Very well, I demand you go out and buy a range of California wines, taste them and provide feedback and tasting notes (oh and pixel art of all of them).
Actually, I drink sweet booze because I donât like the taste of alcohol (which sugar masks), and I donât like dry beverages in general. I like a Mikeâs or a Woodchuck or, if Iâm flush, a glass of Asti with dinner. (Itâs funny how Woodchuck is as sweet as apple juice but, somehow, still passes with beer snobs whoâll mock you for drinking anything else sweet.) If I want to get smashed, which I do occasionally, I go for mixed drinks instead.
So, no, whatever your justification for the objective moral superiority of your chosen tipple, Iâm afraid that sometimes people actually do like stuff because they like it, not because theyâre slovenly drunks with no moral fiber.
Classic Sellers farce. The basic set-up was that the government of Grand Fenwick declares war on the United States in the hopes of getting some U.S. reconstruction money as part of the surrender treaty, but the dope leading the assault screws up the plan by accidentally winning.
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âYour eight-dollar-est bottle of wine, please!â
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Well if you really want to get into the details, thereâs also cultural and ethnic considerations.
At the most basic level, certain people are culturally and biologically predisposed toward sweet flavors, while others are predisposed toward bitter. Southern and Western European wines are typically less sweet because culturally that is the norm, and biologically their taste buds are âtunedâ towards a certain pallate of flavors. These are regions that also drink other âbitterâ beverages, including a lot of coffee and tea, typically with minimal sweetening.
Move further north and you get a tendency towards sweeter drinks, with the Nordic countries having âgrown up onâ honey mead and wines made from sweet berries instead of sour grapes. Move east toward the Levant and you get more exotic flavors like citrus and spice in your drinks, as with limoncello and arak.
Ultimately thereâs nothing wrong with liking one type of drink over other. The whole âwine establishmentâ and market is a bit silly, but the association of bitter and unsweet wines with being âhigh classâ and âculturedâ has less to do with the sweetness of the wine and more to do with drinking the kind of wine that is associated with Old Europe. The idea is that Europe is traditionally âhigh classâ and âculturedâ, and thus emulating their tastes in wine allows one to by extension adopt or at least ape their lofty social status.
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There is a similar phenomenon with most âNew Worldâ wines - NZ, Australia, Chile as well as the U.S.A. The underlying reason is that most new world outfits use modern technology that is easy to sterilise and can maintain constant temperatures for long periods of time.
This allows the producers to make wine of very consistent quality cheaply. Whereas cheap french wine (Vin Ordinaire, Vin de Table) can be truly dire, cheap bottles of wine from most new world sources tend to be of reasonably good quality. This type equipment was much later in getting established in Europe - largely due to conservatism an snobbery within the French wine industry.
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Whaddya talkinâ about? The Coke vs. Pepsi wars were only ended after unspeakable crimes against humanity, the extinction of several types very valuable primate species and over a 120 million humans dead in the heartland⌠and I wonât even get into things like Mt. Dew, Dr. Pepper, and the freaks who like to mix sodas together at fast food restaurants that let you dispense your own.
PS: Ever try mixing tonic with cheap white wine? Fantastique!
It wasnât gin, and I did not make it in a bathtub.
It was âwineâ and it was made on a nice, warm radiator.
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As far as I remember it md2020 , boones farm and similar products are produced by taking cheap bulk California wine and stretching it with water, sugar and flavorings. Regardless of where the company is based. Also these products are typically illegal to sell in surpermarkets and convenience stores, so in ny theyâre made from malt liquor rather than wine.
Actually, I didnât care to get into details â but interesting points, nonetheless.
Weâve only done it thousands of times!
https://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.google.com#q=link:gawker.com+site:boingboing.net
I can lead the horse to pruno, but I canât make it drink it.
Odd. You use scare quotes correctly in your post, and yet you seem to have misunderstood my identical usage of them in mine. 
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â[the US] certainly doesnât make any good wines.â
Well. . . .
As someone who used to drink Thunderbird and Night Train and Wild Irish Rose when he was a college student, I can say that it depends on your definition of âgood.â Cheap port has its place-- Night Train used to be â$1 out the doorâ-- they had geared the price to cover tax, so you only needed one dollar even. If your definition of âgoodâ was a quick cheap buzz, then yes, Night Train is good.
Once I outgrew my fondness for crappy US ports, or âfortified winesâ, I found that almost any dry red wine is quite good. I would place money on most wine snobs not being able to tell the difference between good American, Australian, Chilean, or European wines in a blind taste test.
[edited for clarity]
(These are parentheses.)
I know I know! I was making a theoretical point about our tangent!
Ok, ok. Tomorrow write â5 surprising article themes that you canât believe are in a Boing Boing post,â and see whether you or Boing Boing get called out by name.
Heck, CVS in San Diego seems to specialize in cheap Californian wines â most of them well under $10/bottle. And many of them quite pleasantly drinkable if not spectacular.
