{"id":3525,"date":"2015-08-21T16:12:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T22:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=3525"},"modified":"2015-08-21T17:56:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T23:56:46","slug":"blue-nun-praying-for-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/blue-nun-praying-for-a-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Nun Praying for a Comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t bigger than The Beatles, but it did make it into The Beatles’ White Album<\/a>.\u00a0 It sold 12 million bottles a year in the U.S. alone in its 1980s heyday.\u00a0 Once the most popular imported wine in the world, Blue Nun wine<\/a> had a great run before falling out of popular favor and lapsing into obscurity.\u00a0 And now, perhaps in hopes of divine intervention, the German company that bought Blue Nun is trying for an unlikely resurrection of the brand.<\/p>\n

Blue Nun’s roots go back to nineteenth-century Germany, when one Hermann Sichel founded a wine business in Mainz.\u00a0 In 1921, the Sichel firm decided to try exporting wine to the UK.\u00a0 Sichel concocted a version of liebfraumilch<\/a>:\u00a0 a simple, sweetish white wine blend named for a church in the area where most of the grapes were originally grown.\u00a0 Sichel ackowledged this church connection by putting a picture of a nun on the label. \u00a0According to wine economist Mike Veseth<\/a>, a printer’s error turned the nun’s habit blue instead of brown, and so an advertising icon was born.<\/p>\n

The friendly, unintimidating image of the nun helped turn Blue Nun into a hit overseas, and inspired liebfraumilch imitators like Black Tower (also still around<\/a>) and Goldener Oktober.\u00a0 In the 1970s Blue Nun’s reach extended to the U.S., under the advertising slogan “Blue Nun Goes Everywhere” — the implication being that Blue Nun was safe for those intimidated by wine to serve with any food or on any occasion.\u00a0 The “Goes Everywhere” point was subtly emphasized in some strange TV commercials that showed blue-clad nuns ice-skating<\/a> and playing tennis.\u00a0 “A delicious imported white wine that goes as well with meat as it does with fish,” was Blue Nun’s dubious claim.\u00a0 “Show your good taste with the good taste of Blue Nun!”<\/a><\/p>\n

If anyone believed that then, no one believes it now.\u00a0 By the mid-80s Blue Nun sales started to collapse, a victim of its own success, according to Veseth.\u00a0 Introduced to wine by the likes of Blue Nun, consumers became more sophisticated about wine and left the liebfraumilch behind.\u00a0 Before long Blue Nun turned into a punchline, and then was forgotten altogether.<\/p>\n

In 1996, the German company Langguth bought the Blue Nun label from Sichel in hopes of a miraculous transfiguration.\u00a0 They did improve the quality of the wine, changing it from liebfraumilch to a riesling-based blend.\u00a0 The Blue Nun herself, a reminder of the cheesy ad campaigns of old, was reduced to a tiny portrait on the new bottles.\u00a0 Some new varieties were introduced:\u00a0 a “Sweet Red,” a box wine version, and something called “Blue Nun Sparkling Gold<\/a>,” a gimmick drink that allegedly contains actual flecks of gold in the wine.<\/p>\n

The gimmicks continue.\u00a0 Just two weeks ago, Blue Nun announced three upcoming variations<\/a>, including a “Ros\u00e9 Edition Sparkling Wine,” and a disgraceful, alcohol-free abomination that I will not name.\u00a0 Probably not worth resurrecting in the first place, it seems safe to predict that the new Blue Nun has no prayer of ascending to her former glory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t bigger than The Beatles, but it did make it into The Beatles’ White Album.\u00a0 It sold 12 million bottles a year in the U.S. alone in its 1980s heyday.\u00a0 Once the most popular imported wine in the world, Blue Nun wine had a great run before falling out of popular favor and lapsing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":3526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[200,981,979,530,982,983,980,78],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}