The New True Blue Wine
These student entrepreneurs picked the most traditional consumable of all: wine. In fact it’s the first of it’s kind.- blue wine…
The New True Blue Wine
5 years ago, a group of college students in Spain dedicated their time and talent to make sure they turned the food and beverage industry on its head, so 5 student entrepreneurs named Imanol, Inigo, Gorka, Aritz and Taig picked the most traditional consumable of all: wine. Putting a twist on tradition, their consumable product is the first of its kind, blue wine!
Photo: Today.com
After two years of research at the University of the Basque Country with the help of in-house, professional chemical engineers and an outside centre for food innovation, they launched their company, Gik Live! In 2015, with a record sale of 30,000 bottles in its first year and nearly 500,000 this past year, Gik Live! exports to 21 countries (the United States being its main market & France its second) all with a company of only 12 employees. Electric blue in colour, the wine is made of mainly white wine with a small amount of red and a tiny bit of freshly-crushed grape juice. The innovative Gik Blue is made in several wineries in Spain following the traditional winemaking process and can be found online and in a few restaurants in Spain. While Gik Live used to use sugar substitutes, the company has stated that it has added dessert wine instead to finish the controversial product off with a sweet taste.
Prices online range roughly from $13 to $15 a bottle
Photo: Gik.blue
Reaction to the blue wine has been mixed: "Not bad" was the verdict of the former head sommelier at the Paris Ritz. In Europe, the company has had to label Gik Blue an "alcoholic drink" as authorities have ruled it isn't wine due to its blue hue, but if you happen to purchase it in the United States, it will be labeled as wine.
We hope you’ve enjoyed The New True Blue Wine! What are your thoughts on this controversial new product? Join the conversation below!
Spot the Real Rosé
It seems much of the French pink consumers have been drinking over the past 2 years has in fact been cheap Spanish rosado…
Lovers of French wine are suddenly seeing red. Earlier this year, they feared they wouldn’t have enough of their beloved rosé to get them through the summer, because Americans are buying it all. Now it seems much of the French pink they’ve been consuming over the past 2 years has in fact been cheap Spanish rosado.
Photo by Justin Aikin
France’s consumer fraud authority confirmed in early July that over the past 2 years, unscrupulous wine merchants have passed off as many as 70,000 hectoliters (equivalent to 10 million bottles) of cheap Spanish wine as more-expensive French rosé. That’s shocking news in a country where protesters have been known to stop tanker trucks with imported wines and empty their contents on the road near the border.
This kind of story plays well in headlines because it reinforces 2 popular stereotypes: Those crafty French, and the snooty wine snobs who can’t tell the difference between bad knockoffs and good wine. It also highlights basic economics and current trends in the production and marketing of wine.
French consumer fraud investigators said they became aware of the “Frenchification” of Spanish wine in late 2015, then began canvassing stores and restaurants to verify the authenticity of wines being sold. They found that 22 percent of the establishments they surveyed were selling Spanish wine that was either fraudulently or misleadingly labeled as French, according to Le Parisien, which broke the story.
While it is unclear whether any of the fraudulent wine was exported, it is possible that some may have made it's way to the United States as well.
We hope you've enjoyed learning how the Spanish are challenging the French to Spot the Real Rosé! On a scale of 1 -10 how likely are you to be able to differentiate the real vs. the fake version of this highly popular summer wine? Join the conversation below to let us know!