I adore overly long pet names, I have Crookshanks Tuxedopants Smithchester and Albaquirky New Mexico Smithchester. Their last name is a melding of mine and my partner's last names.
I know exactly what to do with Boone's Farm. In 1972, I owned an MGB and lost all the coolant on the way home. I put an entire bottle of Boone' Farm in the radiator and got home safely - only @ 10 miles. I arrived smelling like a bad apple pie, but the car survived to break down another day. Thank You Boone's Farm!
I think a couple of the drinks were spoiled... Some aluminum cans have a liner on the inside that gives off that hot-tar-burning-tires-condom-factory taste and smell when it gets too old. I got the exact same thing from a six pack of cider once, and someone from the company that canned it told me that's what happens to old cans. My guess is these wine coolers aren't big sellers and they sat on the store shelf waaaay too long.
From my understanding, the fact it smells like a fart says it's actually much worse. It means it's contaminated by Sulphur. Whether it's due to age or a flaw in the canning process (could also be the wine since the one they use may to take to the canning process well) I'm not sure, but it's definitely a sign that Greg should NOT have drunk them.
Makes sense, I guess bare aluminum would affect the flavor much more over time... That plastic must make the cans a lot harder to recycle though... Guess it's glass bottles for me!
@@haptichugs2855the issue is glass is incredibly bad for recycling because it takes so much energy to melt that it's almost as bad for the environment as using new glass. Of course the important thing is to remember to reduce and reuse first.
I like how this channel is turning more and more into a Greg cosplaying according to the subject at hand channel. I know it's kind of always been here with the Tiki stuff, but it's been getting more frequent and it's great.
That's their market. Maybe not teens, exactly. But young people who just want to get drunk without gagging on stuff that tastes like alcohol. I've been there, too.
I don't know if I physically can put that much liquid in my body to actually get drunk off of these, I drink too much liquor for that shit. My tolerance is too high
"these are marketed to children" so fun story, when I was 21 and could suddenly buy alcohol I thought I was so cool when I would come home after class and "unwind" by watching tv and drinking a Seagram's strawberry daiquiri they are in reality closer to liquid candy than alcohol and 100% marketed to children
I don't think I've had a wine cooler or something like a smirnoff ice or a hard lemonade since I was an actual child. But I did grow up in a time and a place where it was considered normal to give hyperactive kindergarteners rum milk punch to make us sit still. I have some strong memories of walking down to Joe D's liquor to pick up my dad's staples and sneaking that strawberry hill boone's farm into the bag, and I'm pretty sure that place closed down when I was 10
I like these because they serve a very specific purpose well: letting people who don't like the taste of alcohol enjoy alcohol without getting plastered by jungle juice.
Yes! I want a compilation video of all the National Parks drinks I can send to my dad--I got him a bottle of Yellowstone Bourbon for Christmas last year, partially thanks to their sponsorship of Greg.
As someone who was also not allowed to wear sunscreen as a child (due to being Italian and growing up at the same time as you), this episode hits me in the nostalgia.
I remember adults would mention wine coolers A LOT when they talked about underage drinking, like in health class and stuff. and i'm in college now, so this was pretty recent. I guess the product declined but the awareness that it was like a sweet alcohol drink that teens would like stuck around. I didn't even know what a wine cooler actually was until watching this
i have extremely vague memories of reading an older YA book where teens were drinking Strawberry Hill, agreed that it was recent enough that adults remembered them well when we were younger but the moment has definitely passed
As a teenager in the 80s, wine coolers being consumed illicitly by underaged drinkers was largely a female phenomenon, along with guys trying to get into the pants of said females.😉👍 Most males were drinking cheap beer(the Strohs 30 packs were particularly popular) or some kind of brown liquor.
This is what I always think of when I hear "wine coolers". In DARE/health class they gave the equivalent of standard drinks in terms of wine coolers. This was probably the late 2000s and I doubt anyone was even drinking them then.
I unashamedly love segram's escapes. Are they sweet? Absolutely, but I prefer sweet drinks. Are they low abv? Absolutely, but I don't drink to get drunk, so I don't care. There will probably come a day where my body ages and makes the amount of sugar in them gross to me, but right now they're amazing and I offer absolutely no apology for loving them.
@@wbfaulk not by that much and I don't like the flavors of most sodas. I also don't like most beers or wines, so on the occasions when I want to drink and don't want to bother mixing something, I'll take a Seagram's over a beer or wine every time.
Preach! As someone with a sweet tooth and an extremely low tolerance for alcohol, wine coolers are a little slice of liquid candy happiness and I’ve been known to have them for dessert. I bet a seagrams float would be amazing
I also like Seagram's. I also can't drink much alcohol because I am a small person and not a regular drinker, so a small amount of alcohol gets me drunk. A Seagram's is perfect for me when I want to drink.
Yeah I really like seagram's. May be because I may or may not have ADHD idk. I tend to drink a shit ton of soda so seagram's became my favorate easily.
Thanks for making this episode. As a 25 year old I had no previous knowledge on wine coolers outside of it being the drink the criminal would bring over in episodes of To Catch A Predator
As a Canadian, I found it interesting that all of these coolers kept their base spirits north of the border. Mike’s Hard may be a malt liquor beverage in the US, but in Canada the tagline was “An Excellent Source of Vodka.”
@@kobakusu The pointless distinctions we draw on that stuff because the OPC functionally shackled us to The Beer Store for all eternity just feels so wrong sometimes.
@@NoOther1 honestly our entire Liqour control system is frustrating and god awful. Let me just order the foreign stuff I want rather than having to buy what the LCBO horribly stocks.
I love in the newer afterparty episodes (and even occasionally in the “actual” episodes) Mere has camera cutaways as well. She’s fully cemented into the show and her and Greg play so well off each other. I love it
DIY wine cooler template: 2oz fruity liqueur of choice 4oz wine you don't care about 4oz carbonated mixer (un sweet) Combine and serve over ice ABV will vary with the wine and liqueur chosen (and if you can figure it out in your head then you know you are not drunk). You can mix and match liqueurs and wines to find combos you like. Last time I did these it was peach schnapps + white zinfandel w/ plain seltzer for bubbles, but you can do you. 😉
When I visited Germany (10 years ago admittedly), I learned that obviously there is a market for teens who are legally of drinking age but not exactly hard drinkers yet. There are plenty of relatively accessible and low ABV drinks available, mostly beers lightened or sweetened with various additives. The technical term they used for these was usually "Gemischtesbier," or literally "mixed beer." However, most of the teens to whom they were marketed preferred the term "Pussybier." Note that is not a translation, they just borrowed the phrase from English.
Yeah in Denmark we call it Ludderbenzin (which literally translates to “whore-fuel”), even though we all know it slaps, because it’s just soda, but with the ABV of beer.
In Germany teens who are at least 16 years old can buy any beer or wine. But sweet drinks like wine coolers or beer mixed with soda are preferred by young people as they are easier to drink.
Had a female friend when I was a younger man that raved about Goldschlager because she "likes how the gold flakes scrape [her] throat." I get she was making a suggestive pass, but man that annoyed me. 😒
It's really the same market in the US, except that legally it's not supposed to be. Or, I should say, it *was* that age bracket in the heyday of wine coolers, I don't really know what the teen scene is like now, but I can't imagine anybody else is going for these things. Those who are past college-age but still have a sweet tooth tend to go for pitchers of sangria (which really is kind of the original wine cooler) or whatever sugary mixed drink is in fashion this month.
I just have to say. I bartended for years and every gosh darn family gathering, I had to “bartend” with whatever three scratch bottles whoever had in their cabinets. I was so over it. But man you’ve given the love of liquor back to me and made me home bartend again Greg. Thank you for the content. MAN!
Haha. I am still forced to bartend at every get together. People think all they need are a few base spirits and a couple of mixers and we should be good to go. I started to bring a few essentials with me so I wouldn't be ashamed of the drinks I gave people.
I think that asphalt note is the essential oils in the coolers getting skunked by something, either too much acid or being stored too hot. Happens with a lot of beers shipped in clear bottles in the summer from sunlight and heat.
Yeah, living in the Southwestern USA most Domestic Beers and Malt Liquors spoil in the 100+ F or 40+ C heat. Tried to drink a couple that were left out only to find out though tasting a bit sweet made me throw up almost instantly. Probably from the alcohol converting to acetaldehyde in the heat.
