Cat Wine Tasting: It Happened to Us

This post was a collaboration between Julia Burke and Jamie Bernstein

Have you ever sipped wine while stroking your cat and thought to yourself, “I wish my cat could share this wine with me?”

No? File this one under “potential signs of the Apocalypse” or “stuff white people like,” but Colorado company Apollo Peak’s “Cat Wine” has been flying off their shelves, apparently. How do we know? We ordered it, because Julia is physically incapable of resisting tasting anything that has the word “wine” on it. The shipment was delayed due to unexpected demand.

Though non-alcoholic (for the best, we’re sure), Cat Wine contains catnip as well as beet juice, both of which are organic because this is your cat we’re talking about here. Given the choice between Moscato and Pinot Meow,* we selected the latter and decided to try it out on our favorite snuggle buddy: Jamie’s cat, Jack.

What follows is a visual account of Jack’s first wine tasting, with scores and tasting notes.

Julia’s notes:

Salty and vaguely herbal with a nose of beet greens and dishwater, Pinot Meow is firmly beet-centric on the palate with just a hint of catnip. The saltiness continues through the finish. Thin and vegetal throughout, this was utterly disgusting for human consumption. 69 points.

Jack’s notes:

We poured the wine into his saucer. Jack briefly sniffed it then turned his nose away, showing extreme lack of interest in Pinot Meow––with the notable exception that when Julia dribbled some onto her fingers he deigned to lick it off them. Luckily, cats can get high from catnip just by sniffing it and within a few minutes Jack began showing the effects of the ‘nip, which consisted mainly of rolling around on the table.

69 points from saucer; 83 points when licked from a lady’s fingertips.

We tried the cat wine before actually checking that catnip was safe for human consumption. Luckily we only took a small sip because smoking catnip or drinking it in tea, or presumably wine, can cause effects such as vomiting in humans. Additionally, you won’t get high from cat wine no matter how much you drink because we humans likely lack the nepetalactone receptors which stimulates some cats sexual response when they are in contact with catnip.

Obviously, we humans had to have an actual wine on standby, and this lovely Grenache Blanc (a tribute to the first cat in space, Felicette) was a thematic and delightful palate cleanser.

*I have to say this company sort of phoned in the cat wine puns. Cateauneuf-du-Pape? Tem-purr-nillo? Meowscadet? I could go on. – Julia

If you want to see more photos from our cat wine tasting, head on over to the Flickr album.