Frosé

Rosé wine, strawberries, and ice blended — Bar Primi's 2016 Bowery creation whose portmanteau name and pink color spread across Instagram in a single summer.

Frosé is a frozen cocktail made by blending rosé wine with ice and fresh fruit — most commonly strawberries — to produce a slushy, deeply colored, refreshing summer drink. The trend's specific origin is documented with unusual precision: the New York restaurant Bar Primi, located on the Bowery in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood, began serving the drink in the summer of 2016, where it became an immediate hit with the outdoor dining crowd and quickly attracted press attention. The portmanteau name — frozen plus rosé — was both descriptive and highly shareable, and as photographs of the pink slushy drink spread across Instagram in the summer of 2016, virtually every bar and restaurant with a blender in New York added a version. The trend spread nationally and then internationally within a single season, riding the simultaneous growth of Instagram as a food-and-drink discovery platform and the decade's broader enthusiasm for rosé wine, which had transformed from a marginalized category associated with cheap sweet pink wine into one of the fastest-growing segments of premium wine retail. The wine industry body the Rosé Association of Provence tracked dramatic sales increases through 2016 and 2017 that were directly attributed to the frosé moment. The drink continues to be a summer menu fixture at outdoor bars, beach restaurants, and rooftop venues, its photogenic color and easy formula making it as reliable a warm-weather seller as it was in its original season.