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Spain startup introduces Blue Wine

Blue wine in a goblet
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Five years ago, a group of university students in Spain’s Basque Country decided they wanted to shake up a sector …  any sector, but preferably one to do with food or drink. So Imanol, Inigo, Gorka, Aritz and Taig picked the most traditional of them all and created blue wine, one of several innovations in a deeply conservative industry.

After two years of research at the University of the Basque Country with the help of in-house, professional chemical engineers and an outside centre for food innovation, they launched their company Gik Live! in 2015. It sold 30,000 bottles in its first year and close to 500,000 in 2017.

The young company now exports to 21 countries, the United States being its main market and wine-loving France its second.

From five rookie entrepreneurs, the company has grown to 12 employees.

“We understand that for many people … wine is something sacred that mustn’t be changed,” says Irish-Basque co-founder Taig MacCarthy, standing at a bar in the company office in Portugalete, a northern town near Bilbao.

“But we like to change things and we’re not afraid to try,” he adds, as employees type at their computers in the room next door where a drum kit and guitars stand ready for use in true hipster startup tradition.

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