WOBW Day 5: MD Banana Red

Well here we are at the final day of the Week Of Bumwine, and we're down to the fruitiest, most wrongly-flavored Mad Dog. I know there won't be any way this is as wretched as Thunderbird, but I figure it's a good thing to ease out on. Expect a full write-up of the week's highs and lows tomorrow, followed by a fairly substantial hiatus-- at the earliest, I'll be back next weekend with another guest review, but it may take me two weeks to recover and get back to fighting force. But yeah-- let's get down to business. Let's hop on that Mad Dog and ride it like a fuckin'... fuck, I guess like a giant dog. But we're riding it towards...towards not getting drunk on hobo wine for at least a week. And that's an admirable goal.

Yeah, that one kind of got away from me.

 Now, knowing banana and me have a recent history, I can only imagine how this is going to go. Well, not imagine. Envision. Like a harbinger of death.

 LOOK

 A bright red, almost pink. I really can't talk too much about the color with these fruit MDs-- they're bright and candy-colored and look in no way like something anyone with self-respect should get drunk off of.

I'll say this for it, though-- unlike Orange Jubilee, it's at least not thick and slushy. But look: when I have to say that it has an advantage over some other kind of Mogen, that's not saying much.

Ted Bundy: Better than Dahmer.

I'd like to point out that, as a result of that picture, I just spent a while reading about how various famous serial killers died (Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate!). I'm only half a glass in and that's what this shit does to you.

NOSE

It smells like banana, that's for damn sure. Not like the banana candy of Jacquin's though-- this smells more natural, more like actual fruit, although equally awful. It smells like vaguely rotten bananas, or like a bag of dried banana chips left out in the sun. So it's organic, but still absolutely terrible. And the whole thing is undercut with that MD antifreeze ultra-sweet/chemical flavor.

I never thought I'd say this, but Thunderbird, I'm sorry. Here we are on the last night of the week and the dark horse challenger sweeps up and takes the "absolute worst-smelling" trophy out of your leprous, diesel-reeking wings.

TASTE

 The worst thing about this flavor is that without the banana it would be passable. It would be fruity and awful and have that Mad Dog engine coolant/bathtub scum sweetness to it, but hey, it would be ordinary Mad Dog.

But nope. it just has to take the slimy pseudo-tropicality and just drop a blob of banana on top of it.

Yep.

Look, I'm sorry. I can't really go on. It tastes bilious, it takes like a less awful version of the Jacquin's, it tastes bilious and fruity. It's like the last five things I've reviewed rolled together into one bottle. Just pick some witty comments from those reviews and put 'em here. The past five nights have finished me, I'm done, it's over. I don't give up-- I made it to the finish, but I refuse to play by the rules anymore.

Yes. Yes, exactly. I'm like David Carradine in Death Race, except that instead of vehicular-manslaughtering the President (spoiler alert!) I just wanna watch some John Carpenter and chat with my girlfriend. Fuck you, readers. I'm done. I'm not gonna do the Liver Death-Tarantella again for a while. MD Banana Red: It's red, it's banana-flavored, it's the worst Mad Dog flavor I've had yet. Don't drink it. And expect a post from a less angry me tomorrow, in which I do a rundown on the past week and bumwines in general.

TOM WAITS SONG THAT BLAH-DE-BLAH-BLAH

ONE MORE THING

CRONENBERG!

WOBW Day 4: Thunderbird!

What's the word? Thunderbird. How's it sold? Terrible.

Thunderbird, man. Shit. What can I say, really? Introduced by Gallo in 1957, it's probably the American Bumwine. They actually put “American Classic” on their label, which I guess is the case in the same way that David Berkowitz is emblematic of 1970's New York. But hey, if it's good enough for James Mason to hold (but not drink), let's see how that goes. Let's ride that Thunderbird.

Thanks, Internet. Thanks.

