Is “Vin Bleu” a real wine?
Jul 06, 2019
Having arrived with great fanfare last summer, the famous " blue wine " is still the talk of the town. Produced by a handful of French producers, this blue-colored wine promised a 100% natural origin, the product of ancestral expertise.
Blue wine producers have always claimed that the color of the wine was obtained by a chemical reaction based on the anthocyanins released during the maceration process of red grape skins in white-fleshed grapes (Chardonnay). This explanation was already difficult to convince at the time, because many studies show that anthocyanins are only blue in a basic environment, wine being an acidic environment, they then have a red color.
Last week, a group of students from the University of Toulouse published a study in the scientific journal European Food Research and Technology, demonstrating that it is impossible to naturally obtain the synthetic molecule that gives the blue color through the simple process of winemaking. According to their findings, this shade was achieved using the food coloring E133.
These "blue wines" cannot therefore be sold under the name "wine", but "wine-based drinks" because not just any product can be sold as wine on the pretext that it is made from grapes: to have the name "wine" it must respect a set of rigorously codified methods.
A mystery finally solved...
