I have tried Boone’s Farm wines a couple times, and M/D 20-20 (the Mad Dog) only once, back in college, but this was the late '90s. Even for us, mostly underage punk-rocker drinkers with as-of-yet unrefined pallates, we knew these were bad news. Boone’s tasted pretty good, though… at least on the way down (as opposed to back up). Since I am a Jew, I must admit a fondness for the syrupy-sweet Manichewitz wines, both Concord Grape and Blackberry. Served ice-cold, they really hit the spot. Every non-Jew I know seems to really love these wines (more as a novelty than anything else, I suppose), but most Jews roll their eyes when it comes to “Oh man oh man oh Manichewitz!”
A very pretty girl once puked up Mad Dog all over my legs. Ahh, high school. 
A couple bucks more expensive than Mateus was Lancers Crackling Rose. It was considerably better than Mateus. Of course, you can still get Lancers Rose, but no Crackling. IIRC, they got into some legal difficulties because they were trying to pass the carbonation off as natural, when they were just injecting gas. What the hell difference it makes I don’t know, but in the wacky world of alcohol laws, I guess a lot.
Paul Masson made a Rare Cream Sherry that cost $3 and came in a heart-shaped bottle. It was pretty good, much better than anything they offer now. Sherry drunks can be deadly, though.
Cold Duck, which is a combination of bad sparkling burgundy and bad champagne, is probably the worst crap I’ve ever drunk. Mad Dog is like Chateau Lafitte compared to that stuff.
On the off chance that you graduated in '77 (a year after I did) and you remember the MD 20/20 incident and are still pretty…all is forgiven. 
I kid you not: in 1977, Night Train Express was a regular advertiser on The Muppet Show.
Like I assume all other colleges, we had a giant drunk-in on the last day of classes every year. One year I encouraged everyone to try Mad Dog – regular, Lightnin’ Jack, Blue Hawaiian, Kiwi Lime, etc. I thought it was great. The next year I suggested it again, but there were no takers. Wonder why?
–Cliffy
Am I the only one to remember Zapple?
BFA? The favorite of the 9th Graders? Fortified, with enough sugar to guarantee a major hangover.
We sophisticated high schoolers on the beaches from Coronado to at least Huntington Beach preferred Red Mountain Wine: the color of grape koolaid, dry and fruity like a pinot noir, it cost $2.39 a gallon in 1964-66. The jug came with a finger loop on the neck. 3 or 4 of us surfer kids would pool our money and get someone’s brother to buy us a jug, then we’d stand in a circle and take long pulls by hooking our fingers through the hole and tilting the jug with our elbows. Whoop-de-DOO! Cheap, but effective!
When I was a freshman in college, I had a Jewish roommate. I landed a nasty bronchitis bug, and she returned from a weekend home with a bottle of Manischewitz Cherry. I sipped on that, and it worked better than ANY cough syrup from Student Health Service!
~VOW
Oh, and my first hangover was from Bali Hai.
~VOW
heres the new bumwine website where they try all sorts of cheap booze old and new
Yeah, we could easily list hundreds of stupid things under the heading “I can’t believe I ate/drank/watched that!”
So, yeah, I could give reviews of Annie Green Springs, Boone’s Farm (Apple and Strawberry), Mateus, Malt Liquors. Up a notch were whisky-ISH spirits like Southern Comfort.
I loved Southern Comfort and Coke in High School. So when I saw a small bottle, I took it home and poured it into a Coke… then into the sink. Ohmygod, what was I…oh, right, that was over half a century ago.
In the D.C. area in the late 60s we had some swill called Five Star. Pretty much the same idea as Thunderbird.
This thread itself isn’t quite old enough to legally drink cheap wine in the U.S., but it’s getting close. 
Blue Nun was considered a step up when you outgrew Boone’s Farm.
We used to buy Bartles & Jaymes Wine Cooler? They were heavily advertised on tv in the 1980’s. Came in peach, strawberry and other fruit flavors.
They were nice on a hot summer day. My mom doesn’t drink but she’d have a wine cooler. The little bottle didn’t give a buzz.
There was Annie Green Springs, which we called Annie Bed Springs.
Seeing as this is a well pickled thread, I just felt the need to say that I spent a good number of minutes confusedly reading the first several posts and wondering if I had unknowingly sampled the beverages mentioned, I saw zero mention of the old defunct wives from the op title(i am all too familiar with defunct wives).
Mogen David, when Gma passed and we were clearing out the house, she had several open bottles stashed here and there. We were all rather surprised, well us grandkids were. Mom commented that she had suspected since Gma had the mastectomy.
I remember drinking something in my misbegotten youth, not Boones or MD 20/20…grah! The name eludes me, I remember thinking it was shnapps or jagermeister at first until someone showed me the label…that sound familiar to anyone?
Yup. Made by Ernest and Julio Gallo; the joke was that Bartles and Jaymes were allegedly the names of their dogs.
I would say this old National Lampoon bit fits:
