I found this site while trying to show a dutch friend what Mad Dog 20/20 was. I think its pretty funny and it brings back a few horror stories in my mind from the 80’s when I was young and willing to drink such swill. Hell, in my college years I woke up in an alley after a night of drinking Thunderbird. I have no idea how I got there. My roommates say I just disappeared from a party we were at. Trust me i never touched that stuff again. None of my stories seem to compare to some of the ones in the sites guestbook, though.
One thing many of these wines have in common though is that they seem to make people go berserk. I vaguely remember a news story in Philadelphia years ago that they wanted to ban the sale of Mad Dog because of that. And when I first went to Fort Campbell my platoon sergeant told me to not drink cisco because its liquid crack. Has anyone had any crazy experiences with these cheap wines? I always hear stories of people going nuts and trashing their own house. Maybe I should have tried cisco after all…
I’d bought my girlfriend a wine rack for Valentines one year, but she goes through wine too fast for storage to be much of a problem for us. I got tired of seeing the empty wine rack, so I decided to fill it with Bum Wine. I’ve got Richard’s Wild Irish Rose, Night Train, Boones Farm, MD 20/20, and Thunderbird but I was rather dismayed to find out that Ripple isn’t on the market anymore.
Ugh, I had Cisco a few times while stationed in VA. On a logical level I realize that alcohol should have the same effect no matter what the delivery vehicle is, but Cisco was a very weird drunk.
Number one, it seemed like you were crazy drunk within minutes, and so you were an energetic drunk. I don’t know, it was bizarre stufff. I never had the same reaction from MD 20/20.
On a side note, the first time I ever wondered if I might have a drinking problem was when someone handed me a bottle of some new flavor of Mad Dog and I said “Hey , that’s not too bad!”
We used to drink so much Wild Irish Rose when we were in high school. Yuck! We occasionally had Mad Dog & Thunderbird, but we usually stuck to Wild Irish Rose.
My husband apparently drank a lot of Boone’s Farm in high school.
We use to have Red Rocket (a fortified wine last seen in the late '70’s) parties in college. A buddy of mine bought several cases for pennies on the dollar from a liquor store that had been unable to sell it; it was probably several years old. Never have so few, barfed so much, for so long.
When Boone’s Farm was introduced in my area, it only came in Apple, and was sold out of the refrigerated case. It was also under a dollar a bottle. Many lost weekends and horrific hangovers started with the phrase “Give me all the cold Boone’s Farm ya got!”
We don’t really have that sort of thing much in Australia - as in, a standard sized bottle of wine that’s cheap and evil. They’re around, but not common. IMpoverished students here tend to go for a 4 litre box of normal (but rough) table wine (around US$7.50 for a cheapie) - with Rohypnol sleeping tablets if they can acquire some, and the skid row types drink bottles of traditional fortifieds such as port or sherry.
As August West mentioned, you would think alcohol is alcohol, but it seems some of the street wisdom is right, and this isn’t actually the case.
For some anecdotal evidence:
Port, sherry etc: the few times I’ve had too much of this, I’ve simply gone into a coma. Never woken up in an alley, but I’ve put myself to bed, and I don’t remember doing so. This is the weirdest of booze to me. It’s like it’s got something else in it. Bad news.
Wine-inna-box: Doesn’t get me particularly more drunk or differently drunk, but by the devil I pay for it in the morning.
Drambuie: Yes, this is top shelf stuff, but when I worked in a pub, we ended up no longer selling it because the young men would always go troppo and fight or otherwise trash the place. Drambuie is whisky-based, and the same young men could drink whisky without dramas, so I am flummoxed on this one.
Strong cider. Australian cider comes in at about beer strength (5% alc/vol) normally, but they put out a 10% a few years back. Many pubs stopped selling it because the young drinkers, again, went absolutely berko on it.
In my younger days when drinking to excess was the thing to do, I was famous amongst my mates as being a hard case for the amount of spirits I could put away. Give me a bottle of scotch, and I’ll give you a high-functioning drunk. I explained to my mates that while that was so, on most occasions when we’d drink beer, I was the opposite. I’d have a few then want to sit down and doze off, and they’d be drinking beer all night. Beer, to me, is a heavy, heady, messy brainfunk. Spirits are the same to all my friends.
I drink the ol’ MD 20/20 once a year, as a tradition at a yearly party-thing. In fact, that weekend is coming up a week from saturday. I hope my stomach is rady for the MD, cause it’s a-comin’ whether it wants it to or not!
Try some Boone’s Farm Blue Hawaiian: Bright blue liquid, tastes like blue raspberry and coconut. I brought some to a dinner party one night when the host asked me to bring “the wine.”
The proper glass to serve Boone’s Farm in: Welch’s Grape Jelly glasses.