Who says you have to own a vineyard to make your own wine? Certainly not the makers of SodaStream. The machine known for turning water into soda is now taking things a step further, and turning water into wine. This, my friends, is a true holiday miracle. With the launch of the company’s new limited-edition line, “Sparking Gold,” you can add a “fine alcoholic concentrate” to sparkling water. The result is said to resemble a “fruity Riesling wine,” and contain 10 percent alcohol by volume if you prepare the beverage according to the recommended mixing ratio (one part Sparkling Gold concentrate to five parts sparkling water). But before you get too excited, we should let you know that for now, the Sparkling Gold is available exclusively on SodaStream’s German website, and that the price is still to be confirmed.
The limited edition Sparkling Gold product hopes to enable customers to indulge in a variety of sparkling drinks, not limited to the non-alcoholic variety. And while you may wrinkle your nose at the notion of a sparkling wine that comes out of a mix and pressurized canister, SodaStream claims that folks have reacted quite well to its new offering. According to an independent market research test conducted in October, 76 percent of respondents rated Sparkling Gold as having a very good or good taste, whereas 67 percent rated Veuve Clicquot similarly, and 56 percent gave the same rating to Moet & Chandon. That said, it appears that women were the only customers surveyed and only 100 participated in the experiment.
“SodaStream is changing the way people drink. Millions of people around the globe enjoy using SodaStream to transform their ordinary tap water into fresh sparkling water at the touch of a button,” SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum said in a statement. “Fun and exciting concentrates give more users the opportunity to enjoy and even indulge in festive beverages this holiday season.”
If you manage to actually get your hands on a bottle of Sparkling Gold concentrate, you will find it in a 200m-liter gold-tinted glass bottle that looks quite the festive part. One bottle is capable of creating 12 glasses of sparkling wine (again, if you follow the prescribed ratios).