TIME  Blue Wine Is Now a Thing You Can Drink

Rosé wine? So passé. Red and white? Please, those are centuries old. But now, some good news for those seeking the next big thing in beverages: a Spanish winemaker is crafting an electric blue wine.

“Try to forget all you know about wine,” the website for the brand, Gik, reads. Ignore all the preconceptions and standards regarding [the] wine industry and turn a deaf ear to what the sommelier told you in the wine tasting last week. The vino is created from an undisclosed combination of red and white grapes that has “no aging procedure.” If you want to get technical, Eater reports that the “juice is hued neon blue with anthocyanin (a pigment found in grape skin) and indigo (a dye extracted from the Isatis tinctoria plant), and a non-caloric sweetener is added as well.”
So why blue? Eater asked co-founder Aritz Lopez, who made a case for his new product, even though he’s never had any winemaking experience. Apparently, Lopez and team were inspired by the concept of “red oceans,” which represent “business markets saturated by specialists (sharks) who fight for the same variables and for a reduced number of clients (fish), and end up in water turned red. And how it’s necessary to revert this, by innovating and creating new variables, back to blue. This seemed poetic for us to turn a traditionally red beverage into a blue one,” López states.

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TRAVEL 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.

● USA TODAY This new blue wine might change your life

A Spanish wine company called Gik is introducing the world to an electric blue wine. Even without tasting it you can tell this isn’t your mama’s White Zin.