The rosé touted by Post Malone and Colton Underwood may seem like one big millennial joke, but these ‘brosé bros’ are laughing all the way to the bank
John Legend, Brad Pitt, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kylie Minogue may all have produced rosé before, but now there’s a hip, new, semi-ironic, millennial craze for the pink stuff, fed and exploited by Instagram generation, and it was only a matter of time before entertainment’s biggest names got in on the act – who knew it would be the men?
The ultimate food and wine pairing is a bottle of rosé with chicken fingers and French fries.
At least it is if you’re dining with rapper Post Malone, who launched a rosé called Maison No. 9 in June and told The Wall Street Journal that the crisp wine “pairs perfect with the sunset” – and also with “a nice, hot American chicken strip”.
Because while 25-year-old Malone is best-known for his record-breaking hit singles like Rockstar and Psycho – and having an Instagram following of 22.6 million – he is also just the latest male millennial celeb to join the brosé league despite saying he has “loved wine for a minute now”.
In 2015, Instagram personality Josh Ostrovsky co-founded wine brand Swish Beverages, which has since been rebranded Babe, and launched White Girl Rosé. Ostrovsky, now 38, went on to release Babe Rosé (a canned sparkling rosé) a year later, followed by Pink Party Rosé with Bubbles (a champagne rosé) in 2017. Most Instagramers will know Ostrovsky by his more recognisable handle, The Fat Jewish, an offbeat meme account that boasts 10.7 million followers.
Then, last year, Colton Underwood, 28, released 65 Roses Rosé with all proceeds going toward cystic fibrosis research. Underwood, a former NFL player with a two million-strong Instagram following, is best known for his season on The Bachelor.
While the move to monetise a feminised drink may seem like a gendered marketing ploy, the brosé launches actually say a lot about millennial culture. As Chloe Wyma wrote for GQ in 2015, “The rosé bro is inaugurating a freer, more egalitarian world of gender-fluid beverage consumption.”
The allure of the rosé bro
The 2015 launch of White Girl Rosé happened to coincide with that year’s drink of the summer – rosé. Ostrovsky and his co-founders felt the liquor market was saturated, according to VinePair’s Leslie Price. But, she reported, they found the rosé market, which was going viral on Instagram, virtually untouched.
What was originally intended to be a cheeky fad turned into long-lasting blush fever. “It was going to be a momentary thing,” Ostrovsky told Price. “We were going to sell it to women in the Hamptons that we knew with like, rhinoplasty.”