Bethenny Frankel's Forever Young Róse
Available nationwide, from Amagansett to Montauk
The real heads of Celebrity Skin Contact know that I have already reviewed Bethenny Frankel’s wine collection. But don’t spit out your lo-fi aperitifs just yet. B has released a new wine brand because she is a BUSINESS WOMAN and a MOTHER and will never stop innovating because her fans are looking for a DELICIOUS and AFFORDABLE beverage brand created by WOMEN!
Bethenny is the godfather of celebrity alcohol. Really, when you think about it, she invented the modern, commodified personal brand that now seems so automatic for reality stars to have (don’t correct me if I’m wrong XO). She used her platform on the Real Housewives of New York to create Skinnygirl, the cocktail-clothing-popcorn empire she claims to have sold for $120 million in 2011 (HuffPo said it was more like $8 million). And now, she is off to greener pastures with Forever Young, a wine label that includes a rosé, a Sauvignon Blanc and a cru classé that uses some of the finest grapes in France because if Bethenny is going to SELL a product then she has to BELIEVE in it because in business your name is your word and your word is TRUST and — sorry, being Bethenny was so exhausting I had to eat a container of cottage cheese.
Bethenny’s online persona has recently become … Cronenberg-ian. I watch her Youtube show like a child watching Bluey, sucked into the vortex that is her beautiful dark twisted reality. Why does she make her assistant film her comparing paper plates at a TJ Maxx in central Long Island? Why does she take a sprinter van to get there? Why does she make her ‘team’ go to Red Lobster after? I don’t know, okay? After a barrage of her content, you realize how lucky you are to just not be Bethenny.
I have found Bethenny’s rebrand post-RHONY to be rather shocking. Gone is the quick-witted, self-aware woman we knew and loved. I always admired her healthy skepticism for reality TV: parts of her life, like her kid and her ex-husband, were off-limits. But as of late, she has morphed into a TikTok influencer with 2.4 million followers reviewing makeup brands, chicken salad and occasionally sharing (true) conspiracy theories about those drones in New Jersey. And let’s just say, the rational voice in her head has been thrown out with the bathwater.
She is now suing Bravo for exploitation but — no offense — doesn’t she just exploit herself? Everything she does — every dinner she attends, every interaction she has with a cashier, every time she makes a wasa-cracker-pizza-hack at 2 AM — has to be broadcast to TikTok. For anyone else, this would be a Truman Show hell, but for Bethenny, that’s life! “These fires have me emotional so you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to make chickpea pasta,” she said in one recent video from LA, taking you through her cooking routine while also crying. “Incidentally I got my teeth whitened today so I can only eat white foods.” And she does not care how she comes across: what angle her phone is propped at; how bad the lighting is; or whether or not she looks like Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream. I really think the government is trying to shut down TikTok not because it’s a weapon of the Chinese state but because Bethenny is being too weird on it.
Bethenny talks about Forever Young with the same verve, naturally, as her other products. She founded the brand in 2023 with a hot older French woman who produces the wines at Château Roubine, a vineyard that dates back to 1307 (it is very funny to think of Bethenny Frankel being connected to anything ancient). Bethenny says her wine is called Forever Young because that’s the last song that played at the club she would go to in Boston. Ah, yes, nothing screams fine wine like a Boston nightclub circa 2002. But I think the Substance-like undertone of the name ‘Forever Young’ is appropriate here: Bethenny’s new chronically-online persona is, in fact, young and hip and Daddy Gang. If Skinnygirl was the tacky, low-budget woman we knew from the Housewives, Forever Young is the ElisaSue monster she is today.
So how is it? I recently tried the Forever Young Côtes de Provence rosé, which seems to only be available at the most random corner store in the West Village. And… it’s fine. It tastes like the second cheapest rosé at every liquor store. It’s light and crisp with some notes of bitter citrus and raspberries. It’s much better than Skinnygirl wine which was terrible. But at $29 it’s a bit steep, no?
But if Bethenny ever asks, I loved it. And while you have her, please tell her I’d like another season of The Big Shot with Bethenny on Max.
In one TikTok, she confronts an unsuspecting sommelier with samples of her wine.
“Did you know that only 18 wineries in the world can make this cru classé?” she asks, holding a knife up to his wife and child’s throats.
“I did not, no,” he says.
“So would you drink this at home?” she asks, wearing a black ski mask.
“I would,” he says, reuniting with his family.
Success, wouldn’t you say?
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