Here are some stories about some truly unique wines. We hope you think they’re really grape.
Cat Wine
When you pour yourself a glass of wine, does your cat look up at you longingly wanting some of his or her own? Well, now you don’t have to deny your cat a glass of red or white—because wine for cats now exists. Cat wine is the signature product of Apollo Peak Cat Wine, based in Denver. Using organic and locally sourced ingredients the company makes non-alcoholic wine just for cats. It’s not made from grapes, so it’s not technically wine. But it sure does look like wine, and it has the same effect on cats that regular wine does on people. Both the red blend (Pinot Meow) and the white (MosCATo) are a combination of beets and catnip. The catnip is the active intoxicant. For while cats get weird and playful when they inhale catnip, ingesting it is a different story: It chills them out. (Cost of cat wine: about $12 for a single-serve bottle.)
Blue Wine
Do you like wine but wish the color more closely resembled that stuff barbers used to clean their combs? Well, good, because blue is now an option alongside the red and the white. Gik Wine has been a major hit in Spain this year. Gik’s vintners get that distinctive blue color (which is officially listed as “Indigo Blue, WTF”) by blending red grapes, white grapes, and, mysteriously, “chemistry.” While this sounds like a winemaking accident gone wrong, Gik specifically chose to make blue wine, saying that the color represents “movement, innovation, and infinity.”
Pine Wine
While those other two are quite new on the wine market, retsina wine has been around for more than 2,000 years. It’s little known outside of Greece. Tradition says that when Roman troops invaded Greece, the locals added tree resins to their wine to make them taste so horrible that the troops would leave it alone. But they kept doing it over the centuries, and an “acquired taste” was born. Retsina is still popular in Greece, and pine tree resin is added in during the fermenting stage. What does it taste like? Reportedly, a little bit like wine, a little bit like pine-scented floor cleaner.