For someone like me, who isn't big into alcohol, I love Seagrams wine coolers 😅 I guess I'm weird for subscribing to an alcohol channel when I don't really drink alcohol. But I find your videos very informative and enjoyable to watch 😊
Quick thought but once all the different Yellowstone cocktails have aired, might not be a bad idea to edit them into one big video? Easier to find in the future since they're hidden otherwise.
I remember being like 5 or 6 years old and asking my mom for a sip of her soda and she said yeah while she was trying to put sunscreen on my sister. I picked up her bottle and drank like 1/2 of it instead of the can of soda, the bottle was her wine cooler… 1990’s at its best. I took a great nap later that day.
I remember Wine Coolers being the "BIG BAD NO NO" Drink that was used in ALOT of videos played to elementary schoolers on the dangers of Alcohol in the early 00's... of all the elementary school memories I have alongside a video about a family who returns to a US ruled by a dictator mobilizing for war but you know shit was weird back then.
I always found the "aLcOhol baD" videos weird as a kid because my parents let me drink a bit of wine/schnapps (not enough to get tipsy, but a bit) quite often lol
The main reason wine coolers never had to be good tasting is because the school doing the anti wine cooler stuff was free advertisement for the product.
I invented a cocktail called a "Gilbert". It was simply Southern Comfort with Lucozade (paired on the basis that they were the same colour). It was lovely! An advantage to this drink was that you were consuming a hangover cure (the Lucozade) at the same time as you were imbibing alcohol, so the morning after was less painful! You could also substitute IrnBru for the Lucozade for the very same reasons - same colour, same hangover-reducing qualities. I can no longer drink at all, due to being on strong painkillers which would be dangerous to mix with alcohol, so I am imparting my wisdom to you to enjoy.
I find it funny that Greg sometimes describes himself as having a sweet tooth, but far and away his biggest criticism of a lot of these types of mass market drinks is that they are too sweet. Not knocking, just find it funny. Also this episode is correct, 95% of "Coolers" are straight up juice, with a slight whiff of alcohol. That's fine for me most days, but if you want an actual, like, grown up drink, stir clear.
I remember in the early 2000s when we were learning about the amount of alcohol in various beverages and how impaired it would make you (for example in driving lessons or health/anatomy class), they ALWAYS talked about wine coolers as a benchmark for some reason even though literally no one knew what those were or had ever seen one. This video is the first time I've ever seen evidence these things actually existed...
I had the exact same experience. It was like they expected a stranger to offer me a wine cooler masquerading as a soda, when I had never and still have never seen one in real life.
Probably because wine coolers are generally 3.2% alcohol (like light beer), which is the equivalent of 1 ounce of standard 80 proof liquor. It’s a good measuring stick for “1 drink,” since wine and beer can vary so much.
generally they would invoke mike's hard as an equivalent to wine coolers in my day, and my goodness imagine trying to get even a little drunk on those things, yeesh! they should have mostly stuck to talking about bottom shelf vodka and whiskey which is what most young people would drink to actually get drunk, wine coolers are something you sip on on a hot summer day to get a very light buzz at the most.
@@mattnutella I think part of it was pedophiles would literally give underage girls wine coolers to get them drunk so they could take advantage of them more easily.
@@kevinmiller1356during my college orientation they actually used Wine Coolers as an example of multiple "drinks" in one container, because they said the total amount of ethanol in one was higher than in a beer or a glass of wine, and told us they were dangerous because of it. Honestly not a bad lesson, but maybe the wrong choice of beverage to use to make that point
These Yellowstone Bourbon ads are just incorporated so well, actually showing something practical that can be done with it that is simultaneously in theme with the channel and the reason I watch these videos in the first place. So much less jarring than the cocophony of "x mobile game has limited time offer using my code I super duper love this character the graphics are so epic wow better than skyrim in my opinion I will definitely be maintaining my clan once the sponsor duration runs out" so many channels resort to.
I can't get the bourbon where I am, no matter how much I'd want to. But what I really want is the ceramic smoking apparatus that Greg used in the drink. Welp, off to Google I go!
I want to try and defend Seagram’s for nostalgia’s sake because it was my introduction to alcohol, but I kinda can’t. It’s not alcohol poisoning that’ll get you if you drink those-it’s a diabetic coma from all the sugar. 😂
I drank almost half of a case of those for my graduation party (from high school.) I've never thrown up so hard from any other drink before, fireball is great, whiskey I love, but nothing hits me as hard as that sugar overdose did.
Two of the most epic hangovers I've ever had: 1st was Jose Cuervo. Second was Boones. Just the smell of either triggers my gag reflex 50 years after the fact!
Gotta love the moment in every episode where Greg randomly turns into a North Carolina diplomat from 1910 and rides it through the rest of the episode.
You just gave me a visceral sense-memory of this incredibly cheap gin a friend of a friend brought back from a road trip somewhere. You know how some gin is like chewing on a pine tree? (I'm looking at you, Bombay) Well this was like getting smacked in the face by a whole branch that had been soaked in full strength Muskol. Just straight up pine and deet. Complete with the way bug spray makes your lips and tongue numb when it gets in your mouth. We ended up passing it to each new person that showed up that night, without any warning, and watching the results. The entertainment value was almost worth the taste.
Hearing Greg utter "Boone's strawberry farm wine hill, for the times when you need a citrus flavored wine of strawberry wine Boone farm town" followed by him missing the glass and pouring it all over the counter" had me in TEARS from laughing. Also, I'm adding "per'shay" to my vocabulary regardless of it lacking any and all meaning.
The keyed-up aggression comes from the powerful vibe of that outfit carrying with it the all energy of a guy in the 80s who is himself *keyed* up and aggressively trying to talk his buddies at the bar into starting a business.
About the extremely low proof, until just a couple years ago it was the law in my state that you couldn't buy anything higher than 3.5% ABV without going to the state liquor store. So 3.2% was actually pretty common to see for drinks like these as well as beers.
@@xanderwebb7998 CO has liquor stores, not sure on the everclear front but it was our grocery stores that couldn't carry above like 3.5 abv and only 1 store in that city could carry anything higher. This law has since been repealed but most grocery stores still don't have wine.
Underwood is a fairly well known, decent winery here in Oregon (pronounced like version A and ONLY version A). I think they were one of the first wineries to can their wines, which is popular in the Pacific North West because camping/hiking/outdoors stuff and glass don't go well together.
I actually love these national parks cocktails. Idk how the paid promotion would work but i'd like them collected and put in a single video on their own too!
I live very near the Smokies...like, minutes away. LOL I would love to try the drink today. But I'm not ordering celery bitters just to use it once & then have it in the cabinet for 20 years.
It's a great sponsorship and Greg does the spots really well, with beautiful scenery and interesting cocktails to go along with the parks. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't cave to advertising often, but I'm tempted to pick up some of that bourbon.
What's crazy is everybody (including myself) likes the commercials, but they're just mini episodes of old how to drink-Greg tells us a story and makes a cocktail. With a little bit of extra theatricality and a good character thrown in.
@@GirishManjunathMusic yeah, that's why my spice cabinet looks like an explosion hit a tiny bottle factory as it is. I buy oddball spices to go in recipes thinking "oh, I can use this in XYZ and stuff"...then it all sits there, like tiny little judges shaming my frivolous spending...
Greg, now you know why Bartles & Jaymes has the refrigerate after opening on the can. You can’t finish a full can of road tar, you HAVE to save it for later.
I figured this episode was gonna happen eventually. Knowing you don't like sweet drinks, I knew you wouldn't like the Seagrams drinks. I enjoy em cause they're literally just slightly alcoholic soda but I knew as soon as I saw "Wine Cooler review" this episode was gonna come for me.
Same, I unironically like them *because* they are just super sugary sodas so can you mentally feel like you're drinking without actually _feeling_ like you're drinking
I remember in the mid 90s in the UK when Hooch was launched as “alcoholic lemonade” and the moral panic about kids drinking it (despite it being legal to drink from 5 here [on private property with parental permission]). When I was a teenager in the early/mid 2000s my alcopop of choice was either Smirnoff Ice or the Green/Orange Bacardi Breezer.
@@Sorrowdusk Most of my friends parents would let us drink at 14/15 (and we even found a pub that would serve me at that age, and I still get IDd occasionally at 35).
