Originally published at: Fred Franzia, creator of "Two Buck Chuck," RIP | Boing Boing
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Best $2.00 cooking wine ever.
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They should fly a Hawaiian shirt at half mast at every TJ’s.
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Apparently some batches were quite high quality, according to those that judge such things.
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It was 3-buck-Chuck the last time I bought it.
Wine snobs I know admit it was good early on, but that over the years it dropped to the point where they wouldn’t even use it for cooking.
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Except the ones here in PA, where Trader Joe’s can’t sell wine.
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I remember the first time I traveled somewhere when I was old enough to buy booze (I believe it was FLA) and there was a weird law*, I had no idea such things existed. In that case, we went to the grocery store on Sunday morning and the entire liquor department was “closed” for the day. We just wanted to get ingredients to make daiquiris at our friend’s house.
*Honestly, lots of people in my state of CA don’t even know that there is a law here that retail establishments cannot sell alcohol between 2 and 6a. When I worked for a grocery chain with 24/7 business hours long long ago, we sometimes had to explain that to people who happened to wander in between those times. Night owls who were just buying groceries, mostly. Not folks looking to extend their party.
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I’ll spill some for the homie.
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I remember when I was just barely “of age” and was on a visit to Oregon and/or Washington, and we went to go get tequila and we had to go to some kind of state owned liquor store. That was quite odd to me.
I sure have known about this, and I have to say that this law has directly prevented at least one of my hangovers from being even worse! The other thing to know about that 2am cutoff is that last call at bars is something like 1am, I guess to let people finish their last drinks before doors close at 2am.
Back to the topic at hand, I guess this guy Franzia was the namesake of the famous box wine. Or a relative of his, it seems.
That happened to us in Key West, too!
But we just went to the next key over (Stock Island) and they didn’t appear to have the same limitation. (This was between 1999 and 2004.) @FloridaManJefe might know if the law is by municipality or by county?
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blue laws are a county to county thing, but KW and Stock Island are both Monroe County. can’t think of any reason KW would disallow alcohol sales, pretty much ever.
Stock island has a reputation of lawlessness, never minding that it is where county lock-up is located!
edit to stay on topic:
nothin’ wrong with cheap wine, in my book!
cheers, y’all!
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" The great street wines are pretty much evenly priced, and range between $1.10 and $2.80, depending on the tax and transportation costs in your area. Of course, with all five, the first sip is always the foulest. You will feel a trail of flames all the way down your esophagus and into your stomach. We do not recommend chugging any of these beverages, but you don’t want to drink too slow or it will get piss warm. The bottle tells you to serve very cold, and we recommend heeding those words. Nobody in any of our tests dared to drink more than 750 mL, and we do not recommend even that much. Go with the 375 mL bottle where available, and see how that sits with you before proceeding. Anything more and you are risking a black out. Don’t drink too much of any of these or you might find yourself at the local middleschool sniffing bicycle seats. You may even worship the sun. "
From: BumWine.com - Rankings
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Still cheaper than a lot of bottled water though, which is impressive on its own.
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“Two-Buck Chuck” is almost certainly what we Canadians would call a new $2 bill with Charles III on it, if we hadn’t replaced the bills with coins (toonies, as you know) back in 1996.
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When I was in Italy over the summer, plenty of >3 euro wines turned out to be quite good, just choose stuff that’s made locally. More expensive ones were better, but the returns do diminish.
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“Vino de la casa” was always affordable and drinkable.
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I worked night shift for 5 years at my last job and would routinely forget to purchase my “evening’s” booze before work and then make an ass out of myself every Sunday morning at the store. It was a nightmare.
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A few years before the introduction of the Euro, I spent a couple of summers working in France. The local vineyard sold its produce from a roadside stall, five francs the litre, bring your own container. It was quite good, especially after the first couple of gulps. Certainly better than the five-litre plastic casks from the hypermarché.
Of course, if you really wanted a cheap but memorable night, your best bet was off-brand pastis, twenty francs a bottle. Drunk neat, if you were hard enough.
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That’s no joke in my household. We’ve only used it for cooking.
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