LOOK

At first I thought that the glass had a vague green tint to it, you know, like some bottles do. Narp. That's just what color T-bird is. No wine should be that green-- it's not candy-apple style intentional green, it more just looks vaguely spoiled. Really faint, like someone squeezed an old lime into a white wine bottle and shook it. It's also startlingly opaque. It tries to look like white wine, but you should really be able to see through white wine better And it streaks the glass like dish soap.

NOSE

Thunderbird is quite possibly the most offensive thing I've ever smelled for this blog.

More offensive than Thunderhawk.

There's not actually that much aroma, more just an acrid bitterness. Kind of like gasoline has, where there is an aroma there, but undercut by just the semi-pain of inhaling the fumes and chemical haze. What identifiable odor is there is sort of fruitiness, but not of identifiable fruits, just the vague sweetness of cheap champagne.

TASTE (STRAIGHT)

There's a faint citrusiness there, and a little bit of identifiable wine flavor. It does taste the most like wine out of anything I've reviewed this week, but the problem is that the fruity flavor does not cover up the flavor of butane as well as a stronger, sugary thing would. And it keeps coming back like Michael Fucking Myers. It surges back in waves of bitterness, hyper-sweetness, and a sort of pain that coats your mouth, which is the equivalent of when they decided that Michael Myers was motivated by a druid curse. It just doesn't go away. (Deep Space 9 Millimeter son keep smilin')

I'm a Caveman your Thunderbird frightens and confuses and me.

Karim, by the way, is pretty much just uttering obscenities, moans, and Farsi slurs.

TASTE (SHAKE 'EM UP)

 

It makes it worse. I can buy a conspiracy here that the above ad was actually a conspiracy by the US Government in the 70s to destroy Black America. The grapefruit juice really brings out the bitterness, while covering up the sweetness. It essentially just tastes like grapefruit juice undercut with the butane bitterness of the original T-bird. I will at least say this: it makes the Thunderbird more drinkable, speed-wise. I can take it down a lot faster, so it accelerates the "get drunk as fast as possible" motives behind Thunderbird. But look. Don't buy Thunderbird. Take it from me-- go for Mad Dog or Night Train first, there's no reason to crawl into the burning gullet of this.


This is also the worst buzz I've had from anything. It's not fun, it's not even sad. There's this throbbing anger running through my cortical lining and a really cold leaden nausea sitting on my diaphragm. It's not a fun drunk, just a sad one and pretty sick-feeling. This is the closest I've come to throwing up for this blog, and I'm not even that drunk.


TOM WAITS SONG THAT BEST EXEMPLIFIES MY CURRENT STATE OF DRUNKEN DERANGEMENT:
"Reeperbahn"


Hustling and Easterner
Bringing out the beast in her
A high dive on a swimming pool
Filled with needles and with fools

WOBW Day 3: MD Orange Jubilee

Okay. We're two days in-- we got Mad Dog Classic and Orange Driver (fucking Orange Driver) out of the way, and we're to the point where, if this week is going to start destroying me, it's gonna be tonight, as the hangovers and disgust start to pile up faster than I can deal with. So. I got my snarky Jewish friend Naomi with me here to help with the bitterness and black humor (I am sorry. But she is). So-- and it has been so good having people help me through this, I love you and everyone who cheers me on through the orgy of self-destruction --let's dive into Mad Dog Orange Jubilee.

Bllll...

LOOK
Like really thick, pulpy orange juice. But thick, pulpy orange juice that is somehow also made from concentrate-- somehow really slushy-looking but also artificially-colored and too yellow rather than orange. It's also really, stunningly opaque. It blocks the light better than the Mad Dog Red did. It looks like a hangover.

NOSE
Oddly enough, it doesn't smell like orange, or even like orange candy. It mostly smells like white wine vinegar and lucky charms. This is good, because it sure as fuck doesn't taste like oranges. But it really doesn't smell like that much of anything. It hides. It  lurks. like a goddamn alligator. Made of orange juice and sorrow.

TASTE
Good lord, is this thick. This is another way in which it compares But here's the thing-- it doesn't taste like oranges. It also doesnt' really taste like wine at all-- there's this simmering bitterness under it that hints at that, but it mostly tastes sugary and undefinedly fruity. It definitely tastes like it's supposed to be fruit-- maybe even citrus --but I don't know what.

 Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. There's Also Whatever This Is Made Of. And (According To The Book) Vaginas.

It really does taste like Trix. Whatever the hell that is. But it's not really much of a buzz at all. There's definitely a buzz there, but it's not a real emotional one.I more just feel a little nauseous and this vague air of disappointment and confusion. Now I've spilled the last of the bumwine and moved onto a Churchill gibson with Tanq, so I'm fuckin' done trying to analyze this. I think this is going to be a trend of this week-- not so much rage as exhaustion.

NAOMI'S TAKE

"This is the kind of drink a pedophile would give a kid in a plastic cup for asking him what a trouser snake is. I can't believe Jews made this-- it kind of makes the Holocaust make more sense."

I love that girl so much for making that comment-- I've wanted to for as long as I've been drinking Mogen David but I'm glad the Jewish student of Holocaust lit made it. She's an old hand at MD and she really agrees here. This barely tastes like alcohol and mostly just tastes like sugar.

TOM WAITS SONG THAT BEST EXEMPLIFIES MY CURRENT STATE OF DRUNKEN DERANGEMENT:

 "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)"

And the owner is a mental midget with the I.Q. of a fence post
'Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...
And you can't find your waitress with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends and you just can't get served without her
And the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire
And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash-trays have retired
'Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking

WOBW Day 2: Orange Driver

Unlike Mad Dog and Thunderbird, which both have reputations-- nay, legacies--Orange Driver is a mystery. If MD Classic is the brains, MD Orange Bliss is the looks, MD Banana Red is the useless chick, and Thunderbird is the muscle, Orange Driver is the wildcard. Literally the only thing I found online about it was someone on a messageboard warning people to stay away from it. They didn't even have it at the Ingles. I had to go to Sav-Mor. Sav. Mor.

Here, here. Let me read you the label. "Select white wine, sub-standard grape wine from choice grapes, citrus neutal spirits with natural orange flavor artificially colored with FD & C Yellow #5 & 6. Contains Sulfites." None of that sounds appetizing-- particularly the "sub-standard" and the fact that the artificial colorings in it are banned in the UK--which leads me to believe they are legally obligated to put that on the label. Also, that's the front label, right under the name of the drink, so either printing a back label would have been too expensive (this is 80 cents cheaper than MD) or that's the kind of disclaimer you legally have to put front and center.

"It's full of red dye. Number two!"

Also, it's got a plastic cap. Fuck this shit. And my buddy Ross and I are gonna be reviewing it.

LOOK
Tang. It really does just look like tang and nothing else. This looks the least like alcohol out of anything I have actually reviewed. I can't even really talk about the look except that is bright astronaut-juice orange, and I hate it. I hate it so much.

NOSE
It does not, however, smell like Tang. It smells so much worse. Like a lot of the bumwines I've reviewed, there's two layers of aroma: the sugary, artificial kind, and the bitter wretched alcohol beneath it. And within the smell of awful alcohol is the smell of onions. And within them is death.

Amazingly enough though, it's not French.

Neither is Brel, though. He's belgian.

TASTE (STRAIGHT)

God. Awful. It tastes like nothing so much as orange peels, and not even fresh ones at that. Not orange juice, not even fresh orange peels, it's like if you found an orange in the back of your fridge that hadn't rotted so much as it at dehydrated, and then when you picked it up the withered fruit just sloughed out of the skin, so you were like, "welp, fuck it," and just chowed down on the peel. It tastes like the orange toothpaste your dentist gives you. It tastes the way I imagine Warren Zevon's kisses would have in the final year of his life-- cancer and triple sec.

I was thinking that the gypsy wasn't lyin' /All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles  / I'm gonna drink 'em up.

I am so, so sorry for that joke. But in my defense, I think Zevon is the only respectable human being who might be into Orange Driver.

