One night, my roommate asked me, almost conspiratorially, if I wanted a glass of “chicken wine.” Her eyes glimmered with mirth. I heard those two words again some time later, when I came across a TikTok of someone exalting their own love of the $10 pale rosé that’d become a staple in our refrigerator.
As it turned out, the wine wasn’t just popular in our Brooklyn apartment, and we weren’t the only people calling it Chicken Wine.
La Vieille Ferme, which makes red, white, and rosé wines, is having a moment right now, and not just in the US. According to Marc Perrin, CEO of Famille Perrin and fifth-generation family member, the brand recently hit 1 million case sales within the last 12 months in the UK and is on track to do the same in the US, all with little to no marketing and advertising. Sommeliers, country club moms, and even a few, ahem, underage drinkers are all abuzz about Chicken Wine.
Scroll the “chicken wine” tag on TikTok and you’ll find dozens of people, mostly from the UK, extolling their love of the wine, the rosé in particular. “It kind of plays into the whole ‘I’m just a girl [trope],’” says UK content creator, Stephanie Booth, referencing the popular meme encapsulating the contradicting whimsy and struggle of being a girl in the 2020s.
Famille Perrin—the family-run wine conglomerate that owns La Vieille Ferme and other high-end luxury labels like Château de Beaucastel and the infamous Brangelina wine, Miraval—has been selling La Vieille Ferme since 1970. The New York Times even wrote about it in 1976, calling it an “excellent buy” at $25 a case. “The idea was: We do haute couture, but let’s also do the prêt-à-porter,” says Perrin. (The wine’s name, which means “the old farm” in French, refers to his parents’ stone farmhouse.)
What drew Booth to La Vieille Ferme was the price, just about 7 pounds sterling in the UK (about $10). In Booth’s experience, cheaper wines tend to taste, well, cheap, touched with a sweetness hinting at the hangover to come. But with Chicken Wine, “you don't feel like you’re drinking cheap wine,” Booth says.
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La Vieille Ferme is not a complex or luxury wine you’re meant to swirl about in your glass and delicately sniff, waxing poetic on its subtle notes of crushed berries and crisp citrus. It is, however, consistent and well-made for relaxed consumption at the end of a long day. And isn’t that its own sort of luxury? Chicken Wine is crisp and vibrant, without pomp and circumstance. For the everyday wine drinker, it belies its $10 price tag.
“When you look into where they’re sourcing their fruit from, where their vineyards are [in the affordable Southern Rhône], the fact that they’ve prioritized organic biodynamic winemaking—and then they’re able to make something so affordable is amazing,” says California-based sommelier and wine educator Warner Boin. These factors together yield refreshing results that prompt sommeliers like UK-based Gilbey to crown La Vieille Ferme a go-to affordable rosé to his over 140,000 followers.
“If you’re paying much over $20 [for rosé], then you are just buying a brand name, because rosé is not a serious wine. It’s a fun wine,” sommelier Tom Gilbey explains. “There’s not too much sugar, so it’s very crisp. To me, that is the sign of a well-made wine.”
Perrin explains the family adopted the brand’s recognizable chicken sketch label in the early 2000s as part of a brand refresh (the label used to depict his parents’ farm). That recognizability, paired with the general public’s laziness to pronounce the name La Vieille Ferme, lead to the widely agreed upon moniker Chicken Wine, a nickname that’s ignited an internet fandom similar to that of viral Josh wine.
It offers a beacon of approachability for low-key drinkers scanning shelves upon shelves of labels that seem to blend together. I couldn’t tell you what most wines look like, but the simplicity (and cuteness) of two chickens makes La Vieille Ferme feel comforting and familiar. That level of branding isn’t common in the wine world—and it’s something Sarah Tracey, sommelier and lifestyle expert from The Lush Life, believes the industry’s been slow to pick up on.
“Think about Coca-Cola,” says Tracey. “Every time you grab a case, you’re always going to have the same experience. Wine is not [like that].” Unlike the soft drink space, the wine world is full of foreign names, regions, and grape varieties unfamiliar to the super casual wine drinker. While you might know you like a type of wine, you likely don’t know of specific wine brands. But the distinction La Vieille Ferme has created for itself as the Chicken Wine helps it stand out the way other labels don’t. “It’s memorable and [removes] a lot of the confusion around standing in the wine aisle and feeling like you’re in another universe,” Tracey says.
Inflation and the looming threat of a recession helps the label and price tag stand out. Even La Vieille Ferme’s viral wine competitor, Josh, costs about $5 or $6 more. “Cost of living just keeps going up, so I think people are trading down,” says BevMo! regional manager Brian O’Neill. “But you’re not sacrificing quality by trading down in price on this.”
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The resurgence comes at a pivotal time for wine, according to Boin, where consumption is down and there’s an increased demand for something more approachable. The genius of Chicken Wine is that it delivers on its promise as an approachable drink that offers the guise of luxury without the price tag.
“Da Vinci used to say, ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,’” Perrin says. “It’s not always about going for the most sophisticated stuff. Sometimes we just want simplicity and quality—and that’s what La Vieille Ferme is.”
That simple quality makes La Vieille Ferme a staple for many, like myself and my roommates. TikTok may have crowned the brand the current It girl of the liquor store, but you don’t need to be a sommelier to know Chicken Wine is forever.