@@Sorrowdusk Yeah drinking a bit of booze in your early teens isn't a big deal in British culture. Having a beer watching the football at the weekends with my dad wasn't unusual and my friends and I were procuring drinks for the purpose of getting drunk from 14ish (sometimes from shops who didn't ask questions, sometimes via an older sibling, less responsible parent or occasional random stranger) and getting served regularly in pubs from 15 onwards. This was also in the early to mid 2000's. I still see kids hanging out and getting lary at the places we used to go and get drunk in the evenings so I assume things are more or less the same. The girls all used to drink alcopops, they were ok but a bit sickly for my tastes, we used to drink the far less palatable but far more economical cheap cider like strongbow or white lightning, £3 would easily give you more than enough to make some terrible decisions.
@@DjDolHaus86 jeez white lightning, frosty Jack's or whatever they serve in Aldi are the absolute worst. Strongbow and thatchers ain't that bad and I usually go for them first when I go anywhere new. It's always the same
@@michaelwright968 I wouldn't disagree, white lightning and frosty jack was awful but it was awfully cheap and when you've only got a few quids worth of pocket money it was the best deal. I've got nothing against strongbow, it's not great but it's not offensive
To me wine coolers have always been for, as Meredith said, those who don't want to drink (or have very low tolerance) but still want to feel "included" in the drinking. And for teens.
Okay, I was almost old enough to drink at the beginning of the wine cooler era (I drank, I didn't drive, we'll leave it at that). They all tasted like some variation of sangria, at that point. There was some sugar, but mostly it was like sangria or a wine spritzer - not that sweet. The sweetness was added later, especially when they added the malt stuff and stopped calling them "wine" anything.
I was a kid in the 80's, early 90's... first thing that comes to mind when I hear wine coolers is Bartles & James! LOL I remember the shape of the bottle and the metallic foil wrapper. Don't tell the authorities but my parents would like me have one at family get togethers. 😉
I have a buddy that used to work for Seagrams. He told me that the main reason for making the wine coolers in the first place was just for advertising the brand. At the time, it was illegal for liquor to be advertised on TV. So it was worth creating a drink to get their name on TV, and they just hoped to break even on the wine coolers. I can tell you I still remember the Bruce Willis Golden Wine Coolers commercials, but I never drank one. I've had plenty of Seagram's 7. It wouldn't surprise me it the other large liquor companies did the same. Obviously, they ended up doing better than they thought. By the time the Zima's & Mike's Hard Lemonade's came out 10+ years later there was definitely a market for them.
@@pennyforyourthots Oh yeah, I always forget that. Soft-cider is very rare, at least that use the word "cider" and not our word for non-carbonated soft drinks I don't think non-carbonated soft drinks are that popular except for with children We also just drink a lot of alcohol and hard-cider and wine-coolers are very popular
@@zeyface6366 soft cider is popular around me, mainly cause we have like 4 different large apple orchards within 20 miles of each other, and is a fun autumn activity for the family to go out to the orchard, pick a bushel of apples, and buy a gallon of cider and a dozen or so doughnuts.
The wine coolers are what the "cool" parents would let the teens/young adults (16-20) have at a sleepover, and they'd say "I don't care if you guys drink, but no one's driving, give me your keys" lol
@@adbreon if things like Mike's hard lemonades and Smirnoff ices are also alcopops, then I can tell you that you won't die before you get drunk, but you most likely will have a terrible hangover (source: those are some of my favorite drinks even though the hangover can be wicked 😅)
My family has an entire tradition about passing around a bottle of Boone's Farm whenever anybody has a big life event. We add a new decoration onto the bottle to celebrate the occasion, and after about forty years of this you can barely tell what it contained (past tense, because at some point somebody drained the bottle to make it legal to ship across state lines). I'm not sure who has it right now, but I'm 100% sure that when I get my next job I'll find out. The bottle is referred to as "vintage Tuesday" in honor of not having ever been a wine anybody would take seriously.
These are I guess equivalent to what we called “alcopops” in Britain in the 90s and 2000s, really sweet drinks that the 12 year olds could start on. Smirnoff Ice is the most known but there was WKD, Bacardi Breezer, VK Vodka Kicks, Reef, Hooch as you said 😂 and some more I can’t remember. You should try those if you can find them Greg 👍
We have/had those in Germany too. After binge drinking spiked, they taxed the hell out these drinks and things went back to normal. And by normal I mean, kids pouring Vodka and Red Bull together.
I remember subscribing when you had like 7k subs. I just saw that you have passed 1.5 million. Congrats my dude! You teached me how to make simple syrup and oleo saccharum. I've discovered so many great cocktails because of you. I wish you and your team all the success. Much love ♥️
I just realized I never subscribed despite watching the channel since butter beer. Between this channel and the educated barfly they've cost me a lot of money and I've enjoyed almost all the drinks.
I absolutely love Seagrams. It's nice to sit back with one on a hot summer day and just relax. Would I drink them if I wanted to get drunk? Probably not, because it would take forever lol. But for someone like myself that doesn't always want to get wasted when they drink, they're perfect 🙂.
ten years ago i went on a high school trip to Italy. in Florence, i got extremely overpriced gelato, but wanted something to drink with it. they had a cooler with gatorades, and the only flavor left was this orange bottle called “arancia”. now i knew it wasnt italian for orange, but i figured it couldnt be that bad, it was orange gatorade. whole thing ran me 16 euros. the gelato was delicious. the gatorade tasted like piss, and, being 16, i forced all my friends to taste it. they agreed. as far as im concerned, arancia is italian for piss
I remember being a kid and grabbing a couple of these and putting them in my moms shopping cart, they just looked exactly like the kind of soda I would like to drink.
Everything I know about wine coolers I learned in D.A.R.E circa 2007 (long after wine coolers weren’t popular) and I learned was that creepy old men will try luring me into their vans with wine coolers and to just say no to them
I have had those Seagrams before and I am so so happy to see Greg ingest those. They had absolutely zero alcohol in them. I honestly used them as like "margherita mixed" added tequila, ice, blended them together. Made it OK.
When I was a sophomore in college (1992-ish) one of my dormmates’ mothers would occasionally go to the liquor store and buy stuff for us since we were underage and she thought the American drinking age (21 rather than 18) was ridiculous. She would NOT, however, go so far as to buy us hard liquor - she would only buy wine or wine coolers.I don’t remember the brand, but I remember there was a sangria wine cooler that was actually pretty decent and didn’t taste like soda.
Well that’s answered a long standing question for me. I had no idea what Bartles and Jaymes was but it’s referenced in You or Your Memory by The Mountain Goats (“I checked into a bargain priced room on la sienaga, gazed out through the curtains of the parking lot. walked down to the corner store just before nightfall in my bare feet. black tarry asphalt, soft and hot. and when I came back I spread out my supplies. on the counter by the sink, I looked myself right in the eyes St. Joseph’s baby aspirin, Bartles and Jaymes, and you or your memory.) So that clears that up!
I keep seeing the strawberry Underwood in the store, then getting the can that I usually get instead (because I am a habitual drinker of canned wine.) Maybe I'll try it. Also, as an Oregonian, Meredith is correct in her pronunciation.
I haven't had a wine cooler since I was 6 but if memory serves me they were they were closer to a sweet fruity desert wine or ice wine with just a little bit of cool-aid in it.
You should try a "daqlet" it's a mix between gimlet and a daiquiri (traditional) 1oz London dry gin 1oz white rum Either 2 oz lime cordial OR 1oz simple and 1 oz lime juice. Love to see it I started making these myself after your 3 ingredient drink episode
I remember sneaking them in the early 90's, but what did I know back then? Then, in the summers, my parents would drink wine spritzers that they made themselves, and they were actually good! For a summer BBQ, I'll still soak peaches in cheap chianti for a day or 2, then serve over ice with soda water.
I had very fond memories of the original wine coolers as they were essentially vat-aged white wine, citrus juice and sugar. Those were tasty as they were essentially pulp-free sangria. I've always hated malt beverage, so the wine cooler for me died with the idiotic decision to move away from wine.
I love cream soda, so thanks for the inadvertent recommendation. If I see a bottle I'll have to give it a go out of morbid curiosity. Some of Underwood's canned wines are legitimately good. I think it was their red blend that I found really nice. It's been a bit since I've had it, so I don't remember exactly. May also have something to do with the fact that I drank a whole can of their wine in, like, 15 minutes...
Jaysus, I can't even imagine the sugar-induced (because it wasn't the booze) hangover you suffered making this episode. You, sir, are a giant among men, if there were a ribbon for sacrificing yourself on the altar of "watchable youtube clips" you would have earned it with 5 mint-leaf clusters. I doff my cap to you. I (barely) survived the OG wine cooler era, so I know whereof I speak. BTW: Back in the mid-late 80s- the wine spritzer/cooler was a legit thing. Wine and either tonic (if the wine was drier) or seltzer (if it was sweeter). My parents had some friends that spent a lot of time in CA in the late 80s, and these were apparently the seed for bottled wine coolers.
