So, blue wine is now a thing. Yes, it exists in the world. I have seen it with my own eyes and have even tasted it. You have likely seen it too, as it has been all over social media. Echo Falls Fruit Fusion Blue Raspberry has officially gone viral, so much so that Morrisons has just released its own version, called Silver Bay Point. Both bottles retail for £6.
What Is Blue Wine?
Echo Falls has been bringing easy-drinking Californian wine to shelves since 2002, and the brand is popular. However, I admit I did not have high hopes for this one. Billed as a fruit fusion, it has received mixed reviews online. Some people love it, calling it 'dangerously good' and 'nostalgic', while others compare its colour to mouthwash and windscreen washer fluid.
Essentially, Echo Falls is selling nostalgia. Unlike other flavours such as lemon or strawberry, there is no authentic blue raspberry fruit that inspired this drink. It is blue and tastes vaguely of raspberry. For anyone who grew up in Britain in the 1990s and 2000s, blue raspberry flavour carries bizarre emotional significance. Slush puppies, Mr Frosty, penny sweets, and fizzy drinks that stained tongues electric blue after boring maths class evoke memories of being ten years old again.
Psychologists note that nostalgic memories are often recalled through a warm, positive filter. Hence, old logos reappear and retro packaging makes comebacks. Blue raspberry is a prime example. Modern food marketing has transformed a colour not associated with anything edible into something fun and novel. A blue-coloured drink is essentially clickbait in swallowable form. It is overtly artificial and bound to taste sweet, and consumers either love it or avoid it. I am in the latter camp.
History of Blue Drinks
Blue drinks are nothing new. They first appeared in 1850s Victorian England with the invention of coal-tar dyes. Early 20th-century Europe was captivated by blue drinks, such as Dutch-made Blue Curacao, which uses blue food dye. It tastes confected and artificial compared to other triple secs like Cointreau, but it was a roaring success in the 1950s in the Blue Hawaii cocktail.
Why I Was Suspicious
Certain flavours do not belong in nature; blue raspberry is one of them. No one has stumbled across a blue raspberry bush in the wild; it was dreamed up in a lab for confectionery. Now it has made its way into the wine aisle, producing what I lovingly call 'Franken-wine's monster'. As a wine expert, blue wine fills me with dread. What in the name of white, rosé, and red is going on?
But I cannot judge too harshly. WKD Blue is not too dissimilar and was a formative part of my tween years. If you were like me and my Gen X and cusp-Millennial friends, you were doing a WKD Blue strawpedo before heading out to Yates's or Brannigan's, only to be turned away for having a fake ID and wearing the wrong shoes. Or we were blending it with port, a la Charlotte Church. Because alcopops are not sweet enough on their own, you need to add sweet fortified wine.
My grown-up, snobby side wants to pretend Echo Falls Blue Raspberry does not exist, like a fictional horror villain such as Freddy Krueger. Inexplicably, another side of me is compelled to taste it.
What Did I Think of It?
I tasted Echo Falls and Silver Bay Point so you do not have to. Here are my thoughts. Echo Falls tasted instantly sweet and artificial, like a raspberry-flavoured boiled sweet or a Mr Frostie. It has a low alcohol content of 9%, but it is dangerous because the sweetness masks the alcohol, making it seem like a soft drink. Cloying on the lips and lacking complexity, I would not buy another bottle.
Silver Bay Point started the same way with an overly sweet raspberry hit on the palate. Then something happened: some zestiness kicked in. This acidity was an essential ingredient that Echo Falls lacked, vital for offsetting the sweetness and making it slightly more balanced. Although I would not buy this bottle again either, my overall verdict is that the Morrisons version was far more palatable than Echo Falls.
