One night my roommate asked me, almost conspiratorially, if I wanted a “chicken wine.” Her eyes sparkled with laughter. I heard those two words again some time later, when I saw someone on TikTok raving about their love for a $10 pale rosé that has since become a staple in our refrigerator.
As it turns out, not only is this drink popular in our Brooklyn apartment, but we’re not the only ones calling it chicken wine.
La Vieille Ferme produces red, white, and rosé wines that are all the rage right now, and not just in the United States. Marc Perrin, chief executive of Famille Perrin and a fifth-generation family member, said the brand had sold 1 million cases in the UK in the last 12 months and expected to achieve the same goal in the US, all with little marketing or advertising. Sommeliers, country club moms, and even some underage drinkers rave about chicken wine.
You’ve probably seen Josh Cellars wines everywhere. There are many reasons.
Scroll through the “chicken wine” hashtag on TikTok and you’ll find dozens of people, mostly from the UK, extolling their love of wine, especially rosé. “It’s kind of like ‘I’m just a girl’ [trope]”, says British content creator Stephanie Booth, referencing the popular meme that encapsulates the conflicting whims and struggles of being a girl in the 2020s.
Famille Perrin, the family-run wine group that owns La Vieille Ferme as well as other high-end luxury brands such as Château de Beaucastel and the infamous Brangelina wine Miraval, has been selling La Vieille Ferme since 1970. new york times There was even an article written about it in 1976, calling it an “excellent buy” at $25 a box. “The idea is: We do haute couture, but we also do ready-to-wear,” Perrin said. (The wine’s name means “old farm” in French, a reference to his parents’ stone farmhouse.)
What attracted Booth to La Vieille Ferme was its price, which costs just £7 (about $10) in the UK. In Booth’s experience, cheaper wines tend to taste cheap, with a hint of sweetness that hints at an impending hangover. But with chicken wine, “you don’t feel like you’re drinking cheap wine,” Booth said.