I believe my first ever sip of alcohol was the Jamaican Me Happy cooler. My mom loved the Seagrams coolers when I was growing up. The ones she drank had even less alcohol than these as in Kansas until about 5 years ago all alcohol sold in grocery stores had to be less than 3%
I actually really like Seagram’s Escapes, lol. When I was first able to drink, I didn’t like the taste of beer or wine, and I didn’t have enough money to try different mixed cocktails, so the coolers were a great way for me to drink something that I knew I would find tasty that still had a bit of alcohol in it.
Yea same, I can't drink something that's too strongly of alcohol, it can be off putting to me. Sweet fruity drinks are what I lean toward. So I also really like Seagrams, but I totally get if people have an aversion to not tasting the alcohol in the drinks.
me too! Like if my friends are having cheap beer or something I'll drink this, not to get drunk but just to feel included while drinking something... not disgusting lol If I want a real cocktail I'll make something with vodka or whiskey or whatever, but if we're just sipping on wine or beer I'll 100% go for seagrams over any of that. Wine tastes to me like it's just... rotten, and idek how to describe most beers I've had other than "ick" lol I don't mind the taste of alcohol, in fact I really don't have any problem drinking any sort of liquor straight... just beer and wine that I don't like
Then never really went away north of the border, either. Arizona here, and yeah, I saw them all the time. But I kind of lost interest in them back in the mid ninety's. Couldn't tell you why. Every now and then, I'd pick up a four-pack, but that's a "once in a blue moon" kind of thing.
Worked at a liquor store for awhile and dear sweet lord if we ran out of Seagrams specifically the blue one Calypso. I’d get cursed out by every 50+ year old woman in town
Greg comparing the margarita one to those ice push pops has made me think that a good use for these might be freezing them and using them as ice cubes for summer cocktails.
I grew up in Washington saying it the same way she did (option A). I never expected to hear somebody say "argon" and mean our neighbor across the Columbia.
I love the Seagrams escapes 🥺 they are yummy Edit: ok hear me out, if you want a slightly alcoholic soda this is kind of the place to go. No offense to the hard root beer people but those kind of suck
As an old: I started my drinking career with beer, moved briefly to Cold Duck (until I became violently ill after over-indulging) and then moved to wine coolers. I preferred Seagrams Golden but I vaguely remember a couple of other flavors I found tolerable. But they were sweeter. The only Bartles and James I could take was their fuzzy navel, but it was too sweet and had a chemical under/after taste. I sincerely appreciate the history though, because wine coolers just vanished and I never knew why.
I personally am a fan of Seagram's Escapes as a nice way to relax after work, but I understand they aren't for everyone. It's just cool to see something I regularly enjoy featured on the channel, even if Greg doesn't like them himself.
Underwood is fairly popular in the pacific northwest. The cans are extremely portable compared to a bottle, making them great for hiking and camping. You dont have to worry about broken glass. Most people who buy it buy it at first for the form factor. The wine itself isnt bad
I don't wanna drink any more wine coolers.
Limestone Branch: limestonebranch.com/spirits/yellowstone-select-kentucky-straight-bourbon/
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Children only get taller.
They all taste the same.
hoopers hooch was what I slammed back at Luleå university in 1996.
31:44 I would say Sturgeon's Law definitely applies. 99% of wine coolers are SHIT.
In the UK the slang for drinks like these is "Alcopop"
My mom had a crotchety old orange cat that she got in college and his full name was Seagram's Wildberry Wine Cooler (we just called him Seagrams)
I have a cat whose full name is The Assistant to the Regional Manager. We call him Reggie.
I adore overly long pet names, I have Crookshanks Tuxedopants Smithchester and Albaquirky New Mexico Smithchester. Their last name is a melding of mine and my partner's last names.
His Grace, Lord Amiral Fuzzyboots, giver of cuddles taker of Naps. First of his name
My cats name is Sieven of Nine, my Corgi is Bindi Sue Bangles, and my Aussie is Wicked Zelena Elphaba Thropp (AKA Gemfire's Under Wicked Skies).
Mine is chairman meow
Greg: It would never occur to me to take wine and put some strawberries in it.
Sangria: *Am I a joke to you?*
Strawberry wine, 17, the hot july moon, saw everything.
You tell that to a Spaniard and they'll heckle you out of the room.
Yo sangria with just alittle sprite on top is bomb
You're as smooth as Tennessee whiskey
Yeah I think at the end he should have made a "good" wine cooler and it would have literally been sangria.
I know exactly what to do with Boone's Farm. In 1972, I owned an MGB and lost all the coolant on the way home. I put an entire bottle of Boone' Farm in the radiator and got home safely - only @ 10 miles. I arrived smelling like a bad apple pie, but the car survived to break down another day. Thank You Boone's Farm!
"Survived to break down another day"
INCREDIBLY accurate, and funny.
I always assumed the reason wine coolers died is that their drinkers turned 21.
same lmao. I havent even seen these anywhere but on the shelf at the store since High School
As in “they just started drinking real drinks”? 🍹 Because a sex on the beach is so much mote sophisticated than a Seagrams win cooler… 😉😂😅
I think a couple of the drinks were spoiled... Some aluminum cans have a liner on the inside that gives off that hot-tar-burning-tires-condom-factory taste and smell when it gets too old. I got the exact same thing from a six pack of cider once, and someone from the company that canned it told me that's what happens to old cans. My guess is these wine coolers aren't big sellers and they sat on the store shelf waaaay too long.
From my understanding, the fact it smells like a fart says it's actually much worse.
It means it's contaminated by Sulphur.
Whether it's due to age or a flaw in the canning process (could also be the wine since the one they use may to take to the canning process well) I'm not sure, but it's definitely a sign that Greg should NOT have drunk them.
All aluminium cans have an inner plastic layer, it is unavoidable. Drinking from a can is the same as drinking from plastic.
Makes sense, I guess bare aluminum would affect the flavor much more over time...
That plastic must make the cans a lot harder to recycle though... Guess it's glass bottles for me!
@@haptichugs2855THE plastic sticks to the top, so you just gotta scoop it out…
@@haptichugs2855the issue is glass is incredibly bad for recycling because it takes so much energy to melt that it's almost as bad for the environment as using new glass. Of course the important thing is to remember to reduce and reuse first.
I like how this channel is turning more and more into a Greg cosplaying according to the subject at hand channel. I know it's kind of always been here with the Tiki stuff, but it's been getting more frequent and it's great.
Helps with the thumbnails so, as often as possible I’ll costume up.
@@howtodrink When's the Sake episode? If you've already done one, do it again for the cosplay
@@howtodrink Are they really costumes if you live them?
@@howtodrink i think it gives the show some extra personality, but theres nothing wrong with lumberjack greg :D
I love used car salesman/cowboy Greg. One of my favorites
"Can you imagine drinking enough of these to get drunk"
Yes. Yes, I can. Many times in my teens, in fact.
Oof… Bet you had to piss like a horse…
it always made my stomach hurt the next day too 🤢 probably why i have stomach problems today.
That's their market. Maybe not teens, exactly. But young people who just want to get drunk without gagging on stuff that tastes like alcohol. I've been there, too.
I don't know if I physically can put that much liquid in my body to actually get drunk off of these, I drink too much liquor for that shit. My tolerance is too high
@@gootchimus 100%this
Greg: I'm not putting cocaine in the drinks on this show
Also greg: dresses exactly like a 80s Miami vice cop would put cocaine in his drinks
Not in the *drinks*
Wink wink nudge nudge
@@Burner-B ... sniffle sniffle
Know what I mean? Say no more... Say no more! She's a real goer yeah? Wink wink!😊😊😊
"these are marketed to children"
so fun story, when I was 21 and could suddenly buy alcohol I thought I was so cool when I would come home after class and "unwind" by watching tv and drinking a Seagram's strawberry daiquiri
they are in reality closer to liquid candy than alcohol and 100% marketed to children
yeah it was so bad here that the Australian government taxed these coolers/cordial alcohols especially to stop the companies.
Did you really wait till you were 21? Bruh.
