A Sparkling Wine Comes Out of the Cave

TendreBulle - the only gay wine in the village?
June 19, 2008
Sophie Kevany in Bordeaux

France's first gay wine – TendreBulle Gay Vin by Domaine de Boyer – launches on 1 July.

The wine, a sparkling rosé from Languedoc-Roussillon, will show two stylised heads, almost kissing, on the bottle. Underneath are the words 'Gay Vin'.

The letters G and L, for gay and lesbian, will appear on the capsule.

'I added the letters after some women at a wine fair told me the wine is only for boys,' said the wine's creator, Jacques-Edouard Pailles, a winemaker whose property is in Saint Martin de Villereglan, in the department of Aude.

Pailles said he started out wanting to make a rosé wine that would be called the gay wine of Malpierre, one of the local place names, but could not, because of AOC regulations.

'So then I thought it would be fun to make a happy wine, something festive, as in happy which is what gay used to mean in the middle ages,' he said.

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About 13,000 bottles have already been made of the non-vintage, méthode champenoise Gay Vin. The wine will cost €6 per bottle and is available by order from Domaine de Boyer.