Rose has long been considered the poor cousin of red & white wine, but as the latest trend for blue wine gathers pace, French experts are finding the phenomenon hard to swallow.
In the Mediterranean town of Sete in southern France, a new brand of wine was recently launched, and it is the colour that has got locals surprised and some infuriated. With a light turquoise hue the chardonnay ‘Vindigo’ is produced at Bodegas Perfer, in Spain’s Almeria region by French entrepreneur René Le Bail.
The science behind the mystifying hue deserves explanation. The makers claim it is not an artificial dye, or the commonly-used blue pea flower extract apparently it starts out as white wine but turns blue after being passed through a pulp of red grape skin, thanks to the natural pigment anthocyanin a claim this is disputed by many French analysists.
No category for ‘blue wine’ currently exists in European Union rules, but Vindigo is the latest of several such products to launch in the last couple of years.
The world’s first blue wine, Gik was launched in 2015 by Spanish winemaker Gik. Breaking the mould in more ways than one, the brainchild of six friends, Gik was developed in tandem with chemical engineers from the University of the Basque country, who discovered that by fermenting different varieties of grapes with two pigments (one found in the skins of red grapes, the other from a flower, which they refuse to divulge), the liquor turns blue. Blumond a blue bubbly, followed just under a year later; and if you just search Google for “blue wine,” you’ll pull up a whole bunch of different options, including Blanc de Bleu Cuvee Mousseux and Marques de Alcantara Blue Chardonnay.
So what does blue wine taste like?
Based on a Chardonnay, Vindigo has a fruity flavour, creator French entrepreneur René Le claims it also has with elements of cherry, passion fruit and blackberry and pairs well with seafood and oysters.
While many wine connoisseurs dismiss blue wine as simply a gimmick, todays millenniums have certainly jumped on the bandwagon of this Instagram’able product
