Question for my British flist:

[spikendru]

Does anyone know of a cheap wine, available in the 1970's, students would be likely to drink? It can be fairly horrible, as long as it's cheap. Something akin to the Ripple, Boone's Farm, or MD 20-20 that American students drank with abandon back in the day.

Thanks!

Comments

[woman_of_]

Sorry can't help...at that time most of the girls were drinking vodka and the boys lager and beer......

[spikendru]

Oh, thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking of way back in the days (at least in America) when cheap wine was the preferred libation because, ahem, you could put it in a hookah and the flavor was much better than beer. Not that I've ever done that, of course! *eg*

[paratti]

I've no idea what those American brands are but Liebraumilch.

[spikendru]

Thanks!

[kaydee23]

Aren't you forgetting TJ Swann? I never drank any of that stuff, but when I was in high school, I remember everyone drinking all the above-mentioned all the time, and then they'd talk about yakking it up. Ha ha.

[spikendru]

Good times. *g*

And I remember Bali Hi, Yago Sangria, and some very interesting pineapple wine that was imported from Hawaii and the bottle was wrapped in yellow plastic netting like that which comes on a frozen turkey. Hee! We tried it because it was all of 69 cents for a quart. Unfortunately, I did actually imbibe all of those brands, until we read somewhere that a wino in NYC drank a lot of Boone's Farm Apple and was found dead in a doorway, and his body was pretty much embalmed when he was found (although it may have been an urban legend, upon reflection). In any event, we noticed that formaldehyde was an actual ingredient in BF, so crossed that brand off our list in a hurry!

[kaydee23]

I remember that legend about the embalmed wino. That went all over my high school. I actually do drink, but I made the conscious decision not to drink until I was of legal age, which was 18 at the time. Then, it was probably half a year later before I actually drank anything. I think the first time I got drunk was on a glass of champagne. It wasn't very fun. Anyway, I never drank any of that stuff, and in college, there was so much of that $1.00 beer night, or 10c beer night, that I never bothered with much of anything else. I still see Yago at the grocery store, but I've been warned against that for years. I've never even tried it. I like the light beer thats on sale, and the occasional splurge on wine.

[spikendru]

Well, PA was pretty much always 21 for the drinking age. But then, we have the stupid Liquor Control Board, which mandates only selling "spirits" in a state controlled store! At the time, the drinking age was 18 in NY, so we just zipped over the border to buy alcohol. Beer was a bit too bulky to transport well, so we generally went for the cheap wines in bulk (none of us college students could actually afford liquor, of course!) I was 17 when I started college, so waiting to drink until I was 21 wasn't really an option I wanted to pursue! My wine tastes have improved a bit as I've aged, but I still don't go for the dry stuff. I guess my taste for sweet wines was formed during my er, formulative years! *g* My current favorite is something called Holiday wine, that you can serve either cold or mulled. (I'd better stop before I embarrass myself!)

[executrix]

I think they'd be more likely to drink cider than cheap wine.

[spikendru]

Oh, good suggestion! I forgot that cider is actually alcoholic in Britain, because it's basically just heartier apple juice, with no alcohol in America. I might just go with that one, as it meets the needs of my fic for both something to drink and something to pour into a hookah, too, like the cheap wine does in America (because the cider here isn't hard!)

[executrix]

It is if you rub it...srsly, they *do* make hard cider in the US, in fact one reason Johnny Appleseed roamed the country planting apple trees was that hard cider was exremely popular when water supplies were iffy. I particularly like Woodchuck. Bars that pride themselves on their craft beers also sometimes have US and British or Irish ciders like Woodpecker and Magner's.

[spikendru]

Ooh! I'll have to try it sometime. I'm just used to seeing "cider" in the grocery store, meaning heartier apple juice. Then again, in PA you can't buy any alcohol in grocery stores - or anywhere else, other than state-controlled liquor stores. But the next time we go out to dinner, I'll have to check for hard cider.

[shapinglight]

It's absolutely got to be Blue Nun, but I'm sure someone's already told you that.

[spikendru]

OMG! Blue Nun! I forgot all about that one. Of course, the last time I had a bottle of Blue Nun was in 1972, and it was a '72 vintage. Now I wish I had saved it, because apparently 1972 was a good year for Blue Nun, and a bottle of '72 is definitely worth something. *g*