You Know What, Blue Wine Can Go Straight To Hell

A Spanish company—we won’t say winemaker, because that would be too generous—is producing an electric blue wine called Gïk, according to a new report from BBC Travel.

Made with a mixture of white and red grapes “whose color and flavor we improve through food tech,” Gïk’s producers say their wine is “sweeter and easier to drink” than traditional vino.

Nope. There’s so much wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin.

“F—king hilarious,” says Keith Wallace, founder of the Wine School of Philadelphia. “This is basically a wine for 15-year-olds who are used to drinking soda.”


Calling Gïk the “wine equivalent of Zima,” Wallace says he thinks Spain might be having its “White Zinfandel moment.”

White Zinfandel is a style of wine—usually sweet and pink in color—that took the U.S. by storm back in the 80s and early 90s, Wallace says.

“It was for people who thought drinking wine would make them look sophisticated, but who didn’t really like the way wine tastes,” he explains.

Since then, White Zin has become industry shorthand for cheap, boring, overly sweet wines, he says.

“So a group of Spaniards without any winemaking experience joined up with a university to come up with a blue-colored White Zinfandel,” Wallace says, roughly summarizing Gïk’s back story. “Is that what the world is coming to?”

If you’re wondering how mixing red and white grapes makes blue wine, you can stop.

The blue hue is almost totally artificial in the sense that Gïk’s creators just pulled it out of thin air.

Gïk’s unnatural blue tint comes from a compound found in grape skins (OK so far) and organic indigo—the stuff traditionally used to make your jeans blue.

“We are not vintners,” the Gïk people say, as if that were a good thing for guys who are making and selling wine. “We are creators.”

“If I want blue wine,” says sommelier Madeline Puckette, founder of Wine Folly, “I’ll grab some blue food coloring and my favorite bottle of Riesling.”

Finally, we have to take a shot at that name. Gïk. It’s a lot like the sound you make when you try to suppress vomit—and fail.

The world would be a better place if this wine were not a thing. (Now watch it blow up into the next viral drinking trend.)
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Article source: http://www.menshealth.com/guy-wisdom/blue-wine