FitWine: “We crush grapes, you crush life”
Is wine truly good for you? Sure, we all know that a glass of red a day keeps the doctors away but can drinking a certain type of wine help? Would you drink a wine that was marketed as the cleanest wine with the highest antioxidants? If so, I’ve got the wine for you! Found on the end cap at Whole Foods, Fit Wine is attempting to cater to the healthy eaters who are active and care about what they are putting in their bodies.FitVine is marketed as great tasting with 95 calories or less and less than 0.2 grams of sugar per 5 ounce glass. Fit wines also contain < 35ppm of sulfites.Reviews online generally speak to a light not overwhelming flavor of a very drinkable but not memorable wine.Have you had it or would you drink it?
I haven't tried it and probably wouldn't purchase on my own. That said, I think it is brilliant and there is definitely a market for this type of marketing pitch and, moreover, I think this solves for one of the most glaring 'needs' of the entire industry. Wine is intimidating and it is difficult for many to begin to play and experiment with what they might like. There needs to be more reputable "gateway" products to allow new drinkers to feel invited to participate in wine culture. This seems like a promising way to do just that for the growing health-conscious market.
ReplyDeleteI've also seen this at Whole Foods and was super skeptical at first. It seems like a fad in line with "Vitamin Water", except somehow patently less true. It reminds me of how sodas try to align themselves with athletes and thirst-quenching in order to affiliate themselves with fitness. My assumption was also that this was a normal wine, maybe slightly more organically produced, with a fitness-focused label slapped on the front.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did some Googling and found this helpful article, which breaks down the claims that the company makes: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/6-facts-about-bio-hacked-wine.html
As expected, many of the claims are over the top and not actually true. For example, it claims to be better than other wines because of its zero residual sugar. While this is better than, say, champagne, in terms of calories, there are many dry wines out there with low or zero residual sugar, so this is not revolutionary. In addition, it points to several aspects of the wine as being unique to it – low pH, no GMOs, grapes grown at high altitudes – that, in reality, and true of many or most wines anyway.
That said, one of the major takeaways is that it's a "clean" wine that tastes decent. It follows many best practices used by top wineries, and has optimized some aspects at the margin.
Ultimately, the article gives a neutral-to-positive review, but ends with one warning: "Big But Alert: wine is still wine and it will still eat your liver, addle your brainium, drop your blood sugar through the floor and render you fodder for angry cops if you overdo it. Also, there are still 600-odd pretty-much-empty calories in that bottle. That’s a little bit more of a free lunch than a wine that has, say 700 calories a bottle. But FitVine is no substitute for plain old moderation."