This also is the opposite of refreshing-- the more I drink of it, the thirstier I get and the more I want to drink something else. Not just because the taste is bad, but because it honestly makes me need to hydrate. 

TASTE (MIXED)

Ross, being the kind, generous soul that he is, went down to the gas station and brought back a big cup of 50/50 Sprite and Hawaiian Punch. And I gotta say, it helps. It really, really does. Granted, it makes it taste even more like child's punch, but hey-- at least it just  tastes like child's punch. I think you could make a good psychological argument for this: reverting to childhood and saccharine ignorance of the beauty of adulthood in order to escape the associated trauma. In a way, It's as though the ordinary satisfaction is so ugly and so associated with pain that I retreat to a mutilated, simplified abstraction of something that should give me pleasure.

Pinky-- are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Told ya man. Cronenberg. Mascot. This is a thing.

Can I just say, too, that this is a really unhappy drunk? This isn't even a buzz as much as it is a drone. It makes me want to clench my hands into white-knuckled fists and it makes me feel like a cross between every Dennis Hopper character and the Captain from Pan's Labyrinth.

Like that, but raping.

ROSS'S TAKE

"This isn't hobo wine-- I think there's an important distinction to make here. No hobo would drink this. This is carny wine; this is what carnies trade each other for handjobs. It tastes like a combination of orange peel and a baboon's ass, and it smells like the cheap iodine my mother put on my cuts as a child that felt like Satan."

 He also really, really wants to know what the hell would posses anyone to make this, and I agree. Baltimore may be the US capitol of bad decisions, and this ranks among the worst.

TOM WAITS SONG THAT BEST EXEMPLIFIES MY CURRENT STATE OF DRUNKEN DERANGEMENT:

"Lucinda," if Lucinda wasn't a beautiful woman and was instead... this.

A sly grin and a bowl full of stars
Like a kid who captures a firefly
And leaves it only to die in the jar

As I kick at the clounds at my hanging
As I swing out over the crowd
I will search every face for Lucinda's
And she will off with me down to hell

WOBW Day 1: MD Classic

So here we are. First day of the Season in Hell, staring down the barrel of a week-long hobo drunk. I'm here with Karim G., my tolerant co-reviewer, who's going to be helping me through a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 Red Grape. Red Grape. Not Merlot. Just...red.

What is there to say, really, about Mad Dog Red Grape. It's legendary-- one of the best-known bumwines in the world. It's the most basic, pseudo-wine flavor I've got this week too (Red. Banana. Fuck.). So this is where we start, this is the first step on our journey downward to liver failure and oblivion. And I'm already one White Russian in to the night. Cheers.

Long is the road, and hard.

I would also accept

I carry Hell within Myself.

LOOK

Dark red, pseudo-merlot. No real bubbles around the rim like real wine has (yes. Yes I will hold it to that standard). But if you hold it up to the light there's a real candy redness that most wine doesn't have. Night Train fully looked like hobo-wine and cranberry juice, but MD tries to disguise it. MD tries to look like real wine, only to have the cancer lurking within it revealed as the skin of decency sloughs off, revealing the pulsing mass of sin and disappointment.

  I am so, so sorry.

NOSE

Well, it does smell vaguely like wine, which I don't think anything in the rest of the week will. But there's also a smell that reminds me of dying eggs as a child-- a hot smell of vinegar and beets, with a really faint eggy sulphrous whiff underneath it. Which is ironic, as the MD stands for Mogen David-- the star of David. So I associate what I guess what designed to be wine for Shabbas Hoboes with the religion that supplanted Judaism.

I don't know what I'm getting at, but I'm sure that I could make a good argument for MD's aroma as both a hate crime and a crucifixion.

TASTE

Wow. I mean, it tastes a little like wine, and a little like the sugary hobo-wine I've had in the past. The worst elements of Argentinian Merlot (I still have that bottle, by the way. Except for a scallion-mushroom sauce, I have not touched it since the review) and Night Train. This makes me honest-to-god miss Night Train. There's that artificial Robitussin sweetness and a vinegar harshness. I didn't think it would be this bad-- I might actually prefer the bling-bling blue raspberry. It's gonna be interesting to see how the other MD variants throughout the week build on this basic formula of failure and cancer. The buzz is more a defeated lethargy than anything fun.

