A wine cooler is an

alcoholic beverage An alcoholic beverage (also called an alcoholic drink, adult beverage, or a drink) is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of alcohol that acts as a drug and is produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. The c ...

made from

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

and

fruit juice Juice is a drink made from the extraction or pressing of the natural liquid contained in fruit and vegetables. It can also refer to liquids that are flavored with concentrate or other biological food sources, such as meat or seafood, such as ...

, often in combination with a

carbonated beverage A soft drink (see § Terminology for other names) is a drink that usually contains water (often carbonated), a sweetener, and a natural and/or artificial flavoring. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a sugar ...

and

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

. Traditionally home-made, wine coolers have been bottled and sold by commercial distributors since the early 1980s, especially in areas where their

alcohol content Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

, lower than wine, causes them to come under less restrictive laws than table wines. Because most of the flavor in the wine is obscured by the fruit and sugar, the wine used in wine coolers tends to be of the cheapest available grade. Since January 1991, when the United States Congress quintupled the excise tax on wine, most producers of wine coolers dropped wine from the mix, substituting it with cheaper

malt liquor Malt liquor is a type of mass market beer with high alcohol content, most closely associated with North America. Legally, it often includes any alcoholic beverage with 5% or more alcohol by volume made with malted barley. In common usage, it ...

. These malt-based coolers, while sometimes referred to as "wine coolers", are in a different category of beverage—sometimes called "malt beverage", "malternative", or just "cooler".

Bartles & Jaymes Bartles & Jaymes is a flavored wine cooler and malt beverage line produced by the E & J Gallo Winery in the United States, introduced in 1985, and available in various fruit flavors. TV commercials The product line is remembered for its folksy t ...

refers to its malt beverage as a "flavored malt cooler". In

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, wine coolers became popular in 2004, when the German government imposed an extra duty on

alcopop An alcopop (or cooler, spirit cooler n South African English">South_African_English.html" ;"title="n South African English">n South African English or malternative n American English is any of certain flavored alcoholic beverages with relati ...

s (pre-mixed spirits) of 0.80 to 0.90 euro per bottle, effective 1 August 2004. To circumvent higher taxation, some German producers have switched to wine coolers, which are being marketed in the same way as alcopops.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wine Cooler Premixed alcoholic drinks

See also

References