BENGALURU: Chances are, by this July, you can order the blue wine. The Spanish company that goes by the name of Gik Blue tells City Express that they have received more than 500 emails from India and interested importers and distributors have approached them for bringing blue wine to the country.
“We would like to start with the biggest cities in the country: New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. All of them during the current year 2017,” says Aritz López, co-founder of Gik.
Makers of the blue are six Spaniards all under the age of 30, who started the blue wine “to shake things up” in a country where wine is an established tradition. Currently operating in 20 countries, it took two years to develop the product and it was done in collaboration with University of the Basque Country. “We wanted to shake things up a little bit and have fun. Wine felt like the best industry to shake things up,” says Taig Mac Cathy, creator of Gik Blue Wine.
Trouble Starts
However, the electric-blue colour of the wine, has landed them in controversy. Spain has called for the product to be relabeled, on the grounds that wine cannot be blue, only red or white. Spain identifies 17 types of wine and blue is not on the list.
The makers say the blue drink is more of a beverage than a wine, but it is a wine.
How is it made blue? “It’s pretty straight forward,” says Mac Cathy. First of all, a mixture is created from five different varieties of red and white grapes. Two organic pigments, anthocyanin, from the red grape skin, and indigotine, an organic salt commonly used as a reddish-blue food colourant is used to turn the drink into blue. The drink is 99 per cent wine and 1 per cent grape. A process to combine natural and chemical pigments were developed.
It has the aroma of a ripe fruit and is slightly acidic with a sweet bubbly burst. The drink carries no added sugars to ensure it is a non-caloric and not alcoholic (since sugar ferments into alcohol).