The future is frosé: wine revamped with a little chill

Rosé wine has long been a staple of the girl’s night out, but a new incarnation may be about to ovetake it: frosé.

A slushie for grown-ups, the standard recipe involves blending a whole bottle of rosé with the juice of two lemons and two teaspoons of sugar and freezing it for six hours. It won’t fully freeze - the alcohol prevents that - but it will form an icy consistency that you can sip from a fancy glass. Add your favorite garnish, such as mint, pomeganate or a lemon slice to make yours fully Instagram- able. The social media site has already seen almost 2,000 posts with #frosé in the caption.

So who is responsible for this new cocktail craze? New York’s Bar Primi claims to be the first to serve the drink with their signature recipe including vermouth and pureed strawberries to make it even sweeter. It is now the bar’s top-selling beverage.

This frozen fad is taking off in the UK too. London’s trendy Beaufort House bar, on the King’s Road, put frosé on its menu three weeks ago. “We’ve been inundated,” says employee Hannah Carey. “We were the only place in london at that point selling it... We get so many people coming in asking for it every day.” It’s now one of Beaufort Houses’s biggest- selling cocktails, on the menu for £9. “Particularly because it’s the middle of the summer, and because of the buzz about it on social media, it’s certainly the drink people are talking about” says Ms Cary.

Rosé started in ancient Greece. According to mythology, the pink colour was a result of a king mixing red wine with water at meetings of his councillors to dilute its strength and minimise arguments. The actual reason for rosé’s lighter colour is a bit more scientific than that: the grapes are left to macerate with their skins on for a shorter period than they are to make red wine.

Rosé has slowly become the go to summer drink for many. In France, where it was once sneered at by wine experts, sales have tripled in the past decade and it now makes up a third of the country’s wine production. Here, Sainsbury’s sold 15 million bottles of rosé just last year, accounting for one in 10 of all wines sold at the supermarket.

It has become a celebrity venture too, with Bradd Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Drew Barrymore producing their own brands. Instagram sensation The Fat Jewish, real name Josh Ostrovsky, began production of his White Girl Rosé last year. He got the idea after hearing about a shortage of the pink wine in the Hamptons, the upmarket getaway of rich New Yorkers.

“People were running through the streets, screaming. There was not enough rosé,” he said, describing why he went into production. “Never again.”