Post Malone joined the ranks of male celebs trying to capture the millennial market of rosé drinkers this summer. It all says a lot about the generation's thirst.

• A number of male household entertainment names have been cashing in on millennials' famed thirst for rosé.
• In June, Post Malone launched a rosé called Maison No. 9.
• Prior to that, Instagram personality The Fat Jewish and "Bachelor" alum Colton Underwood also launched their own rosé brands.
• Rosé appeals to millennials of all genders because of the lifestyle it evokes, Susan Kostrzewa, editor-in-chief of Wine Enthusiast magazine, told Business Insider.
• Bro's in rosé — or brosé — is also a subset of the growing number of celeb ventures into booze brands.

The ultimate food and wine pairing is a bottle of rosé with chicken fingers and french fries.

That's if you're dining with rapper Post Malone, who launched a rosé called Maison No. 9 in June. As he told The Wall Street Journal, the crisp wine "pairs perfect with the sunset" and sometimes with "a nice, hot American chicken strip."

Malone is known for his record-breaking hit singles like "Rockstar" and "Psycho." The 25-year-old also has an Instagram following of 22.6 million. He says he has "loved wine for a minute now," but he's just the latest male millennial celeb to join the brosé league.

In 2015, Instagram personality Josh Ostrovsky cofounded wine brand Swish Beverages, which has since been rebranded BABE, with the launch of White Girl Rosé. Ostrovsky, now 38, went on to release BABE Rosé in 2016, a canned sparkling rosé, and Pink Party Rosé with Bubbles in 2017, a Champagne rosé. Ostrovsky is more popularly known by his Instagram handle, The Fat Jewish, an offbeat meme account that boasts 10.7 million followers.

And last year, Colton Underwood, 28, released 65 Roses Rosé with all proceeds going toward cystic fibrosis research. Underwood, a former NFL player with a 2 million Instagram following, is best known for his season on "The Bachelor."

While the move to monetize a feminized 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 coincided with that year's drink of the summer — rosé. Ostrovsky and his cofounders felt the liquor market was saturated, VinePair's Leslie Price wrote two years later, but they found the rosé market, which was going viral on Instagram, virtually untouched.

What they 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."

But after they had to quadruple their original order of 800 cases, Price wrote, they realized they had a business. In 2019, they sold the company to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest beermaker.

Post Malone's Maison No. 9 has only been around for three months, but it sold 50,000 bottles within two days of launching and 1,000 cases in the first hour alone, reported The Journal, citing online wine marketplace Vivino. The company told The Journal it was the first time they saw a product sell that quickly.

A representative for Underwood's 65 Roses did not reply to Business Insider's request for sales data.

Popular, but not exquisite

The numbers speak to success, but are these wines actually any good? VinePair had sommeliers blind taste White Girl Rosé, which retails for $10.99. The concensus among most was that it was "fine," and likely made for Instagram-loving young adults.

Maison No.9, which you can guzzle for $21.99, bills itself as "high-quality" and "accessible." Unlike many celeb-backed booze brands, according to The Journal, Malone was hands-on in his rosé's creation, working with his two cofounders and a winemaker in Provence, France, to perfect the blend and design the glass topper.

The editors at The Cut recently took it for a spin, with most deeming it enjoyable but not a stand-out from other rosés. "I would say it's a bit like drinking a pink starburst, which everyone likes, but nobody loves," wrote Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz.

As of this article's publication, Business Insider was not able to find any taste test reviews of Underwood's rosé.

Everyone loves rosé

It seems, then, that these brands have nailed how millennials view rosé: It's a drink predicated more on lifestyle than on taste, and one that evokes a glamorous, faintly exotic association.

There's also the matter of the drink's target audience: In the US, rosé consumption is highest among those ages 25 to 34. That puts its drinkers squarely in the millennial generation — a generation that, with their music, Instagram following, and TV audience respectively, Malone, Ostrovsky, and Underwood have already established a strong fan base in. It's also an audience they are well-position to address; between the three of them, they tout an impressive collective social following of more than 35 million.

Susan Kostrzewa, editor-in-chief of Wine Enthusiast magazine, told Business Insider that this fan base is a critical point to consider. By nature of their audiences, millennial brosé brands "are likely to reach and appeal to more female than male wine drinkers in their efforts," she said. But since women make over 80% of the household wine purchases in America, she imagines those wines may still end up in the hands of their male partners.

On top of that, rosé is a drink that knows no gender: Kostrzewa said the millennial rosé obsession is climbing in the US among both males and females.

Kostrzewa told Business Insider that in traditional wine cultures like France, rosé is a non-gendered favorite. Millennial wine drinkers, she said, are less swayed by gendered marketing than previous generations were, and are more attuned to overall lifestyle branding and easy enjoyment.

"In the US, its varied and approachable palate profile, as well as the glamorous south of France or coastal lifestyle naturally associated with it, is appealing to millennial wine drinkers across the board," Kostrzewa said.

Rosé also offers the "luxury of non-choice" for an indecisive generation in that it combines the freshness of white and boldness of red, GQ's Wyma wrote.

Millennial men aren't the only celebs bottling up some pink. Consider men over 40, like John Legend and Brad Pitt, or women, like Sarah Jessica Parker and Kylie Minogue, who all have their own rosé brands. They're all a subset of the increasing number of celeb-backed booze brands such as George Clooney's Casamigos tequila and Snoop Dogg's 19 Crimes wine brand.

As celebs venture into the liquor industry, some are turning to rosé because it seems to be showing no signs of slowing in young mainstream culture, Kostrzewa said.

As Malone told The Journal, "Everybody loves a good glass of rosé on a hot day."