I don't think I've had a wine cooler or something like a smirnoff ice or a hard lemonade since I was an actual child. But I did grow up in a time and a place where it was considered normal to give hyperactive kindergarteners rum milk punch to make us sit still. I have some strong memories of walking down to Joe D's liquor to pick up my dad's staples and sneaking that strawberry hill boone's farm into the bag, and I'm pretty sure that place closed down when I was 10
kek, forgot the US considers 21 year-olds "kids" in that aspect, that's ridiculous lol
@@martinszymanski2607 yet can be charged as an adult as early as 16. Land o the free lol
I like these because they serve a very specific purpose well: letting people who don't like the taste of alcohol enjoy alcohol without getting plastered by jungle juice.
I know Ranger Greg is just a commercial for Yellowstone but as a huge fan of the National Parks I think he deserves his own series.
Yes! I want a compilation video of all the National Parks drinks I can send to my dad--I got him a bottle of Yellowstone Bourbon for Christmas last year, partially thanks to their sponsorship of Greg.
You genius I’m doing this for my dad this year.
I just want a supercut of the Yellowstone commercials. I was wooed by the commercials and bought a bottle today. (Local Sam's club had it FYI)
so you mean a series where greg makes real cocktails again? huh
Legit the ads for Yellowstone are episode quality stuff
As someone who was also not allowed to wear sunscreen as a child (due to being Italian and growing up at the same time as you), this episode hits me in the nostalgia.
That's totally my dad and brother, I got all the Irish genes so I look like Casper even in the summer
I remember adults would mention wine coolers A LOT when they talked about underage drinking, like in health class and stuff. and i'm in college now, so this was pretty recent. I guess the product declined but the awareness that it was like a sweet alcohol drink that teens would like stuck around. I didn't even know what a wine cooler actually was until watching this
i have extremely vague memories of reading an older YA book where teens were drinking Strawberry Hill, agreed that it was recent enough that adults remembered them well when we were younger but the moment has definitely passed
As a teenager in the 80s, wine coolers being consumed illicitly by underaged drinkers was largely a female phenomenon, along with guys trying to get into the pants of said females.😉👍
Most males were drinking cheap beer(the Strohs 30 packs were particularly popular) or some kind of brown liquor.
This is what I always think of when I hear "wine coolers". In DARE/health class they gave the equivalent of standard drinks in terms of wine coolers. This was probably the late 2000s and I doubt anyone was even drinking them then.
Wine coolers were the White Claws of the ‘80’s
Teachers are more often than not, really dumb and out of touch
I unashamedly love segram's escapes. Are they sweet? Absolutely, but I prefer sweet drinks. Are they low abv? Absolutely, but I don't drink to get drunk, so I don't care. There will probably come a day where my body ages and makes the amount of sugar in them gross to me, but right now they're amazing and I offer absolutely no apology for loving them.
Why wouldn't you just buy soda, then? Surely it would be cheaper.
@@wbfaulk not by that much and I don't like the flavors of most sodas. I also don't like most beers or wines, so on the occasions when I want to drink and don't want to bother mixing something, I'll take a Seagram's over a beer or wine every time.
Preach! As someone with a sweet tooth and an extremely low tolerance for alcohol, wine coolers are a little slice of liquid candy happiness and I’ve been known to have them for dessert. I bet a seagrams float would be amazing
I also like Seagram's. I also can't drink much alcohol because I am a small person and not a regular drinker, so a small amount of alcohol gets me drunk.
A Seagram's is perfect for me when I want to drink.
Yeah I really like seagram's. May be because I may or may not have ADHD idk. I tend to drink a shit ton of soda so seagram's became my favorate easily.
"I also hold myself in... DEEP contempt"
And now we know why this channel is so relatable
Thanks for making this episode. As a 25 year old I had no previous knowledge on wine coolers outside of it being the drink the criminal would bring over in episodes of To Catch A Predator
This comment made me laugh harder than perhaps I should have.
i think you're thinking of the sneaker commercial parody lmao
As a Canadian, I found it interesting that all of these coolers kept their base spirits north of the border. Mike’s Hard may be a malt liquor beverage in the US, but in Canada the tagline was “An Excellent Source of Vodka.”
In Ontario vodka mikes are sold at lcbo while malt mikes are sold at beer stores. Same with other brands
@@kobakusu The pointless distinctions we draw on that stuff because the OPC functionally shackled us to The Beer Store for all eternity just feels so wrong sometimes.
@@NoOther1 honestly our entire Liqour control system is frustrating and god awful. Let me just order the foreign stuff I want rather than having to buy what the LCBO horribly stocks.
In Canada - get Jack Daniel’s 6% whisky cola cans
@@CarLoverPhotography they have real coke now too iirc.
Greg saying Seegram’s is marketed to children reminded me of Brennan Lee Muligan’s sketch as the CEO of Juul, in the best possible way
I was thinking the same thing about that.
Aaaand, now I gotta go rewatch that sketch again.
Didn't see it, but will now watch it.
"Does any adult like blue raspberry?"
@generalcodsworth4417 "I like blue raspberry" "No you don't!"
I love how Meredith started as a person behind the camera and now she's basically HTD's Ed McMahon.
I know right? I’m always glad to see someone along for the ride.
more guests on he show! non-sponsered
I love in the newer afterparty episodes (and even occasionally in the “actual” episodes) Mere has camera cutaways as well. She’s fully cemented into the show and her and Greg play so well off each other. I love it
hey-o!
You are CORRECT, sir!
DIY wine cooler template:
2oz fruity liqueur of choice
4oz wine you don't care about
4oz carbonated mixer (un sweet)
Combine and serve over ice
ABV will vary with the wine and liqueur chosen (and if you can figure it out in your head then you know you are not drunk).
You can mix and match liqueurs and wines to find combos you like. Last time I did these it was peach schnapps + white zinfandel w/ plain seltzer for bubbles, but you can do you.
😉
My college combo (about 30 years ago) was 1:1 sprite and wine, it still holds up
When I visited Germany (10 years ago admittedly), I learned that obviously there is a market for teens who are legally of drinking age but not exactly hard drinkers yet. There are plenty of relatively accessible and low ABV drinks available, mostly beers lightened or sweetened with various additives. The technical term they used for these was usually "Gemischtesbier," or literally "mixed beer." However, most of the teens to whom they were marketed preferred the term "Pussybier." Note that is not a translation, they just borrowed the phrase from English.
Yeah in Denmark we call it Ludderbenzin (which literally translates to “whore-fuel”), even though we all know it slaps, because it’s just soda, but with the ABV of beer.
In Germany teens who are at least 16 years old can buy any beer or wine. But sweet drinks like wine coolers or beer mixed with soda are preferred by young people as they are easier to drink.
Like how crap like Fireball took off over here (whiskey for people that don’t like whiskey).
And Ludderbenzin is now in my vocabulary.
Had a female friend when I was a younger man that raved about Goldschlager because she "likes how the gold flakes scrape [her] throat." I get she was making a suggestive pass, but man that annoyed me. 😒
It's really the same market in the US, except that legally it's not supposed to be. Or, I should say, it *was* that age bracket in the heyday of wine coolers, I don't really know what the teen scene is like now, but I can't imagine anybody else is going for these things. Those who are past college-age but still have a sweet tooth tend to go for pitchers of sangria (which really is kind of the original wine cooler) or whatever sugary mixed drink is in fashion this month.
I just have to say. I bartended for years and every gosh darn family gathering, I had to “bartend” with whatever three scratch bottles whoever had in their cabinets. I was so over it. But man you’ve given the love of liquor back to me and made me home bartend again Greg. Thank you for the content. MAN!
Haha. I am still forced to bartend at every get together. People think all they need are a few base spirits and a couple of mixers and we should be good to go. I started to bring a few essentials with me so I wouldn't be ashamed of the drinks I gave people.
I think that asphalt note is the essential oils in the coolers getting skunked by something, either too much acid or being stored too hot.
Happens with a lot of beers shipped in clear bottles in the summer from sunlight and heat.
Yeah, living in the Southwestern USA most Domestic Beers and Malt Liquors spoil in the 100+ F or 40+ C heat. Tried to drink a couple that were left out only to find out though tasting a bit sweet made me throw up almost instantly. Probably from the alcohol converting to acetaldehyde in the heat.
For someone like me, who isn't big into alcohol, I love Seagrams wine coolers 😅 I guess I'm weird for subscribing to an alcohol channel when I don't really drink alcohol. But I find your videos very informative and enjoyable to watch 😊
I'm with you! I don't drink and I just found HTD this last week and I love Greg's presentation and reactions.
Quick thought but once all the different Yellowstone cocktails have aired, might not be a bad idea to edit them into one big video? Easier to find in the future since they're hidden otherwise.