(Holy fuck, Karim just poured a shot of banana hitler into his. He says it makes it taste more like actual wine. I gotta try this).

Update: Yep. It's an improvement. A little less Jacquin's maybe, but it actually does add a sweetness and fruitiness that makes it taste more like...Night Train. I am actually going to recommend Night Train here. I did not think that MD basic would be this bad, but it really, really is. This is actually nurturing a love in me for other hobo wines, which is fucking terrifying. It is turning me into a scarred-ass, traumatized man, marked forever by my sins and habits.

Yes. Yes, Cronenberg. He is the new mascot of the blog.

KARIM'S ASSESSMENT

Karim's comment on the taste is particularly enlightening-- it tastes the way engine fluid smells. Simultaneously sugary and carcinogenic. He also comments that the drunken buzz it gives you is like having your head stuck in a trash compactor, and I can't help but picture the something just touched my leg trash compactor from-- fuck, you know where it's from. He also just mentioned "the ballsweat of a dude who lives in his mother's basement kind of bitter," and says that the buzz is really angry and brooding. Darcy-style.The term jewblood just got thrown around. He says his final thoughts are that the buzz is like hospital anesthesia and his girlfriend broke up with him and his mother died.

  I googled "angry persian," since there's not a camera.

TOM WAITS SONG THAT BEST EXEMPLIFIES MY CURRENT STATE OF DRUNKEN DERANGEMENT: "The Bottom of the World."

Well I dined last night with Scarface Ron
On Telapia fish cakes and fried black swan
Razorweed onion and peacock squirrel
And I dreamed all night about a beautiful girl

And I'm lost
And I'm lost
I'm lost at the bottom of the world

WOBW Day 0: Start your engines

Here's the deal: I (with help from a few other reviewers) will be reviewing a different bottle of rotgut hobo wine every night for the next week. At least a third of a bottle for me each night, with guest reviewers stomaching as much as they can. No exemptions, no excuses. To celebrate the beginning of summer, we are going on a smash tour of the back alleys of alcohol. This is why there haven't been any updates for a bit: this is going to be the no-holds-barred throwdown thunderdome. Well, not Thunderdome. There are winners in the thunderdome. This is more like, well, hmmm...

 Riiiiiight.

(Yes, that is my second Videodrome visual gag).

Anyway, keep watch. Here's the tentative schedule:

Monday: MD 20/20 Classic Red Grape (Guest: Karim G.)

Tuesday: Orange Driver (Guest: Ross E.)

Wednesday: MD Orange Bliss (Guest: Naomi T.)

Thursday: Thunderbird

Friday: MD Banana Red

TOM WAITS SONG THAT BEST ENCAPSULATES MY CURRENT STATE OF DRUNKEN DERANGEMENT: "Take Care of All My Children."
Oh, take care of all of my children
For I don't know when I'm comin' back home
You can put all of my possessions here in Jesus' name
Nail a sign on the door
Bright and early Sunday morning with my walking cane
I'm going up to see my Lord

Great big plans growing in my brain/ Big ugly lump in my throat.

Week of Bumwine, starts Monday, May 17.

Mark your calendars.

Jacquin's Banana Nirvana

It's warming up down South-- in the mountains of Carolina, May already feels a bit like summer. And with no A/C in the apartment, what could possibly be better than a little bit of nice, fruity liquor? Wouldn't that be just great, something sweet and smooth that tastes great cold and gives you a buzz?

No. No. Absolutely not. I don't normally give away quality this early in the review, but Jacquin's Banana Nirvana is, beyond a doubt, the worst thing I have ever drunk. This is what the ice in the 9th circle of Dante's Inferno makes daiquiris with. It is fucking vile in every possible way.

Strap in, boys. This is gonna be rough.

