A sommelier with almost 20 years' experience says millennials' rose obsession won't die anytime soon
- Rosé wine has exploded in popularity in the past five years.
- Master sommelier and multi-restaurant owner Alpana Singh attributes Instagram and millennials to the wine's success.
- She told us during the James Beard Leadership Awards that the trend isn't dying out anytime soon.
Master sommelier Alpana Singh knows good wine.
A multi-restaurant owner and past TV personality and food critic, Singh has been in the business for almost 20 years.
Singh's expertise and experience have shaped her strong opinions when it comes to food and wine. When we met her at the James Beard Leadership Awards in Chicago last week, we had to ask: Will the rosé wine trend be back for another summer?
According to Singh, the obsession with drinking - and Instagramming - rosé isn't going anywhere. In fact, restaurants are now having to pre-order their bottles of rosé for the summer starting in February, she said. Singh is launching a bottomless rosé special at one of her own restaurants, Terra and Vine, this month.
She noted that millennials were the first to take a liking to rosé and then they brought it into the mainstream.
"The truth is, 20 years ago you couldn't get people to drink rosé," Singh said. "[Wine drinkers] thought it was like White Zinfandel, very uncouth, not very classy or sophisticated."
Instagram and rosé's "pretty pink" hue are also reasons for its popularity, Singh said: "'RoseAllDay' is not just a hashtag, it's a cultural movement sparked by Instagram."
By January 2017, the rosé wine category had reached a valuation of $389 million annually, Bloomberg reported, based on Nielsen data.
Not only have fans of the wine emerged on social media - new brands of rosé have come about via social platforms as well. What started simply as an Instagram account, yeswayrose later launched a tote bag and ultimately a line of rosé. And social media influencer The Fat Jewish launched White Girl Rose with Swish Beverages in the summer of 2015.
In the summer of 2014, Hamptons restaurants and East End wineries ran out of the drink. In 2017, Rosé All Day, a wine named after the popular hashtag, was launched.
"I want to tell [millennials]: "I tried to get your mom to drink it for 20 years. And now, mom's caught on," Singh said.