Blue Nun is a German wine brand launched by the company H. Sichel Söhne (Mainz) in 1923 with the 1921 vintage, and which between the 1950s and 1980s was probably the largest international wine brand. For most of its existence, Blue Nun was a single German wine, which until late 1990s was classified as a Liebfraumilch, but the name is now used for a whole range of wines of various origins. When it was created, the label was designed as a consumer-friendly alternative to the innumerable German wine labels with Gothic script and long, complicated names. With the creation of its UK office in 1927, Sichel targeted the export market. Beginning in the 1950s, Blue Nun was advertised as a wine that could be drunk throughout an entire meal, thereby eliminating the often intimidating problem of wine and food pairing. Blue Nun can be said to have been the first wine to have been produced and effectively marketed with an international mass market in mind.
After World War II, the brand became spectacularly popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, selling for the same price as a second growth red Bordeaux wine. At its peak of popularity in 1984–1985, annual sales in the United States were 1.25 million cases, with another 750,000 cases sold elsewhere.
During the 1970s, a series of popular radio adverts promoting the wine were produced, featuring Stiller and Meara.
From late 1980s, and more in the 1990s, easy-drinking semi-sweet German wines began to lose in popularity in general. Consequently, the brand's popularity declined, and the wine began to be perceived as tacky and dated. This change was reflected in the drink of choice of a popular fictional over-the-hill British television and radio presenter, Alan Partridge. However, sales increased after Blue Nun was purchased by the Mosel-based German family firm Langguth which bought the brand, along with the owning firm, Sichel, in 1996. They repositioned the brand, reclassifying it from a Liebfraumilch to a regular Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA), changing the grapes from Müller-Thurgau to 30% Riesling, and making it less sweet. It remains relatively low in alcohol at 9.5%.
Read more about Blue Nun: Brand Extension, References To Blue Nun in Popular Culture and Media
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or nun:
“Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps.
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black.
The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.
Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.
Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The sight of a Black nun strikes their sentimentality; and, as I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art, housed in a magical color; the incarnation of civilized, anti-heathenism, and the fruit of a triumphing idea.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)