When Coolers Were Wine

After writing a post about Dewey Stevens wine coolers for Diary of a Non-Person, I started thinking.

Back in the '80s, wine coolers actually contained wine. These days, people tend to still use the term "wine cooler," but most of these drinks don't actually have any wine in them. In fact, they're flavored malt beverages now. Occasionally, through the years, I've wondered how that happened, but I've never taken the time to delve into it.

I'm actually not much of a drinker; when I do drink, I lean toward having a strawberry daiquiri or some other frozen concoction that contains rum. Even so, I miss some of the wine coolers of the past, such as Dewey Stevens, California Coolers, Seagrams, and Bartles & Jaymes; I preferred them to any of the flavored malt beverages I've had in more recent years.