I remember being like 5 or 6 years old and asking my mom for a sip of her soda and she said yeah while she was trying to put sunscreen on my sister. I picked up her bottle and drank like 1/2 of it instead of the can of soda, the bottle was her wine cooler… 1990’s at its best. I took a great nap later that day.
That. That is the Wine cooler experience.
Man, when you (apparently) said "Oregon grown", I was just wondering why the hell the company was using argon gas to grow their grapes.
I thought the same loll!
I remember Wine Coolers being the "BIG BAD NO NO" Drink that was used in ALOT of videos played to elementary schoolers on the dangers of Alcohol in the early 00's... of all the elementary school memories I have alongside a video about a family who returns to a US ruled by a dictator mobilizing for war but you know shit was weird back then.
Doesn’t seem so weird now, does it?
I always found the "aLcOhol baD" videos weird as a kid because my parents let me drink a bit of wine/schnapps (not enough to get tipsy, but a bit) quite often lol
@@____________838 best user name ever!
The main reason wine coolers never had to be good tasting is because the school doing the anti wine cooler stuff was free advertisement for the product.
The PSAs were just trying to save you from crappy alcho-pop and a terrible hangover thanks to all the added sugar.
I invented a cocktail called a "Gilbert". It was simply Southern Comfort with Lucozade (paired on the basis that they were the same colour). It was lovely! An advantage to this drink was that you were consuming a hangover cure (the Lucozade) at the same time as you were imbibing alcohol, so the morning after was less painful! You could also substitute IrnBru for the Lucozade for the very same reasons - same colour, same hangover-reducing qualities. I can no longer drink at all, due to being on strong painkillers which would be dangerous to mix with alcohol, so I am imparting my wisdom to you to enjoy.
I find it funny that Greg sometimes describes himself as having a sweet tooth, but far and away his biggest criticism of a lot of these types of mass market drinks is that they are too sweet. Not knocking, just find it funny.
Also this episode is correct, 95% of "Coolers" are straight up juice, with a slight whiff of alcohol. That's fine for me most days, but if you want an actual, like, grown up drink, stir clear.
I remember in the early 2000s when we were learning about the amount of alcohol in various beverages and how impaired it would make you (for example in driving lessons or health/anatomy class), they ALWAYS talked about wine coolers as a benchmark for some reason even though literally no one knew what those were or had ever seen one. This video is the first time I've ever seen evidence these things actually existed...
I had the exact same experience. It was like they expected a stranger to offer me a wine cooler masquerading as a soda, when I had never and still have never seen one in real life.
Probably because wine coolers are generally 3.2% alcohol (like light beer), which is the equivalent of 1 ounce of standard 80 proof liquor. It’s a good measuring stick for “1 drink,” since wine and beer can vary so much.
generally they would invoke mike's hard as an equivalent to wine coolers in my day, and my goodness imagine trying to get even a little drunk on those things, yeesh! they should have mostly stuck to talking about bottom shelf vodka and whiskey which is what most young people would drink to actually get drunk, wine coolers are something you sip on on a hot summer day to get a very light buzz at the most.
@@mattnutella I think part of it was pedophiles would literally give underage girls wine coolers to get them drunk so they could take advantage of them more easily.
@@kevinmiller1356during my college orientation they actually used Wine Coolers as an example of multiple "drinks" in one container, because they said the total amount of ethanol in one was higher than in a beer or a glass of wine, and told us they were dangerous because of it. Honestly not a bad lesson, but maybe the wrong choice of beverage to use to make that point
These Yellowstone Bourbon ads are just incorporated so well, actually showing something practical that can be done with it that is simultaneously in theme with the channel and the reason I watch these videos in the first place. So much less jarring than the cocophony of "x mobile game has limited time offer using my code I super duper love this character the graphics are so epic wow better than skyrim in my opinion I will definitely be maintaining my clan once the sponsor duration runs out" so many channels resort to.
I finally found a bottle. Do you know if there is a list somewhere of the cocktails he has done. Or an easy way to find them 😬
The only ads embedded into videos that I don't immediately skip. Great content.
I can't get the bourbon where I am, no matter how much I'd want to. But what I really want is the ceramic smoking apparatus that Greg used in the drink. Welp, off to Google I go!
@@Finwolven as a Canadian I get you. It is nowhere up here. I was on vacation in the states and happened by a bottle... Pretty much had to grab it.
I want to try and defend Seagram’s for nostalgia’s sake because it was my introduction to alcohol, but I kinda can’t. It’s not alcohol poisoning that’ll get you if you drink those-it’s a diabetic coma from all the sugar. 😂
I drank almost half of a case of those for my graduation party (from high school.) I've never thrown up so hard from any other drink before, fireball is great, whiskey I love, but nothing hits me as hard as that sugar overdose did.
My dad drank these for a year and was diagnosed Diabetic type 2 because of it. He now has to take insulin shots for the rest of his life
Two of the most epic hangovers I've ever had: 1st was Jose Cuervo. Second was Boones. Just the smell of either triggers my gag reflex 50 years after the fact!
Your reaction to Seagram’s makes me realize I should add extra simple syrup to every recipe of yours lmao, I like things that sweet
"The feeling is mutual. I also hold myself in deep contempt." You are the voice of our generation, Greg.
Gotta love the moment in every episode where Greg randomly turns into a North Carolina diplomat from 1910 and rides it through the rest of the episode.
Raid has a bug spray for indoor use called “Essentials.” It uses lemongrass oil and smells like the Bartle and James Ginger and Lemon.
When the main comparison between your drink and another product is bug spray. Let's just say that's not a good endorsement
You just gave me a visceral sense-memory of this incredibly cheap gin a friend of a friend brought back from a road trip somewhere. You know how some gin is like chewing on a pine tree? (I'm looking at you, Bombay) Well this was like getting smacked in the face by a whole branch that had been soaked in full strength Muskol. Just straight up pine and deet. Complete with the way bug spray makes your lips and tongue numb when it gets in your mouth.
We ended up passing it to each new person that showed up that night, without any warning, and watching the results. The entertainment value was almost worth the taste.
Hearing Greg utter "Boone's strawberry farm wine hill, for the times when you need a citrus flavored wine of strawberry wine Boone farm town" followed by him missing the glass and pouring it all over the counter" had me in TEARS from laughing. Also, I'm adding "per'shay" to my vocabulary regardless of it lacking any and all meaning.
The keyed-up aggression comes from the powerful vibe of that outfit carrying with it the all energy of a guy in the 80s who is himself *keyed* up and aggressively trying to talk his buddies at the bar into starting a business.
he should have done a line of coke to complete the picture..
@@kd7jz I was just about to say all he needs is a fat rail and a silver straw
About the extremely low proof, until just a couple years ago it was the law in my state that you couldn't buy anything higher than 3.5% ABV without going to the state liquor store. So 3.2% was actually pretty common to see for drinks like these as well as beers.
CO had a similar law, but it was repealed so more grocery stores can carry higher proof beers.
Yeah, UT raised ours too, but it's still only 5%
meanwhile in iowa i can buy everclear at my local liquor store
@@xanderwebb7998 I moved from PA to IA and almost fell over when I realized not only do people drink lighter fluid here, they can buy it at HyVee.
@@xanderwebb7998 CO has liquor stores, not sure on the everclear front but it was our grocery stores that couldn't carry above like 3.5 abv and only 1 store in that city could carry anything higher. This law has since been repealed but most grocery stores still don't have wine.
Underwood is a fairly well known, decent winery here in Oregon (pronounced like version A and ONLY version A). I think they were one of the first wineries to can their wines, which is popular in the Pacific North West because camping/hiking/outdoors stuff and glass don't go well together.
I was hoping to see another Oregonian in the comments! “Versions” B-D hurt my heart 💔😄
I actually love these national parks cocktails. Idk how the paid promotion would work but i'd like them collected and put in a single video on their own too!
I live very near the Smokies...like, minutes away. LOL I would love to try the drink today. But I'm not ordering celery bitters just to use it once & then have it in the cabinet for 20 years.
It's a great sponsorship and Greg does the spots really well, with beautiful scenery and interesting cocktails to go along with the parks. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't cave to advertising often, but I'm tempted to pick up some of that bourbon.
What's crazy is everybody (including myself) likes the commercials, but they're just mini episodes of old how to drink-Greg tells us a story and makes a cocktail. With a little bit of extra theatricality and a good character thrown in.
@@greenmtnmellie you can add it to bloody marys too I guess.
