"She had the money
/ I had the time / she had the champagne / I had the Cisco
wine" --Rancid, "Detroit"
Canandaigua Wines
is the nation's second-largest wine company; it is also
responsible for Almaden, Arbor Mist, Maneschewitz, Dunnewood
and more.
Canandaigua's
Web site (cwine.com) claims Cisco has a "distinctive ripe
strawberry profile." I can't vouch for the "distinctive
profile" part, but "ripe" is definitely right.
There's wine, and then there's fortified wine, the villainous,
corrupted younger brother of classy vino. Where "real" wines
are sipped at tony restaurants and win respectable medals,
fortified wines are surreptitiously swigged in trainyards
and win you a trip to jail. These staples of the wino diet
boast names like Thunderbird and Mad Dog--evil beasts, indeed--and
many a bedraggled boozehound has slid into a near-coma after
chugging a decanter of Wild Irish Rose. Even toxic twit
Axl Rose meowed about riding the Night Train on Appetite
for Destruction.
Yet despite their nasty bite, the average brown-bagged
street wine isn't the highest-caliber weapon available to
those who want to blow their brains out through the glass
neck of a bottle. Not by a long shot.
Mind-annihilating and liver-killing compatriots, meet Cisco.
Thick, sticky and sickly sweet, Cisco tastes like fruit-flavored
Robitussin mixed with un-jelled Jell-O and 100-proof vodka.
The nuclear-tinted liquid also has a wicked kick meaner
than any bull--Red, Schlitz, or otherwise--and wreaks more
mental havoc than the cheapest tequila. Something in the
syrupy hooch seems to have a synapse-blasting effect not
unlike low-grade Angel Dust. (The label insists it's merely
"citrus wine & grape wine with artificial flavor &
artificial color." Suuuuure.) Tales of Cisco-induced semi-psychotic
breaks are common; not infrequently, people on a Cisco binge
end up curled into a fetal ball, shuddering and muttering
paranoid rants about conspiracies involving French secret
police and/or former sex partners. Nudity and violence may
well be involved, too. Naturally, nihilistic gutterpunks
love it.
Unfortunately for Canandaigua Wines, the brand's manufacturers,
Cisco's tendency to cause a temporary form of inebriated
insanity has led to pesky legal problems. Sometimes called
a "wine fooler," Cisco used to be shelved next to popular
(yet relatively benign) wine coolers, which have an alcohol
percentage of about 6 percent--stronger than beer, but diluted
piss when compared to Cisco's potent 18 percent. Novice
teenage drinkers expecting a Seagram's-sized buzz got more
than they bargained for--specifically, vicious cases of
alcohol poisoning, even death. After numerous parental complaints
and anti-Cisco campaigns, the Federal Trade Commission forced
Canandaigua to change the way it marketed Cisco in 1991:
The big bottle was ousted from its perch alongside Messrs.
Bartles & Jaymes and banished to the convenience-store
fridges' nether regions; the pointed warning THIS IS NOT
A WINE COOLER was added to the label in not one, but two
places; and the ad slogan, "Takes You by Surprise," was
forcibly dropped (even though it was entirely accurate).
Turned into the bugaboo of the booze industry, today once-ubiquitous
Cisco is almost impossible to find anywhere outside cracked-sidewalk
slums. Ironically, this makes it more alluring to wastoids.
After all, Cisco was once regarded as sugary garbage for
sorority girls and naive teens; now it's a hazardous drug
with a reputation for inspiring radical punk-rock hijinks.
The FTC's demonizing of this berry-flavored (but bad-tempered)
drinking buddy has only served to increase its street cred,
a dangerous development for those trying to minimize damages.
Will The Man ever learn?
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 5,
2000
|