LOOK
It's bright, bright yellow. Neon. Piss. But the real awful thing is, there's a faint tinge of green to it as well. It just looks bilious and sickening. Wretchedly artificial, awfully tinted, blatantly offensive to the senses.

And they added color. This is a catastrophic fuck-up. You're already artificially tinting your booze, and you can't get it to look appetizing then? You have failed conclusively, Jacquin's. I don't even need to open the bottle to know that this is going to be absolutely wretched.

You have failed as sincerely as Damien Hirst's non-conceptual works.

NOSE

It doesn't really smell like banana. I mean, there's a definite tinge there. But what it really smells like is that banana syrup ice cream parlors that don't want to keep actual fruit on hand use in their sundaes. Or the banana Runts. And nobody likes the banana Runts. When I was a kid I usually just threw them away.

Oh, wait. It also smells like alcohol. Because, did I mention-- It's fucking 100 proof. It is FIFTY PERCENT ALCOHOL. It is stronger than most vodka. Why? EXPLAIN, JACQUIN'S. Who in the name of God would want their banana liqueur to be 100 proof? It's presumably not meant to be drunk straight out of a glass, so why on earth would you make it that strong?

EXPLAIN.

 The only logical outcome.

Actually, calling something this strong a liqueur sounds wrong. But it's so incredibly sweet, so I can't call it a schnapps or a liquor.

I'm just gonna call it a banana Hitler.

TASTE (STRAIGHT)

 Look, I'm just going to put on some nice soothing music until I can get it together enough to start listing everything this does wrong.

Look, it's more soothing than drinking this.

Anyway, this shit is B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Not that it tastes like bananas, ohhh no. What it tastes like is if you soaked an over-ripe banana in sugar syrup for days until it became mush, and then mixed that with rubbing alcohol because it is 100 proof, I'm sorry I just cannot get over that fact.

I chilled it because I think that something fruity should be cold, but that just makes it disgusting. Because then it's thick and gooey and slithers its way down your throat like a banana-flavored slug. It's like blowing a baboon.

Hey baby, why don't you come on over here.

But the worst thing, oh god, the worst thing is the aftertaste. See, the astounding burn of it really leaves your throat open to the flavor, so that after you choke down the shot like said baboon has a switchblade to your neck BAM! the actual flavor, which at least the alcohol and cold suppressed, comes bubbling back up like repressed childhood trauma.

I'm having a hard time communicating how bad it is, and I know I communicate in hyperbole a lot, but this is literally the worst beverage I have ever tasted. It tastes rancid and bilious and like rotten fruit and bad sugar. It is my hell.

TASTE (MIXED)
I tried three different ways to get this down, and none of them succeeded. Let's try a rundown.

THE FRUIT SALAD SHOT: 1/3 banana hitler, 1/3 Bootlegger Grape, 1/3 Bootlegger Apple
Using the remnants of my Johnny Bootlegger, I made this grey shot. It tasted and felt pretty much exactly like cough syrup. And that was a big, big step up from this stuff undiluted.

I do not like Banana Nirvana. Banana Nirvana is not good.

THE ELECTRIC BANANA SHOT: 1/2 Banana, 1/2 tequila, lime juice.

The tequila and the banana really complement each other in the worst way possible. This one is definitely worse than the Fruit Salad, but still far, far better than the banana by itself. It tastes kind of like rancid cactus, or like tequila made from banana Runt candy with a gummi worm in the bottom. But if you for some reason need to drink this stuff (like, psychotic killer forcing you to or the beartrap around your head triggers, your asshole friends accidentally mixed the antidote for your snakebite in), sure, mix it with tequila. Mix it with anything. Mix it with Riva vodka, because even that would improve the flavor.

DAIQUIRI: I don't have a blender, so I'll just have to have this on ice instead of with crushed ice. But if you're buying this Hitler, this is probably what you're buying it for, so let's see how it works out. The Black Seal rum tastes pretty nice, at least (I didn't have any light rum). But pretty much drinking this just makes me wish I could remove the banana part and just do rum, ice, and lime. It is a very tropical drink, but in the best (Black Seal=Gauguin paintings) and worst (Jacquin's=syphilis) ways.

