Drinking Hen Wine on my Sofa
The delicious and now ubiquitous wine is making rosé the go-to for many
I hadn’t really realised that there was a zeitgeist until I noticed other people posting about the wine that has seen me through more evenings than I wish to count. The wine in questions being La Vieille Ferme, made by Famille Perrin, owners of Chateau de Beaucastel in the Southern Rhône. This easy to drink rosé is more commonly known by it’s nickname “Chicken Wine” but to me it is “Hen Wine” and hen wine has been somewhat of a constant companion ever since I moved into my little flat 3 and a half years ago.
The reasons for this are not poetic, the Co-op underneath my flat sells it, and keeps it in the fridge, and the Co-op fridge is the coldest out of all the shops nearby. I am both a tad lazy and impatient, so wine that requires minimal effort and preparation to drink after a long day is most certainly a good way to score points with me.
I also call it hen wine rather than “Chicken Wine” because as the owner of some very cute backyard hens I have an inbuilt proclivity to call them hens, chicken reminds me too much of meat to link to my pets. I also know there is a rooster on the label, he’s just a boy-hen, some roosters have very strong boy-hen energy and one on the label of a bottle of pink wine is part of this club.
Hen wine has been my go-to whether to celebrate, commiserate, or simply get a wee bit plastered. Long day at work? Hen wine. Bereavement? Hen wine. A beer I designed getting good reviews? Hen wine. It’s a workhorse in my house, and some weeks I have been known to get through 4 bottles or so, though those are not particularly regular. At £8 at the Co-op it doesn’t break the bank and it always tastes great, even when it’s been recently put in the fridge. Friends now know that that’s the bottle to pick up on the way over, and I now even get 75p off vouchers from the Co-op app to add to the temptation. (I suppose the algorithm that awards money off vouchers saw how many bottles I got through).
Then I realised it wasn’t just me who had a slight obsession with this rosé, it started popping up on memes of East London stereotypes alongside the fried egg crisps, Perello olives and Scampi Fries. It was acting as a sort of shibboleth of Millennial conformity and acceptable coolness, coded the same way as take away cups from the right coffee shop or French work jacket brands are, taking the spotlight from the Cin Cin Vinho Verde which had for so long occupied that space.
Provincial rosé has been having a moment though, once the palates of those formed in halcyon days of Frozé had matured into proper wine drinkers they were waking up to the fact that these wines don’t need to be drunk as a sweetened slushy.
Pink wine is always a harder sell than white or red, mostly because people who know nothing about wine will happily proclaim that they don’t like rosé, either because its sweet (it’s not) or it commits the ultimate sin, that of being feminine. There is interesting research out there that shows how much our visual expectations affect our tasting experience. If we see something orange we expect it to taste of orange and slightly tart, if we see something red we expect sweet berries, and to experience otherwise can be jarring. Pink wine therefore suffers from a duality of prejudice here, both that people expect it to be sweet like strawberry, and they expect it to be girly.
Hen wine isn’t a particularly astonishing shade of pink, its light and bright, clear and gentle, nothing like the almost synthetic shades of pink you see in some supermarket rose. The colour is more like rose coloured water, like the perfume you made as a child from your mothers best roses and the water from the butt at the back of the greenhouse, and smeared all over your neck, deep pink rose petals, algae water, and a few insect larvae in the mix. The nose (and I like my wine almost headache inducingly cold) is muted, with notes of boysenberry, rhubarb, lychee and a teeny hint of raspberry. Tasting the wine, it is dry, but with a slight residual sweetness, there’s a touch of roughness too that accompanies a gooseberry note on the end of the palate. There’s no lingering flavour on the tongue, just acidic berries that quickly fade and enough scrumpy cider like dryness to keep you drinking. It’s delicious, it’s interesting and complex, it’s far more drinkable than most of the sub £10 supermarket wines out there, and certainly a massive step up from most of the rose wines in the same price bracket. If you pair it with Scampi Fries it tastes like synthetic blueberry muffin or cherry pie.
After writing these tasting notes I looked up the official ones online, they also mention lychee, but also strawberry and peach. The producers recommend drinking it at 10-12’c, but I like wine cold. I also like beer cold, and when a brewery says to drink their stout at 18’c I merrily ignore them and pop it in the freezer for 20 minutes to get it nice and icy. The grapes used in Hen Wine are the stalwart of Provincal Rosé, Cinsault, as well as Grenache and Syrah. Cinsault adds some tannins and earthiness to the blend, with the Grenache and Syrah providing the berry and fresh notes, with Grenache also mellowing some of the greener notes and lending some more red fruits to the mix. Food pairings are the typical grilled fish, salad and quiche, but really this wine is going to match a whole swathe of delicious things, from pickled egg and anchovy stuffed olives, to cheese and onion crisps, don’t overthink it, just eat and drink.
