What Happens When a Wine Goes Viral?

By WineBottleMag
September 24, 2025
Viral Wine
With 0 comments

It started with one post on January 7, 2024, from an X user under the handle @OptimusGrind_.

“I’m not gonna keep telling y’all to grow up and leave that Stella & Barefoot alone,” read the post, accompanied by a photo of Josh Merlot.

The post blew up, quickly amassing over 20 million views and spurring a storm of copycat posts.

“It’s Josh ‘clock somewhere,” someone captioned a photo of a bottle on the beach. In another post, Don Draper says to a room of marketing execs: “A wine, but we call it Josh.” A photo of people celebrating: “A live look at the Josh marketing department.”

Dan Kleinman, now the chief brand officer of Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, ran the brand when the @OptimusGrind_ Tweet took off. Josh had a social presence, but posted with careful curation and calculation—memes weren’t in the marketing plan.

They had some decisions to make. How do you ride out—and reap—the attention? How do you prevent Josh from becoming a meaningless fad, buried in the social media trend graveyard beside sea shanties, jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc recipes, and sorority rush videos?

“Viral moments bring broad exposure, which is exciting, but that spotlight can cut both ways,” says Jessica DeBenedetto, who leads social media at Colangelo & Partners. “If a brand isn’t prepared to manage the sudden surge in social engagement—responding to comments, handling criticism, or monitoring the conversation—it can quickly become overwhelming and even damaging.”

“When a wine goes viral, it’s hilarious or at the center of online discourse for a bit,” says Amanda Joffee, who runs Shitty Wine Memes. “But in today’s fast-moving social media cycle, it quickly peaks, then gets old.”

What Makes a Viral Wine?

How does a wine go viral? Is it pure luck, or a predictable equation?

Ryan Goydos, one half of the Super Vino Bros, lists three requirements for a viral wine: a good story, an accessible price point, and a certain amount of visual appeal.

“Maybe the color is super pretty or the label is memorable—those things all factor into the shareability of a wine,” says Gaydos.

A viral moment also needs to feel like just that: a moment. Goydos, who has had plenty of viral wine videos, underlines that it needs to feel organic. “It needs to be a spontaneous, grassroots movement.”

Can a brand start its own movement? Tricky question. “Going viral takes something social media can laugh at or be shocked by,” says Joffee. “It’s also timing. It’s hard to make moments like that premeditated. With how many ads we see everyday, the internet’s grown a better BS detector for brands.”

As Goydos puts it, “It’s very difficult for a brand to catch that spark without it feeling fabricated.”

To understand wine’s role in the digital zeitgeist, we looked at the biggest viral moments in wine’s recent history.

Josh Cellars

After @OptimusGrind_’s post, attention came fast and hard. So fast, the brand realized that they hadn’t posted on Twitter (now X) since 2019. They didn’t even know the password. “Our marketing team was on vacation,” says Kleinman. “I was visiting my in-laws in Vermont, and spent an entire family dinner trying to get our Twitter password back.”

When Kleinman finally got access, the team had some difficult decisions to make. Josh had always positioned itself as a serious wine brand. Would leaning into memes rip apart that brand image?

They did it. They responded to top Tweets and rolled out their own memes to keep the momentum going

According to the brand, sales rose 22% in that six-week period in early January, a time when drinkers are pursuing Dry January or recovering from holiday revelry. The year before, Josh had seen a sales decline over those dates.

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“The qualities that give a wine legs to go viral are hard to pinpoint,” says Joffee. But Josh had the secret sauce: wide-scale availability, affordability, and approachability. “The combination of the script font with the guy-next-door name Josh had the memes and retweets rolling in. It was silly, and spread across platforms.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before in the wine world.”

While the Josh brand didn’t plan for the moment, they’ve parlayed it into brand growth. They sell Josh merch that winks at the memes. They’ve tweaked their brand voice to allow for levity and let them lean into internet trends—the day Taylor Swift announced her new album, their social media went orange.

“The world is polarized right now,” says Kleinman. “Everyone is more lonely than ever. We’re seeking less connection in real life and more social connection through our phone. When you can tap into that, you can kind of make people happy.”

La Vieille Ferme

La Vieille Ferme, a Rhône brand of budget red, white, and rosé, is best identified by the two chickens on their label. This led to its unexpected online moniker: “chicken wine.” TikToks came at a rapid clip: I’ve been on that chicken wine.

Sales of chicken wine to the U.K. grew 46% over 2023. La Vieille Ferme reported a 96% sales boost in Sainsbury’s. People made merch. Dupes, like Le Petit Poulet, followed.

La Vieille Ferme could have been offended. The brand spent decades building a narrative around fine French wine, now reduced to poultry juice. Instead, they leaned into it. They launched magnums and cans in well-performing stores. A limited run of wine was swapped out their standard label for “chicken wine.”

