What is Glou Glou?
What is Glou Glou? Glou Glou is a French noun-turned-adjective that mimics the word “glug-glug”, Aaron Ayscough from Wine.Sprudge.com describes the term as “representing both the sound of liquid leaving a bottleneck and of the rapid gulping of said liquid”. Glou-glou described wines are wines that are easily chuggable, impossible to put the glass down, and seductively delicious! They tend to be young and fresh, designed to be drunk early with an average ABV of around 10%.
The usage of the word itself was first derived in the winemaking capital of the world - Japan...just joking, it was the French who first brought it into usage. Trust us when we say this, the word ‘glou glou’ isn’t just some type of hype lingo that’s ready to be forgotten about once the next trend comes around, people and businesses in the natural wine community all across the world have lent the word for various reasons - from the name of wine bars in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, to funky wine labels and even a natural wine importer over in the states has opted to use ‘Glou Glou’ as there trading name. People just tend to instantly know what ‘glou glou’ stands for and it’s great!
Beaujolais was the birthplace of the word ‘glou glou’ and that’s because they typically produce natural wines of very light-bodied, fruit-focused features. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the actual winemakers who began using the word, it was the local harvest workers who initially started referring to Beaujolais wine as “so fresh, so invigorating, so glou glou”
In quite simple terms, ‘glou glou’ stands for fresh, sometimes young, sometimes old, really drinkable wine.
You might also use the word ‘vin de soif’ which represents unpretentious, approachable wine, anyway, you get the message! For the most part glou glou wines are incredibly light-bodied and fruity which highlights the connection between the adjective ‘juice’ that is widely used in today's natural wine world and the original meaning of ‘glou glou’.
To describe your wine as ‘glou glou’ isn’t just a hipster way of naming an expensive bottle of cool looking natural wine, it means so much more than that, there are entire winemaking regions out there such as the Loire, Beaujolais and Burgenland who boast a large amount of vignerons that are producing easy drinking, ‘glou glou’ wines.
This is not a write-up designed to make you want to buy strictly ‘glou glou’ tasting natural wines for the rest of your life, but more like a background story to where the term comes from and why it deserves a lot more respect than most people give it.