@@GirishManjunathMusic yeah, that's why my spice cabinet looks like an explosion hit a tiny bottle factory as it is. I buy oddball spices to go in recipes thinking "oh, I can use this in XYZ and stuff"...then it all sits there, like tiny little judges shaming my frivolous spending...
I can’t drink malted alcohol, it makes me throw up, so I was sad to hear that wine coolers were phased out. Nice to know they came back.
Greg, now you know why Bartles & Jaymes has the refrigerate after opening on the can. You can’t finish a full can of road tar, you HAVE to save it for later.
I figured this episode was gonna happen eventually. Knowing you don't like sweet drinks, I knew you wouldn't like the Seagrams drinks. I enjoy em cause they're literally just slightly alcoholic soda but I knew as soon as I saw "Wine Cooler review" this episode was gonna come for me.
Same, I unironically like them *because* they are just super sugary sodas so can you mentally feel like you're drinking without actually _feeling_ like you're drinking
I remember in the mid 90s in the UK when Hooch was launched as “alcoholic lemonade” and the moral panic about kids drinking it (despite it being legal to drink from 5 here [on private property with parental permission]). When I was a teenager in the early/mid 2000s my alcopop of choice was either Smirnoff Ice or the Green/Orange Bacardi Breezer.
People did that in UK? I thought it was just France and Wisconsin that did something like that with parents permission+presence
@@Sorrowdusk Most of my friends parents would let us drink at 14/15 (and we even found a pub that would serve me at that age, and I still get IDd occasionally at 35).
@@Sorrowdusk Yeah drinking a bit of booze in your early teens isn't a big deal in British culture. Having a beer watching the football at the weekends with my dad wasn't unusual and my friends and I were procuring drinks for the purpose of getting drunk from 14ish (sometimes from shops who didn't ask questions, sometimes via an older sibling, less responsible parent or occasional random stranger) and getting served regularly in pubs from 15 onwards. This was also in the early to mid 2000's. I still see kids hanging out and getting lary at the places we used to go and get drunk in the evenings so I assume things are more or less the same. The girls all used to drink alcopops, they were ok but a bit sickly for my tastes, we used to drink the far less palatable but far more economical cheap cider like strongbow or white lightning, £3 would easily give you more than enough to make some terrible decisions.
@@DjDolHaus86 jeez white lightning, frosty Jack's or whatever they serve in Aldi are the absolute worst. Strongbow and thatchers ain't that bad and I usually go for them first when I go anywhere new. It's always the same
@@michaelwright968 I wouldn't disagree, white lightning and frosty jack was awful but it was awfully cheap and when you've only got a few quids worth of pocket money it was the best deal. I've got nothing against strongbow, it's not great but it's not offensive
To me wine coolers have always been for, as Meredith said, those who don't want to drink (or have very low tolerance) but still want to feel "included" in the drinking. And for teens.
Okay, I was almost old enough to drink at the beginning of the wine cooler era (I drank, I didn't drive, we'll leave it at that). They all tasted like some variation of sangria, at that point. There was some sugar, but mostly it was like sangria or a wine spritzer - not that sweet.
The sweetness was added later, especially when they added the malt stuff and stopped calling them "wine" anything.
I was a kid in the 80's, early 90's... first thing that comes to mind when I hear wine coolers is Bartles & James! LOL I remember the shape of the bottle and the metallic foil wrapper.
Don't tell the authorities but my parents would like me have one at family get togethers. 😉
I have a buddy that used to work for Seagrams. He told me that the main reason for making the wine coolers in the first place was just for advertising the brand. At the time, it was illegal for liquor to be advertised on TV. So it was worth creating a drink to get their name on TV, and they just hoped to break even on the wine coolers. I can tell you I still remember the Bruce Willis Golden Wine Coolers commercials, but I never drank one. I've had plenty of Seagram's 7. It wouldn't surprise me it the other large liquor companies did the same.
Obviously, they ended up doing better than they thought. By the time the Zima's & Mike's Hard Lemonade's came out 10+ years later there was definitely a market for them.
They needed some kind of advertisement since Seagrams liquor is just as bad as the coolers but without the sugar headache
In Sweden a lot of beer and cider companies started making non-alcoholic versions to be able to advertise them
@@zeyface6366 I will never not find this weird as an American, where our cider is non-alcoholic by default.
@@pennyforyourthots Oh yeah, I always forget that. Soft-cider is very rare, at least that use the word "cider" and not our word for non-carbonated soft drinks
I don't think non-carbonated soft drinks are that popular except for with children
We also just drink a lot of alcohol and hard-cider and wine-coolers are very popular
@@zeyface6366 soft cider is popular around me, mainly cause we have like 4 different large apple orchards within 20 miles of each other, and is a fun autumn activity for the family to go out to the orchard, pick a bushel of apples, and buy a gallon of cider and a dozen or so doughnuts.
The wine coolers are what the "cool" parents would let the teens/young adults (16-20) have at a sleepover, and they'd say "I don't care if you guys drink, but no one's driving, give me your keys" lol
you nailed it, my parents said that to me word for word as a teen
Holy shit 🤯 I can't believe it
You will die of diabetes before you get drunk on an alcopop. They were great for identifying that girl who will pretend to be wasted after two sips.
@@adbreon if things like Mike's hard lemonades and Smirnoff ices are also alcopops, then I can tell you that you won't die before you get drunk, but you most likely will have a terrible hangover (source: those are some of my favorite drinks even though the hangover can be wicked 😅)
my good friend’s mom will only let her drink the shitty jack daniel’s fruity bottled drinks
I feel bad that this might be my favorite episode of HTD because it's so clear that Greg was miserable making this.
How miserable Greg is directly related to how much I enjoy the episode 😅
Oh yeah the bartles and James had me rolling
I hope he hits bottom soon. I miss the expertise and skill of the cocktail episodes.
Interesting. I think it's fun to watch him squirm sometimes but I'm here because he makes creative cocktails and inspires my own experimentation.
My family has an entire tradition about passing around a bottle of Boone's Farm whenever anybody has a big life event. We add a new decoration onto the bottle to celebrate the occasion, and after about forty years of this you can barely tell what it contained (past tense, because at some point somebody drained the bottle to make it legal to ship across state lines). I'm not sure who has it right now, but I'm 100% sure that when I get my next job I'll find out.
The bottle is referred to as "vintage Tuesday" in honor of not having ever been a wine anybody would take seriously.
so glad i came back to rewatch this. ive been dying from the start. this is why i love this channel , its timeless . like wine cooler jokes lol
"Something about this outfit, I'm all keyed up and aggressive."
"Your blazer's made out cocaine, Greg."
These are I guess equivalent to what we called “alcopops” in Britain in the 90s and 2000s, really sweet drinks that the 12 year olds could start on. Smirnoff Ice is the most known but there was WKD, Bacardi Breezer, VK Vodka Kicks, Reef, Hooch as you said 😂 and some more I can’t remember. You should try those if you can find them Greg 👍
WKD 'Blue' (because blue is a flavour) with a slug of Port to make it taste like Vimto
It fascinates me any time an adult wants to drink them. I think WKD was too sweet for me by the time I was 15
We have/had those in Germany too. After binge drinking spiked, they taxed the hell out these drinks and things went back to normal. And by normal I mean, kids pouring Vodka and Red Bull together.
20/20 was on in Ireland
@@togusa1301 😂
I remember subscribing when you had like 7k subs. I just saw that you have passed 1.5 million.
Congrats my dude! You teached me how to make simple syrup and oleo saccharum. I've discovered so many great cocktails because of you.
I wish you and your team all the success. Much love ♥️
I just realized I never subscribed despite watching the channel since butter beer. Between this channel and the educated barfly they've cost me a lot of money and I've enjoyed almost all the drinks.
I absolutely love Seagrams. It's nice to sit back with one on a hot summer day and just relax. Would I drink them if I wanted to get drunk? Probably not, because it would take forever lol. But for someone like myself that doesn't always want to get wasted when they drink, they're perfect 🙂.
ten years ago i went on a high school trip to Italy. in Florence, i got extremely overpriced gelato, but wanted something to drink with it. they had a cooler with gatorades, and the only flavor left was this orange bottle called “arancia”. now i knew it wasnt italian for orange, but i figured it couldnt be that bad, it was orange gatorade. whole thing ran me 16 euros. the gelato was delicious. the gatorade tasted like piss, and, being 16, i forced all my friends to taste it. they agreed. as far as im concerned, arancia is italian for piss
I remember being a kid and grabbing a couple of these and putting them in my moms shopping cart, they just looked exactly like the kind of soda I would like to drink.