So, other than being utterly delicious, why is Hen Wine so popular?
For one, it’s cheap! Usually clocking in at about £8, and you can get it just about everywhere! It is familiar, you know what you’re going to get, and it has nice friendly branding.
The branding is genius, and its designed to appeal to women. Using animals in branding is associated with increased sales, and with the friendly hens on the label this has a definite feminine slant. This might explain why some people are so derisive about the wine, as branding directed towards women can lead some to dismiss the product as being soft, or even lesser. This is unfair, but sadly how our consumerist world operates.
Like all products that get a certain reputation, others seek to emulate it. Hen Wine has now joined the hallowed halls that contain products such as Jo Malone candles, Coco Mademoiselle perfume, Charlotte Tilbury face cream, and Sweaty Betty leggings in having an Aldi dupe that looks (and purportedly tastes) almost identical.
Aldi Hen Wine is names Le Petit Poulet, and also has a hen and a rooster on the label alongside a pale pink screwcap. The 2023 vintage is 13% ABV, a smidge higher than Hen Wine’s 12.5%, and the tasting notes mention red berries and citrus, specifically raspberry and pink grapefruit. It is apparently made by a fella called Pierre Jaurant, though he almost certainly belongs to the Captain Birdseye and Dr. Oetker canon of producers.
Looking at the wine, its a tad darker and well…pinker than the Hen Wine, but as a trained beer taster I know fine well that the colour of something has no indication on the actual taste, just our expectation of it.
On the nose the Pretendy Hen Wine is softer, and a tad more muted but with definite white peach and strawberry Starburst aromas. The smell is slightly sweeter, but I’m not going to go into my usual tirade about smelling sweetness, I’ll save that for a whole post of its own, and definitely more “candy” like than the Hen Wine, which to me is pure fruit. There is also a slight sulphurous note, something a touch cabbagey, but its not unpleasant or off-putting, but its there, along with a hint of what I think is coconut (or lets be poncey and say gorse flower).
On the palate its cherry and I don’t get raspberry fruit, rather raspberry leaf, and although its dry, it is sweeter than Hen Wine and noticeably more acidic and somewhat puckering. Its very nice though, and whilst its not an exact dupe, it’s a very tasty wine at the price point, and it’s not so dissimilar that a fan of Hen Wine would turn their nose up at it.
Being the sort of host I am (erratic and resourceful) I decided to pair both of these up against the kind of snacks I’d generally have on hand should a friend or my boyfriend come over and I decide to serve up some rose. On my platter of cupboard foraged snacks, and in the spirit of the dupes, I tired some ready salted crisps from a big bag opened at least 6 days ago, some off-brand Scampi Fries, and a Lidl own brand tin of anchovy stuffed olives. All of these are delicious in their own right, but I was surprised at how very differently two superficially similar wines tasted when paired with my discount retailer smorgasbord.
First up the crisps, ever so slightly stale but still absolutely worthy of being shoved into your face. Somewhat expectedly, both of the bird wines worked well with these, they don’t have a specific flavour or acid profile. They’re just salty, crunchy and oily. You can be rest assured there are no unpleasant surprises here, both scored a 7/10 on this pairing.
The olives were surprisingly different with each. The Hen Wine didn’t go with these at all, the bitterness of the olives and the acid profile of the wine were completely at odds with each other, really rough and clashing. Not a combination I’d recommend. The Le Petit Poulet, on the other hand, paired really well with these, the saltiness of the anchovy worked well with the slight sweetness, and the acids were considerably less clashing with the bitterness of the olive. I’d rate that pairing a good 8/10.
The scampi and lemon bites, a Poundland Scampi Fries dupe are really quite tasty. Lighter, fishier and less salty than the originals, they are not quite an exact replacement, but they are 6 for £1, and so they’re a great thing to keep in the cupboard for when you really want a fish flavoured snack. These worked really well with the Hen Wine, the crispness of the wine really cut through the (fish shop similar) deep fat fried taste of the snack, and the fishiness paired well, a good 6/10. The Le Petit Poulet on the other hand felt flabby and oily with these, though if you let the bites melt on your tongue a bit first it pairs better.
Hen wine, to me, is going to be my go to for the foreseeable, but with good, easily approachable wines with a reasonable cost become more popular, the drive towards better value and taste will hopefully lead to more people drinking rosé, and seeing it as a good choice rather than lower quality wine only drunk by women who don’t know better.