Wine Coolers: The Drink, Its History and Wine vs Malt

The wine coolers drink is a light, sweet, usually fizzy mix of wine and fruit juice, and today it’s often not made with wine at all. A US tax change in 1991 pushed most brands to a malt base, though the “cooler” name stuck. If you’re after the drink, this guide covers where it came from, how to tell wine from malt on the label, how strong it is and how to make one at home. If you meant the appliance, see our guide to the best wine fridge instead.

What a wine cooler is

Wikipedia defines a wine cooler as an alcoholic drink made from wine and fruit juice, often mixed with a carbonated drink and sugar. It notes that malt-based drinks sold under the same name, sometimes called “malternatives”, are really a different category.

Wikipedia places coolers in the wider group of alcopops: low-alcohol sweet drinks that also include malt-based and spirit-based products. So a “cooler” on a store shelf could be any of the following:

Base	What it is	How to spot it	Example, per its own source
Wine	Wine plus sparkling water, juice or flavors	“Made with wine” or wine named on the label	Bartles & Jaymes’ 2019 line, “made with wine, sparkling water, and fruit flavors”, according to Market Watch
Malt	Fermented malt base with flavors	“Flavored malt beverage” or “malt beverage”	Seagram’s Escapes, described on its own site as flavored malt beverages

In our view, the name on the front tells you little, so the small print on the back is the part to read. These are examples of the two types, not recommendations.

A short history of the wine cooler

Mixing wine with juice at home is old, and Wikipedia describes these drinks as traditionally homemade. The bottled boom came from California.

• 1976. Wikipedia says wine coolers were first marketed in California that year, with California Cooler. Lodi Wine’s Randy Caparoso tells the story of two Lodi High School friends, Michael Crete and R. Stuart Bewley, who raised about $140,000 from friends and family to launch a bottled blend of wine and fruit juice.
• 1985. Caparoso reports that the brand reached 12.3 million cases a year, worth about $125 million, and that its founders sold it to Brown-Forman for a reported $146 million.
• Mid-1980s. Gallo’s Bartles & Jaymes arrived with heavy advertising. Wikipedia gives 1985 for the launch and says its famous ads, with two older men chatting on a porch, ran until 1991. Competition cut hard into California Cooler, which Wikipedia says had fallen to about 5 million cases by 1987.
• Peak. Wikipedia says coolers made up about 20% of wine sold in the US in the mid-to-late 1980s.

The 1991 tax change

TTB’s historical tax table shows what changed on January 1, 1991:

Product	Tax until the end of 1990	Tax from January 1, 1991
Still wine, not over 14%	17 cents per gallon	$1.07 per gallon
Beer (higher of the two rates TTB lists)	$9 per 31-gallon barrel	$18 per 31-gallon barrel

That’s more than six times the old wine tax. The beer rate doubled too, but $18 a barrel still works out to about 58 cents a gallon, by our math, against $1.07 for wine.

Wikipedia says Congress’s increase led most producers to replace wine with cheaper malt liquor, and that Bartles & Jaymes went fully malt-based in 1991. Its summary calls the wine tax rise a quintupling, but TTB’s published rates are the primary record. Wikipedia adds that Gallo resumed making wine-based coolers in 2019, though the line remains mostly malt-based.

How TTB and FDA treat coolers

The base decides which rules apply, according to a 2026 TTB presentation on low-alcohol drinks. TTB (the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) regulates alcohol taxes and most alcohol labels:

Product	Is it taxed as	Who sets the label rules
Wine product under 7% ABV	Wine	FDA labeling rules, plus TTB’s basic tax-code labeling rules
Wine product at 7% ABV or more	Wine	TTB’s wine labeling rules
Malt beverage (made with both malted barley and hops)	Beer	TTB’s labeling rules
Beer without both malted barley and hops	Beer	FDA labeling rules, plus TTB’s basic tax-code labeling rules

Any of these at 0.5% ABV or more also needs the federal health warning statement.

The wine cooler’s low strength has a practical side effect. Since many wine-based coolers sit below 7%, their labels can follow FDA food rules rather than the TTB wine rules you’d see on a bottle of Chardonnay, as explained in our guide on how to read a wine label. In our reading, that may be part of why a cooler can look more like a soft drink can than a wine label.

How strong is a wine cooler?

Strength varies by product, so check the label. Market Watch listed Bartles & Jaymes’ 2019 wine-based cans at 4% in 12-ounce cans. Wikipedia’s article on alcopops gives about 3% to 7% for the wider group.

Using the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s standard drink of 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol, here’s our math for a 12-ounce container:

ABV	Standard drinks in 12 oz
3%	0.6
4%	0.8
5% (same as the NIAAA’s regular beer example)	1
7%	1.4

So a 12-ounce cooler holds about as much alcohol as a beer. A 12-ounce can of actual wine holds far more, as our guide to canned wine shows. Coolers are sweet and easy to drink, which in our view is a reason to count them just as you would beer.

The gluten question

This is where the base really matters. As our guide to whether wine is gluten-free explains, regular wine fermented from grapes has no gluten ingredients, but drinks with something added need a closer look. In Wine Spectator’s 2018 report, Marilyn Geller, CEO of the Celiac Disease Foundation, warned about wine products with added color or flavoring and those made from barley malt, “such as bottled wine coolers”, and advised reading labels.

We’d check three things: whether it says “malt beverage”, what’s in the ingredients list and whether the producer says anything about gluten. If you have celiac disease or another condition, ask your doctor or a registered dietitian. This isn’t medical advice.

How to make a wine cooler at home

Caparoso, writing for Lodi Wine, says that after bottled coolers faded, people found how simple they are to make at home. His fresh watermelon wine cooler is a good example:

• 1 bottle white, rosé or sparkling wine
• 4 cups seedless watermelon
• ½ lemon
• Mint leaves

Blend the watermelon and add the lemon juice. Fill a pitcher ¾ or ½ full with the mix, depending on how strong you want the drink, then top with wine. Stir, chill for 20 to 30 minutes, stir again and serve with mint.

Which bottle? We’d use a crisp, inexpensive white or dry rosé, since the fruit carries most of the flavor. Other options:

• Wine spritzer: wine and soda water only, for less sugar and a simple ratio.
• Sangria: the punch-bowl version, usually stronger because of added brandy.

Wine is for adults of legal drinking age (21 in the US). Please drink responsibly.