There is something wonderfully British about taking a perfectly respectable French wine called La Vieille Ferme, deciding that we can't really be bothered to pronounce it, looking at the label and collectively declaring:

“I'll have the chicken wine.”

And then buying £190 million of it.

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Because beneath the slightly ridiculous nickname is one of the more interesting drinks success stories of recent years.

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La Vieille Ferme isn't new. It comes from Famille Perrin, the Rhône winemaking family behind the considerably grander Château de Beaucastel. It has always occupied a clever bit of territory: proper French winemaking, without requiring either a wine qualification or a remortgage.

But then TikTok got hold of it.

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During 2024, people increasingly began referring to La Vieille Ferme simply as “chicken wine”, thanks to the birds adorning its reassuringly rustic label. Importantly, this wasn't a nickname dreamt up by a branding agency after six weeks of workshops. Consumers invented it themselves.

And that distinction matters.

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Famille Perrin did something brands are often surprisingly bad at doing: they listened.

Rather than correcting everyone, explaining the heritage or insisting we learn how to pronounce Vieille, they embraced the joke. A limited-edition run actually carrying “The Chicken Wine” branding followed. The initial 100,000 bottles disappeared. There are now Chicken Wine versions of the red and white too.

Meanwhile, the numbers have become extraordinary.

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Sainsbury's reported a 96% increase in sales of the rosé in 2024 and responded by launching a magnum. More significantly, UK off-trade sales across La Vieille Ferme rose by £28.9m in 2024 and another £63.3m in 2025, reaching £190.3m in the year to March 2026. The rosé has become Britain's bestselling rosé by both value and volume.

All this while the wider still-wine market has been having a considerably less enjoyable time.

So why has it worked?

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Price is certainly part of it. At roughly £8–£9 a bottle, Chicken Wine sits in a beautiful sweet spot: inexpensive enough for Tuesday night, but sufficiently credible that you don't feel the need to apologise when putting it on the table. Famille Perrin has also resisted becoming overly dependent on promotions, creating a relatively stable everyday price rather than training shoppers to wait for the inevitable discount.

But I think something more interesting is happening too. My daughter and her friends identify with the brand. Chicken Wine has somehow ushered in a new wave of younger fans who aren't necessarily following the traditional drinks journey at all. They're skipping the alcopops and going straight for the rosé. They know the nickname, recognise the bottle and are in on the joke. That's quite an achievement for a French wine whose history considerably predates TikTok.

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And that matters because wine has historically made itself unnecessarily complicated. Regions. Grapes. Vintages. Appellations. Tasting notes involving graphite, hedgerows and occasionally things that sound suspiciously like garden centres.

Chicken Wine removes all of that anxiety.

You don't need to remember the château. You don't even need to remember the name.

It's the one with the chicken on it.

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That makes it easy to recognise, easy to recommend and, crucially, easy to talk about. Social media didn't merely advertise La Vieille Ferme; it gave consumers a shared language for it.

And perhaps that's the cleverest part of the whole story.

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Famille Perrin spent decades making a good, affordable French wine.

Then Britain gave it a stupid name.

And accidentally created one of the strongest wine brands in the country.