gik is an exception to the rule.

Is blue wine next in the line of off-color, unconventional wines that have captured the imagination of young drinkers? Can it compete with wines like rosé, Vinho Verde or orange wine? Probably not, or at least, we certainly hope not. This stuff is more or less what you’d get if you made Gushers into wine, which is sort of an insult to Gushers actually.

If you’re one of those drinkers that’s constantly seeking something other than what’s popular, we tip our hats to you. Our advice? Make sure you pick something other than Gik (and its imitators) too. The good news? Rosé is here to stay.