On the Quality of Things, #9
Drink Yourself Brilliant!
A Hipster's Guide to Fortified Wines

by Wade "I Do Not Have a Problem" Stuckwisch

The world of today's stylish, in-the-know erudite urbanite can be most befuddling to the outsider, especially when it comes to the modern hipster's fixation on kitsch and anachronistic, trashy pop culture. While seeking out, appropriating or simply strip-mining the cultural productions of lower-class communities has been commonplace in avant-garde culture for generations, the extent to which the current clique of the tragically hip has adopted this practice can be downright unsettling. In past generations, for example, intellectual circles embraced blues and folk music, as they learned to appreciate the nuances of what were working-class traditions. On the other hand, the ideology of those young, aspiring members of this generation's taste-making elite seen in "Foreigner" T-shirts, a common sight only one or two years ago, escapes me. At first I credited this to the popularity of nostalgia and irony, and secretly hoped that someday one of these fashion plates would stumble into the wrong bar, meet a real Foreigner fan and, shortly thereafter, meet an untimely end. But given other recent trends in fashion, I now suspect that some of these style aficionados may have been actually listening to Foreigner, voluntarily, and not just wearing a Foreigner shirt to be silly. The more common sight today of a supermodel in a strategically torn Iron Maiden or Judas Priest shirt makes me wistful, knowing that the bearer probably could not differentiate "Run To The Hills" from "Heading Out On The Highway" even if each track bit her on an opposing shapely buttock. However, the idea of supporting or enjoying a genuinely shitty band like Foreigner perplexes me, kitsch be damned.

The same holds true in the hipster's choice in alcoholic beverages. Recently a friend informed me that one new signifying mark of the hipster set, distinguishing them from other more rectilinear socialites, is the consumption of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, preferably in cans. What disturbs me most about this trend is that I drink PBR, and not because of some trend, but for the same reason generations have consumed Pabst beer since it was named America's Best Beer in 1893: it's cheap as hell. (For those of you that may not live in the metropolitan New York area, be advised that beer in the city is expensive as all hell.) The idea of anyone drinking PBR by choice, purely to be fashionable-that's simply preposterous. Look, kids, if you're spending $1000 a month to live in Williamsburg, wearing $200 pre-worn designer jeans, and then drinking $2 PBRs in a can when you go out at night, you need to rethink your financial priorities. At least spend the extra dollar to get Rheingold or Rolling Rock in a bottle, please.

However, as a hip, youthful provocateur of the "Great Hobo Lifestyle™," I write to keep the haute couture ahead of trend, not to decry their chosen lifestyle. Gentlemen and ladies, I declare to you, as an expert on the subject and a unqualified cultural barometer, that the Great Hobo Lifestyle is The Next Big Thing. Think about it: if some clueless redneck cock-rocker with a mullet and a trucker hat is your idea of cool, how much cooler is a half-crazed bum in the gutter? You think guys like Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson, in their heyday, sipped Alize cocktails while munching tapas? Absolutely not! Like all great writers and artists, they were crazy, alcoholic bums. And on that note, let me introduce you to a new, up-and-coming nightlife choice, sure to soon be "the new black" for the slumming-it set: fortified wines.

For those of you not familiar with the term, fortified wine is any fermented grape beverage that has been "fortified" with a stronger form of alcohol. While this category includes many fine, delectable beverages such as port wine, the term has been made infamous by a number of theoretically grape-based liquors, often with a strong, sugary artificial fruit flavor, that have been adulterated with grain alcohol to raise their alcohol content to wine's legal limit of 18%. Typically a $2 serving of these noxious beverages packs the whallop of four or five beers, making fortified wine the drink of choice for straight legit winos and other hardcore booze hounds everywhere.

My enjoyment of fortified wine began, like many alcohol-motivated middle-class white Americans, while I was a college student on a tight budget. A friend wagered that I could not finish an entire bottle of MD "Mad Dog" 20/20 in one sitting; I not only proved him wrong, but also did it while retaining diction and mobility, and then proceeded to score once on Brazil while playing as Jamaica in "FIFA World Cup '98." Later in life, I rediscovered the phenomenon in the post-graduate period I spent living in San Diego. I was living in Golden Hill, an out-of-the-way area on the southeast corner of San Diego's Balboa Park that was just beginning the transformation from a marginal working-class Latino area to a refuge for younger white residents at the time I lived there. Gracing the crest of our namesake hill was a small neon-edificed grocery named Jaroco, which my roommates and I soon developed an unhealthy obsession with. Among Jaroco's delights for the lower depths was a selection of fortified wines unlike any I have ever seen; legendary tinctures as Night Train and Richard's Wild Irish Rose were only known to me previously through story and song. As I had an entertainment budget limited by necessity to about $5 a week, knew almost no-one in San Diego other than my roommate Ron, who worked nights, and of course being a truly dedicated gourmand of alcohol, I made it my goal to try at least one variety of every brand at Jaroco before my time in San Diego ended. And, with a little help from fellow Hobo Mark Hugo, who was living in LA under similar circumstances at the time, I made that dream come true.

