|  It is a common refrain in the cocktail circuit by people who have never set foot in China, to talk about how the Chinese mix cola with the top Bordeaux wine, perhaps not liking the bitter taste. It does not matter that many more Chinese would tell you that the trend has been changing fast and is no more the standard way of drinking wine in China.
You might not even be aware that Kalimotxo, a cocktail made by mixing 50% wine with 50% of any cola with a splash of lemon, has been popular with the young clubbing population in Basque regions of Spain and France for about 40 years.
It might have been cutting it too close with the recent experimentation of serving wine in coke aluminum cans in order to catch them young with Aussies, Americans and the French bringing out afresh the cans for wine. While Coke and Pepsi would deny that they ever considered mixing coke with wine or selling wine in coke cans, a French company has taken the recent events as an indicator of the future trends and has come out with a wine with 25% cola contents to make it more sugary and cola-like in taste to attract the youth to this low-level alcoholic concoction.
Designed to capture the young Cola-guzzling generation, an Aquitaine-based wine producer, Haussmann Famille which already makes Passion Fruit and Grape Fruit blends too, launched Rouge Sucette (French word for red lollipop) Cola with 9% alcohol last week after announcing the launch at Vinexpo in Bordeaux last month.
 The lollipop cola (Rouge Sucette) retails for under €3 a bottle (750 mL) -it has stayed away from the cola can! The manufacturers hope that it will soon become a regular feature of French barbeques and summer parties. It has been selling in various French hypermarkets and reportedly Sainsbury in UK has also been conducting the taste tests.
The producers claim to have done a lot of research to come out with the best recipe and the best mix between wine, water and the aromas. 'The result is surprising; the balance between the bitterness of the wine and the sweetness of the cola is perfect,' they claim. Keeping in view the fun loving young target audience, the label has been designed in the shape of a lollipop. It comes in a Bordeaux shaped bottle with a screwcap.
Who knows, Rouge Sucette may replace Kalimotxo in the Basque region. There surely must be Chinese still drinking their French wine with cola and might provide a ready market for the red lollipop.
Source: Media reports
Tags: Rouge Sucette, Kalimotxo, Haussmann Famille, Vinexpo, Bordeaux |