When it comes to wine, we’re used to red and white, maybe a little rosé now and again. But winemakers Gïk decided to shake up the wine industry with a startling new wine color: blue. Their blue wine may be sourced from local grapes, but it’s unlike most wines found in Spain or the rest of the world.
Gïk sources their grapes from Spanish vineyards in Zaragoza, La Rioja, Castilla-La Mancha, and León, but they don’t place an emphasis on where they get their grapes. Rather, it’s about how they use food technology to change those grapes into a vibrant new product. Not only does the color differ from traditional wines, but the blue wine is sweeter as well, even though it doesn’t contain added sugars.
Related: Historic 7th-century cellar in Spain renovated to celebrate the history of wine-making
The members of the Gïk team are in their twenties and describe themselves not as business people but as “creators: designers, programmers, artists, and musicians.”
They write on their website, “We are not vintners. We are creators. So we sought the most traditional and close-minded industry out there…having selected the wine industry as our battlefield, we set about creating a radically different product, changing the color to a vibrant blue and making the wine sweeter and easier to drink.”
So how do they obtain that crazy blue hue? It’s all due to a pigmentation process using two organic pigments. One is indigo; the other is anthocyanin, which comes from grape skin. Gïk worked with the University of the Basque Country for about two years to research the best method and recipe for the blue wine.
Currently the wine is sold online to customers in Spain, France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands. Each bottle costs about $11 and contains 11.5% alcohol.
Via My Modern Met
Images via Gïk and Gïk Facebook
