wine

Holy smokes, change really is afoot at TTB. I was startled to see these wine labels recently, with various and sundry famous politicians emblazoned all upon them, and not in the most flattering light. I suppose there is some extra latitude for parody- or caricature-type speech, and there certainly is or ought to be latitude as to political speech. But often in the past, TTB has disallowed presidentially-oriented labels. Just two years ago, the line was drawn here, as to President Obama, and this one seemed to go too far.

The abstraction, in these caricatures, seems to help, as does the absence of the full names. The Horizon Cellars Winery, of Siler City, North Carolina has a large series of the labels depicted above. We already pointed to various labels with Former President George Bush and Sarah Palin in the past, so today we elected to highlight Former Vice President Dick Cheney, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Former President Bill Clinton.

But there are other reasons to revel in these labels. Any discussion of Joe Biden would be embarrassingly remiss without a fond recollection of that storied day when Joe Biden washed his Trans Am, in...

First it was just the pants on the ground. Now there is a profusion of panties on the ground. And once again, alcohol beverages are not far from the root of the problem. Way back in April of 2009 we first uncovered this problem, and there is no sign of abatement in the time since then. Panty Dropper is Late Harvest Zinfandel, produced and bottled by Christies of Sonoma, Inc. Liquid Panty Remover is Cherry and Raspberry Fruit Wine, produced and bottled by Alto Vineyards, of Alto Pass, Illinois.

The upcoming Halloween holiday brings to mind candy and costumes and ghosts and ghouls and witches. This year, witches and witchcraft have enjoyed an additional autumnal limelight after tapes surfaced of U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (R-DE) claiming to have dabbled in witchcraft while in high school. Squished Witch, from Oz Winery of Wamego, Kansas, looks set to capitalize on the shared whimsy of this year’s Halloween and political seasons. The winery describes Squished Witch as a “fruity, semi-sweet Ives Noir based red.” Like Squished Witch, most of the three-dozen wines in the Oz Winery stable boast some obvious connection to the classic film The Wizard of Oz, including I’ve Got You My Pretty, The Lion’s Courage, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Scarecrow, Flying Monkey, and I’m Melting Merlot. The Squished Witch label is home to at least one interesting legal issue. If you were looking for the class/type description and/or alcohol content and weren’t having any luck, note the smallish cursive words “Red Table Wine” nestled in a fold in the land above the fanciful name. I missed them at first, second, and third glance. Oz also has Drunken Munchkin, and it’s rare to have a reference to intoxication on a wine label. The Witch label reminds me that a friend used to...