I just Google Image Searched "Syphilis" to find an illustration, and it was still a better decision than drinking this.

Bottom line, Banana Nirvana absolutely fails at everything. It is disgusting, misbegotten, vile, and chemical-laden. It is the Jerri Blank of alcohol.

 Quandry.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I know I bitch, but I usually have a lot of  fun writing this site. There's a joy to the depths of the worst liquors. You may even be tempted to become a tourist in the realm of my suffering--for entertainment, solidarity, or just a dirty cheap drunk.

Not today. This issue is a public service: never, ever drink this. There is nothing but pain here for you. It is, without competition, the worst that I have ever drunk. ME. That's like Paul Reubens saying "nah, no thanks dude. That's just too damn weird."

Feeling better already. Fuck, I love that little guy.

Johnny Bootlegger Alcatraz Apple/Sing Sing Sour Grape

In the past week, no less than 3 of my friend have recommended that I review Johnny Bootlegger-- 2 dollar fruit-flavored malt liquor. People are starting to pick up now. They're starting to realize the depths of my self-loathing.

Johnny Bootlegger, on their website, encourages you to "relive the prohibition era!" You know, when alcohol was brewed in bathtubs, regularly poisoned people, and funded the most violent crime in the world. In addition, these two flavors are named after prisons. Because when I think "prison wine," I think "delicious." Essentially, while they may simply be trying for a badass image, they're pretty much just implying that they're going to poison you.

So at least they're honest.

I couldn't find Machine-Gun melon, or I'd be doing a rundown of all three flavors. But as it is, I still got the most candy-ass-tasting ones available. So let's see how this goes.

LOOK
The both of them are bright, bright colors, the color of children's candy and artificial flavoring. Even worse than the color of the booze itself, though, is the label. The smug-ass gangster on it, grinning because he knows he just conned me into buying this piss, smirking like a motherfucker because he's making money off what is essentially poison.

Sorry, kid. But that's just business.

Also, the label on each bottle is off-center and misaligned. COME ON.

NOSE

They both pretty much smell like candy. Look, I know I've compared other things on here to Jolly Ranchers before, but that is literally what this smells like. Exactly. Not even similar to, these smell exactly like their equivalent flavors of Jolly Rancher, with a faint undercurrent of musty bitterness.

TASTE (ALCATRAZ)
Ugggggh. If you taste a really small sip of this, it tastes like a Jolly Rancher. Anything stronger than that, though, and the candy flavor gets overpowered by the taste of the really cheap alcohol. It tastes more like a Jolly Rancher that you left out in the sun and is now half-melted and covered with dust. The name is appropriate, as it feels like Connery and Cage are just ramming their boots down my throat and making a Michael Bay explosion of awful.

Ed Harris announces his plan to launch sour apple malt liquor all over the city.

TASTE (SING SING)

When you knock it back, the Sing Sing manages to retain its candy flavor more. But the aftertaste is worse. There's this really powerful burn and a weird tingling all over my tongue, and the feeling that Johnny's trying to claw his way up the back of my throat.

It feels like it's carbonated, but it's not. That's just the skin in your mouth reacting to it. And again, there's some kind of weird musty, cheesy flavor running underneath it all. I don't know how or why, but there is. The gangster metaphor fits, because this feels like a microcosm of 20's society-- cheap, glitzy sugar coating over a seething bed of death and violence and human misery.

Fffffuuuuuuuucckkkk yoooooooooou!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Yeah, this is just wretched. Even Jacquin's Peach brandy (probably the worst thing I've ever reviewed...until later this week) tasted vaguely like something related to alcohol. If you just served me this in a glass I wouldn't even know it was booze. It just pretends to be something sweet and friendly, all the while biding its time for the inevitable punch to the gut when you realize how truly awful it is, and then--

Wait-- I think that maybe--

There ain't no Johnny Bootlegger, kid. Never was.