This article is a work of satire.

“The flavor is like a romantic love story between fresh strawberries and sweet cherries. No wonder they call it blush. I’m getting red in the cheeks just thinking about it. Especially when I think about enjoying it with a warm quesadilla and my favorite senorita.”

– CarloRossi.com’s description of Carlo Rossi’s Blush Table Wine

Charlie and I want to meet the guy (definitely a guy) who writes the descriptions for the various varieties of Carlo Rossi wine. Charlie likes to think it’s Carlo himself. Matt thinks it’s some guy who came from an upper class background, went to the second best pre-school in northern Connecticut, graduated from Dartmouth and hung himself in a Van Uyes apartment in the summer of 2003, kicking out a pottery barn stool from beneath his feet (the suicide note: “There’s no quesadilla… no senorita… just Rossi blush whenever I close my eyes”).

Let’s just problematize this narrative that Carlo Rossi attempts to beer-bong into our hearts and minds. There has never (NEVER) been a “romantic love story” that involved four liters of a beverage that can only be described as “pain flavored kool-aid.”   That is excepting, of course, that oh-so-common Rom Com formula of “Charlie’s fist meets quarter-inch-thick glass, hilarity ensues.” And really: why a quesadilla?

Why? I guess it makes sense that, after drinking four liters of this shit, the only food you’ll be capable of making is something that involves putting cheese between two tortillas and sticking it in the microwave for a minute.

The idea of “blush wine” was invented in the ’70s by Sutter Home (in California, not Mexico). A batch of white zinfandel went bad and became pinkish and sugary and Bob Trinchero: in a move of self-interested brilliance that would make Ayn Rand weep bitter tears of joy: simply sold it. Like the movie “Snakes On a Plane,” Blush became an unexpected hit (with douchebags), both in spite of and because of its awfulness. Carlo Rossi (who, Wikipedia indicates, is a person, and not a robot sent from the future to destroy us one flagon of rotten zinfandel at a time) appears to have stumbled upon the coup de genie that you can get away with selling shitty wine by calling it “table wine.”

Let’s work with that a little bit: the term “table wine.” What exactly does that mean? Isn’t most wine supposed to be drank at tables of one sort or another? Rossi is only a “table wine” if your table is the bathroom counter at the VFW hall where you have your AA meetings, or the space between the two front seats of the car you live in. Regardless of where your table is, if you buy some Rossi, everybody sitting at it is going to get bent like steel bars at Superman’s house.

Music to Drink Rossi with:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Spanish guitar and a sexy Mexican dude telling you how pretty you look.

Reality: Police car sirens, the sound of your car’s engine turning over again and again without starting as you try to get out of your driveway before your meth-dealer “boyfriend” wakes up.

To Drink with Rossi:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: The semen of a sexy Spanish dude… or more Rossi.
Reality: Whatever is free/nearby.
To Eat With Rossi:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Quesadillas, apparently.
Reality: Nothing. You’re not supposed to eat for like three hours before you get that surgery on your hand.

Activities:
The Rossi Advertising Fantasy Version: Casually telling jokes and enjoying some good-natured railery in front of a fireplace, knowing full well that it’s only a polite preamble to the Caligulaic, pan-sexual orgy that is to follow with some of your impossibly attractive friends.

Reality: Masturbating, knowing full well that it’s only a preamble to crying about your frighteningly low bank balance.

Consumeability Formula:

[ ( Drinkability out of Hundred / Price ) + ( (Alcohol Per Volume x Volume) / Price ) ] / Hours Hungover

So, filling in the numbers for Carlo Rossi Blush:

[ (45/$10.00) + ( (%9 x 4000 ml) / $10.00) ] / 3 Hours Hilariously Hungover = 121.5

(Holy Shit: we’re beginning to think there must be something deeply problematic about our formula.)