As far as taste goes, fortified wines cannot be judged purely by their reputation or infamy. Mark and I discovered that, for example, while Night Train Express has a fruity, Grape Kool-Aid-like bouquet that almost hides the acrid turpentine after-taste common to all hobo wines, its "white wine" cousin Thunderbird is all but undrinkable. The only way we were able to finish off the "pocket rocket" of Thunderbird we purchased was to mix it with Night Train and create a revolting but potable wine cocktail. I should note that Mark Hugo is truly a genius hobo mixologist-on another occasion Mark discovered that by mixing the only two forms of alcohol at hand, an undrinkable brand of cheap vodka and a semi-palatable blush wine, he could effectively fortify his own wine. Indubitably this man should be President.

Another common misconception is that fortified wines can be consistently judged by brand, as many brands come in several flavors. I can safely say I have never sampled a bottle of Mad Dog that was better or worse than any other flavor. I recall the grape variety of MD 20/20 as a passable approximation of the fruit, if not actual grape wine; the berry-banana blend was surprisingly potable, especially given past experience with cheap banana-flavored liquor; and of course it's tough to screw up fruit punch. When it came to Cisco, on the other hand, quality varied greatly by flavor. Strawberry Cisco was probably the most pleasant tasting variety of bum wine I have sampled, with Night Train a close second. On the other hand, the Cisco variety known enigmatically only as "Red" falls into a category with Thunderbird as one suitable only for drunkenly chucking at abandoned cars. What flavor Cisco "Red" attempts to emulate is beyond me; perhaps this is what Cisco would taste like without the addition of fruit flavoring.

Fortified wines also typically come in two sizes--375 ml and the standard wine bottle size of 750 ml--but for the lone Great Hobo the smaller container is the only size recommended for consumption. For one, all varieties of hobo wine become undrinkable unless served thoroughly chilled, and few inclined to buy Cisco or Thunderbird are going to have the impetus or wherewithal to save the remainder of a bottle in the fridge for later. (I should note that I have saved half a bottle of MD 20/20 for later at least once, with satisfying results, and the part-consumed bottle of Cisco Red graced my fridge in San Diego for a couple weeks until someone ultimately threw it away.) With their extremely high alcohol content-about half the proof of most whiskey-a 375 ml bottle or flask is more than enough to get the head of even the most habitual drunk spinning, and these wines have a well-earned reputation for somehow being more potent in effect than their proof would warrant. Trying to polish off a full 750 ml bottle is a grievous error in judgement, as I proved with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose I procured in a week where I had been especially thrifty. Settling down for an evening of television, I was pleasantly surprised by the beverage's close approximation of actual red wine, although the acrid aftertaste and bouquet of burning tires were off-putting. Much of the night was spent editorializing to David Letterman's televised likeness; by 1AM my heterosexuality had somehow become eschewed, and I was offering myself sexually to Scott Thompson, Conan O'Brien's second guest that evening. When Ron arrived home from work some time after 2AM, he found the partial bottle wedged in between the door and the screen door, and my clothing laid out neatly in ascending order (shoes and socks at the bottom, shirt spread out at the top) in front of the couch, with my boxers hung from the rabbit ears on the TV. (My motivation for this is lost to the ages.) This would probably be a choice juncture to mention the other common drawback of all fortified wines: a penchant to produce especially vicious hangovers. My Wild Irish Rose experience was definitely the most painful, but I also recall the after effects of a single bottle of Cisco as notably profound.

So hipsters, carpetbaggers and wannabe hoboes of the world, take heed and discover the world of fortified wines: your best bet when you absolutely, positively must get shitfaced for $2 or less. I have no doubt that, as the Great Hobo Lifestyle increases its market penetration, trendy dive and faux-dive bars across our nation will begin posting their $8 Cisco special right next to their $2 PBRs. And while personally I will never claim to have been poor, in part due my experience in San Diego, there's no reason why the financially enabled, or those who at least have an emergency plan in times of desperate need, can't enjoy a little taste of true, grinding, inescapable, hopeless poverty without abandoning the comfort of a hip middle-class left bank lifestyle.

(As an epilogue, I would just like to reassure any family or friends who may stumble upon this article that I have matured a bit since college, and I am not sitting at home guzzling Thunderbird. So you can postpone any plans for an intervention or counseling, thanks.)

-September 24, 2003