Belle Glos

Winemaker Joe Wagner started posting during the pandemic to retain relevance. “I started by doing some stupid dance, and it was embarrassing,” says Wagner. “But in such a saturated market, how do you stay top of mind?”

Then, they pivoted to ASMR-style content showing day-to-day life in the winery: shoveling pomace, stirring lees, and dipping Belle Glos’ bottles in its signature wax.

Five years later, @JoetheWinemaker posts to 550,000 followers. Belle Glos is collaborating with clothing brands and UFC fighters. Wagner gets stopped on the street. Belle Glos videos show up alongside content from Alex Earle, Chipotle, and Nike. Videos, particularly the ones of Wagner dipping bottles in wax, regularly pull in millions of views.

“I’m still surprised people like dipping things in wax this much,” says Wagner.

He’ll admit there’s a discomfort to the whole thing—a cringe factor one must overcome to thrive online.

“And there’s the criticism, which takes time to get used to,” he continues. “But we realized our content was resonating. We were getting a lot of views, interactions, and engagement.”

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The brand’s online presence has also strengthened relationships with retail partners. “It gives them the confidence to put our brands in places that are gonna be higher traffic,” says Wagner. “It’s going to see that pull through.”

There are other learnings. Belle Glos is the most viewed wine brand on Instagram, and Wagner is the top wine creator on TikTok. But you won’t hear any winespeak on their accounts—approachable and affable is their motive.

“You have to start with entertainment, then move into education,” says Wagner. “If you start with education, people are just going to write it off. Entertain: once the hook is set, then you have an opportunity to expand knowledge.”

They also learned to put Wagner first, brand second. They found the algorithm likes faces, and audiences like recognizable figures. Wagner is a jolly, guy-next-door character, just like the fictional Josh. “Who knew a guy named Josh who was a jerk?” jokes Kleinman.

Whispering Angel

The blush-pink French rosé has made its TikTok rounds, which shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Château d’Esclans’s Whispering Angel has always been that brand. It’s the world’s most popular rosé and almost single-handedly responsible for reviving the category.

Now, videos of rose Salmanazars being poured at 2 pm rack in hundreds of thousands of views. As do videos like one user’s reaction when her son shows up with Whispering Angel.

“It’s always a nice surprise when a brand maintains this level of cult status online,” says Julia Cuissart de Grelle, the acting head of Château d’Esclans. “It shows up outside of food and beverage spaces, organically appearing in fashion, travel, and lifestyle content. The way fans have created their own rituals around Whispering Angel has been remarkable—everything from midday ‘rosé o’clock’ to traditions where it’s ‘Whispering Angel or nothing.”

Lolli

Lolli doesn’t hit the standard markers of a great wine. The non-vintage is bracingly sweet, slightly effervescent, and high proof—17% abv. It’s not meant to be sipped in stemware: serve it over ice or with a cocktail, says the bottle.

XXL is a similarly sweet wine branded as “the Moscato without manners.” Its motive is more—more abv (the sparkling moscato is 16%), more flavor. Instead of Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, XXL comes in flavors like mango, peach, and ‘Extreme Red Blend.’

Both wines have spread through social media at a steady clip. The results show—last year, XXL was second only to Josh Cellars in on-premise dollar value gains, selling 1.8 million cases in the U.S. over 2024.

There are a few interesting takeaways. The first is the traction sweet wine has, a category which has a tumultuous track record in the United States. It checks out: in 2023, NielsenIQ reported that sweet and flavored wines accounted for 30% of the bottles sold in the United States.

It’s also a strong sign for high-octane drinks. So long, low-alc. Products like Lolli, XXL Moscato, and BuzzBallz, a line of small-but-strong cocktails, are capturing consumer’s increasing interest in high-proof, highly sweet drinks.

The Takeaways of TikTok

The biggest takeaway? People online care about wine. They’re willing to click, like, follow, buy—gravely important in a time when drinking is down.

“Once a drink does go viral, the effects are immediate: bottles can sell out, the product may be copied, and the moment can become part of the cultural zeitgeist,” says Renee Sferrazza, a marketer and influencer behind Wine By Renee. Viral moments draw in more drinkers and break down perceptions of snobbiness. “Every viral wine moment benefits the industry as a whole.”

“A wine goes viral when it taps into culture in a way that feels immediate and shareable,” DeBenedetto adds. “It might be a social trend, a clever label, or even a casual mention from an influencer or celebrity. But the core factor is always the same: people feel something, whether humor, nostalgia, aspiration, or surprise, and want to share it. The wine becomes more than just a beverage; it transforms into a mood, a meme, a message.”