Saturday, September 15, 2007

Franzia in a Bottle

For those of you not familiar with this fixture of college pukefests, this picture sums the brand up nicely:


I defy you to go any frat party in America, bring a box of Franzia, and try to go the whole night without seeing someone do this. It's impossible. This colored bilge water was designed with one purpose in mind: rapid and cheap intoxication. Sure, it's got nicer graphics on the box and probably makes some allusions to grapes from Napa Valley, but don't kid yourself: the only reason homeless dudes pick Cisco over this stuff is because the 5-liter cardboard cube doesn't fit in a paper bag.

So what? There's good wine (I've heard. I've never actually tasted it because I'm poor), and there's bad wine. Good wine comes in bottles, and bad wine comes in boxes, cans, and can be seen mixed up with chunks of Ballpark hotdogs splattered across the floors of dorm rooms across America.

Well, Japan decided to defy convention and offer Franzia in a bottle, which prompts the question, WHY? Isn't the entire brand centered around it being crappy, cheap, and in a box? Is your average Franzia customer really going to be put off by the wine's packaging not being "classy" enough? This boggles my mind. I know there's other cheap wine in bottles (3 buck Chuck), but Franzia is synonymous with "box wine." I think there's some aphorism about dressing a pig like a lady that might apply here, and if there isn't there should be.

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