Rosé: The Sunday Styles Aftermath
For whatever deranged reason relating to sunshine, yesterday afternoon we found ourselves thrust amidst the well-heeled glamourpusses on the rooftop of Soho House. While were successful in avoiding eye contact, we couldn't help but glance around and notice a proliferation of pink. Waiters bringing out bottle after bottle of rosé to the poolside. Wine glasses filled with various shades of blush. Just one week after Sunday Styles absurdly proclaimed rosé to be the new hotness, and everywhere we looked, people were drinking rose-fucking-ay. The conspicuous consumption of rosé wasn't confined to the exclusive places, either. We even saw rosé in the East Village. Well below 14th.
Um, what the fuck is going on here? Is this weekend's weird slew of rosé sightings the result of a post-Styles rosé explosion, or are we just noticing the wine now because Styles put it in our head? It's the eternal question: which came first, the stupid wine or the stupid Styles article?
Jesse Salazar of Union Square Wine, where rosé is displayed in the storefront window, confirms the worst of our suspicions. The article resulted in a "total snowball effect," he said. "People had been drinking rosés all summer long, but the stock evaporated after the article. The rarer, harder-to-find stuff is mostly gone, and we just have a handful of stock left. Anytime something is written up in the Times, it's gone a few days later. Wine connoisseurs had been drinking the stuff all season, but it really exploded after the write-up."
Well, that's what happens when you have Leotard Fantastic pictured looking, well, fantastic while holding a glass of the stuff. But the spread of rosé has extended far beyond Misshapes and Soho House. A 23-year-old Manhattanite tells us, "I was a dinner party at a friend's house and some other guests brought that shit," he says. "I asked, 'Is this because of the article?' and they were sheepishly like, 'Um, shut up.'" Hm, somebody's defensive.
On the other hand, a representative from Sherry-Lehman Wine and Spirits says, "It's difficult to gauge. I'm sure there was a residual effect, but sales of rosés had been strong all summer long. Rosés were already so hot, we were on track to sell out of them either way. The article was really the tail end of the trend."
Which, come to think of it, is actually just as bad.
