jug wine

This is the cheapest type of wine, and also the type of wine which is made in the most abundance - most wine made in the United States is jug wine. (terms are different in other areas - in Europe the cheapest type of wine is called 'table wine'.) This stuff is dirt cheap and thus is popular with college students and 'rednecks'. Unlike most wine, this stuff is consumed only to get drunk, as it tastes like rancid, sweet grape juice, not wine. It comes in big gallon jugs, and also in boxes. Out in Bishop we'd put the stuff in Nalgene bottles and drink it while floating down the Owens River. its got a high alcohol concentration and is good for getting fucked up, but not much else.

This has been the second cheapest or third cheapest type of wine in the United States for about a decade now. The cheapest wine in the US is box wine. Jug wine, in comparison, isn't so bad. Usually, it's brands like Carlo Rossi or Gallo or some such--certainly low-cost California wines but above box wines, which are still above Boones or MD 20/20 or other fortified wines that are seemingly marketed to people on skid row.

Jug wine--ah, now that brings back memories. The summer before my senior year in college, those of us still on campus lived in an old dorm--beautiful high ceilings, very airy. Nothing else to do on the weekends but drink heavily and party. And, while I was friends with a bunch of people around, I wasn't close with everyone usually, but for the summer we were all friends and would often hang out in someone's room drinking. For budgetary reasons, my poison of choice was a jug of blush wine (can you even buy blush anymore? Isn't it just white zinfandel now?) I would gleefully walk around the halls with my jug of blush (not to be confused with "jug o' chablis") and dole out portions to people carrying those large plastic cups endemic to the college scene and only really useful for jug wine or keg beer or grain punch or some other mass quantity of alcohol.

I don't buy jug wine anymore. Perhaps a bottle of a moderately priced wine (under $15 a bottle is my speed.) I like cheap wine like I can't stand cheap beer.