You weren't wrong; they are delicious XD
The ones with the gold foil, right?
Everything I know about wine coolers I learned in D.A.R.E circa 2007 (long after wine coolers weren’t popular) and I learned was that creepy old men will try luring me into their vans with wine coolers and to just say no to them
I have had those Seagrams before and I am so so happy to see Greg ingest those. They had absolutely zero alcohol in them.
I honestly used them as like "margherita mixed" added tequila, ice, blended them together. Made it OK.
I think it's funny that the Ramona chose grapefruit and blood orange, two typically bitter flavors and removed the bitterness from them
When I was a sophomore in college (1992-ish) one of my dormmates’ mothers would occasionally go to the liquor store and buy stuff for us since we were underage and she thought the American drinking age (21 rather than 18) was ridiculous. She would NOT, however, go so far as to buy us hard liquor - she would only buy wine or wine coolers.I don’t remember the brand, but I remember there was a sangria wine cooler that was actually pretty decent and didn’t taste like soda.
Well that’s answered a long standing question for me. I had no idea what Bartles and Jaymes was but it’s referenced in You or Your Memory by The Mountain Goats (“I checked into a bargain priced room on la sienaga,
gazed out through the curtains of the parking lot.
walked down to the corner store just before nightfall in my bare feet.
black tarry asphalt, soft and hot.
and when I came back I spread out my supplies.
on the counter by the sink,
I looked myself right in the eyes
St. Joseph’s baby aspirin,
Bartles and Jaymes,
and you or your memory.)
So that clears that up!
I now understand that old-school Vlog Brothers reference about Strawberry Hill. You learn something new every day.
I keep seeing the strawberry Underwood in the store, then getting the can that I usually get instead (because I am a habitual drinker of canned wine.) Maybe I'll try it.
Also, as an Oregonian, Meredith is correct in her pronunciation.
I haven't had a wine cooler since I was 6 but if memory serves me they were they were closer to a sweet fruity desert wine or ice wine with just a little bit of cool-aid in it.
You should try a "daqlet" it's a mix between gimlet and a daiquiri (traditional)
1oz London dry gin
1oz white rum
Either 2 oz lime cordial OR
1oz simple and 1 oz lime juice.
Love to see it I started making these myself after your 3 ingredient drink episode
"would you say they're Jamaican you sad"
Meredith is my favorite human.
I remember sneaking them in the early 90's, but what did I know back then? Then, in the summers, my parents would drink wine spritzers that they made themselves, and they were actually good! For a summer BBQ, I'll still soak peaches in cheap chianti for a day or 2, then serve over ice with soda water.
Hey Greg, love the videos as always! Could you do an episode on champagne cocktails, like the Old Cuban?
the editing on this video was really good, really nailed the comedic timing
I'm absolutely dying and replaying 17:27 - 17:33 over and over, you're killing it Greg 😆
I had very fond memories of the original wine coolers as they were essentially vat-aged white wine, citrus juice and sugar. Those were tasty as they were essentially pulp-free sangria. I've always hated malt beverage, so the wine cooler for me died with the idiotic decision to move away from wine.
I love cream soda, so thanks for the inadvertent recommendation. If I see a bottle I'll have to give it a go out of morbid curiosity. Some of Underwood's canned wines are legitimately good. I think it was their red blend that I found really nice. It's been a bit since I've had it, so I don't remember exactly. May also have something to do with the fact that I drank a whole can of their wine in, like, 15 minutes...
Jaysus, I can't even imagine the sugar-induced (because it wasn't the booze) hangover you suffered making this episode.
You, sir, are a giant among men, if there were a ribbon for sacrificing yourself on the altar of "watchable youtube clips" you would have earned it with 5 mint-leaf clusters.
I doff my cap to you. I (barely) survived the OG wine cooler era, so I know whereof I speak.
BTW: Back in the mid-late 80s- the wine spritzer/cooler was a legit thing. Wine and either tonic (if the wine was drier) or seltzer (if it was sweeter).
My parents had some friends that spent a lot of time in CA in the late 80s, and these were apparently the seed for bottled wine coolers.
I believe my first ever sip of alcohol was the Jamaican Me Happy cooler. My mom loved the Seagrams coolers when I was growing up. The ones she drank had even less alcohol than these as in Kansas until about 5 years ago all alcohol sold in grocery stores had to be less than 3%
I actually really like Seagram’s Escapes, lol. When I was first able to drink, I didn’t like the taste of beer or wine, and I didn’t have enough money to try different mixed cocktails, so the coolers were a great way for me to drink something that I knew I would find tasty that still had a bit of alcohol in it.
Yea same, I can't drink something that's too strongly of alcohol, it can be off putting to me. Sweet fruity drinks are what I lean toward. So I also really like Seagrams, but I totally get if people have an aversion to not tasting the alcohol in the drinks.
me too! Like if my friends are having cheap beer or something I'll drink this, not to get drunk but just to feel included while drinking something... not disgusting lol If I want a real cocktail I'll make something with vodka or whiskey or whatever, but if we're just sipping on wine or beer I'll 100% go for seagrams over any of that. Wine tastes to me like it's just... rotten, and idek how to describe most beers I've had other than "ick" lol
I don't mind the taste of alcohol, in fact I really don't have any problem drinking any sort of liquor straight... just beer and wine that I don't like
In Mexico, we still have wine coolers, and they are actually pretty widely available
Then never really went away north of the border, either. Arizona here, and yeah, I saw them all the time. But I kind of lost interest in them back in the mid ninety's. Couldn't tell you why. Every now and then, I'd pick up a four-pack, but that's a "once in a blue moon" kind of thing.
Worked at a liquor store for awhile and dear sweet lord if we ran out of Seagrams specifically the blue one Calypso. I’d get cursed out by every 50+ year old woman in town
I love the background additions during the Yellowstone bit. Such attention to detail :)
i absoloutly adore the new energy and direction the chanel has taken, love the videos!
Greg comparing the margarita one to those ice push pops has made me think that a good use for these might be freezing them and using them as ice cubes for summer cocktails.
As an Oregonian, Meredith is correct. However, I love the variations lol
I grew up in Washington saying it the same way she did (option A). I never expected to hear somebody say "argon" and mean our neighbor across the Columbia.
Option D would only be dreamed up by someone who pronounces orange as one syllable. Every time the tasting notes say AHRNJ I giggle.
Greg's mentioned how he'd like to play with carbonating drinks - I'd love to see him turn a craft cocktail into a wine cooler/alco-pop.
Love you man. You deserve at least twice as many subscribers. I’m sure it’s coming soon
I really love the Yellowstone ads. Perfect partnership for the channel. I have yet to get a bottle, but I'm definitely going too.
I love the Seagrams escapes 🥺 they are yummy
Edit: ok hear me out, if you want a slightly alcoholic soda this is kind of the place to go. No offense to the hard root beer people but those kind of suck
No you're absolutely right. My response to trying hard root beer was, "You ruined root beer. "
As an old: I started my drinking career with beer, moved briefly to Cold Duck (until I became violently ill after over-indulging) and then moved to wine coolers. I preferred Seagrams Golden but I vaguely remember a couple of other flavors I found tolerable. But they were sweeter. The only Bartles and James I could take was their fuzzy navel, but it was too sweet and had a chemical under/after taste.
I sincerely appreciate the history though, because wine coolers just vanished and I never knew why.
I felt so seen at the end. 'outrageously sweet' is right up my alley for alcoholic drinks.
Coming from that age the first was California Cooler it came in a two liter bottle. Then it was Bartle and James wine cooler.
I personally am a fan of Seagram's Escapes as a nice way to relax after work, but I understand they aren't for everyone. It's just cool to see something I regularly enjoy featured on the channel, even if Greg doesn't like them himself.
The only time I've ever heard of wine coolers were cautionary tales in health class that were already totally unrelatable
The kids in my family called these “mommy juice” cause they would DOWN these during camping Trips. They being the moms not the children
"Smells like cat piss.....drinks it....yup, that tastes like cat piss." I appreciate your detective work, Agent HTD.
Underwood is fairly popular in the pacific northwest. The cans are extremely portable compared to a bottle, making them great for hiking and camping. You dont have to worry about broken glass. Most people who buy it buy it at first for the form factor. The wine itself isnt bad
Seagram's Wild Berry was one of my favorites shortly after I turned 21, along with Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade. I didn't know any better.