The world's first blue wine

The world's first blue wine

Gïk Blue combines red and white grapes with organic pigments and flavours to produce a sweet, electric-blue wine that has some raising their eyebrows and others raising their glasses.

A Spanish company is shaking up the country's traditional wine industry with a surprising new beverage.

Gïk Blue combines red and white grapes with organic pigments and flavours to produce a sweet, electric-blue wine that has some raising their eyebrows and others raising their glasses.

"Gïk was born for fun, to shake things up and see what happens," said co-creator Aritz López.

"We wanted to innovate and start a little revolution... and the wine industry looked like the perfect place to start."

The only problem? No one in López' circle of friends was an experienced winemaker, so they recruited some help from the University of the Basque Country, where a team of chemical engineers spent two years helping them "merge nature and technology" to create a blue wine.

Gïk blends different varieties of red and white grapes with two organic pigments to turn it blue: anthocyanin, from the red grape skin, and indigotine, an organic compound commonly used as a reddish-blue food dye.

The resulting flavour is enhanced with non-caloric sweeteners to create a product that is cross between a wine, a wine cooler and a cocktail mixer, with a mellow, sweet, slightly syrupy mouthfeel.

"At first people didn't believe we were selling a blue wine, but when they tried it, they loved it - and they keep coming back for it," said Enrique Isasi of Sushi Artist Madrid, one of Spain's first restaurants to carry the product.

However, not everyone has been a repeat customer. Some have called Gïk blasphemous and a terrible invention; others liken it to an "anti-wine" spin-off, like what Seville-based Puerto de Indias did with its strawberry gin.

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