Ok, so apparently, some homeless and low-income people drink cooking sherry to get drunk. Given that what is in it and it apparently takes terrible, one might ask, why?
I had heard people complaining about other people who drink cooking sherry and how they get really drunk and stupid on it. And how it had some other physical impacts on people drinking it. And, I had heard about how terrible it tastes. And people were trying to figure out why people were drinking it. Well, I did a little research. Brian G, seeing the cooking wines and sherry in my car, had to ask why and he helped me finish up the research, so thanks to him as well. Here’s the deal. Turns out, you can buy 3 bottles of cooking sherry or wine for $7.77 or $2.59 a piece.
Cheap, sure, but given that the red and white cooking wines have 12% alcohol in an approximately 12 ounce bottle
it seems like you might just go get a cheap 12 pack . . . or 30 pack and get a much better deal.
The issue is that cooking wines and cooking sherry are not considered alcohol at the grocery store. They are considered food, so you can go to the grocery store and buy them with your Quest card (food stamps). In fact, the cooking sherry and wines are not in the alcohol section, they are with the salad dressings
(By the way, one outstanding question I have is if you can buy them after 9:00 at night? Have to remember to try that. I would guess not, but I’m not sure given it is “food”.)
Anyways, the cooking sherry is the preferred item, because it has 17% alcohol in the same sized bottle. But it also has an even higher salt content. The wines have 8% of the recommended daily allowance for salt. Sherry had 230mg or 10% and there are 13 servings per bottle.
Can you imagine drinking a few bottles of this stuff and how high it would raise your blood pressure?
In order to drink the stuff, they mix it with mountain dew or other soda. I can’t imagine that really covers up the taste of all that salt, but I haven’t gotten anyone to agree to try drinking it with me. Tho, I have heard a few people tell me they tried drinking it in high school and it does, indeed, taste terrible. But that doesn’t seem to stop anyone, check out how empty the shelves were around 9:30 in the morning, there is about a case of the stuff cleared off the shelves (from the night before?)
One last item of interest. When meeting with Mayor Soglin he indicated that Capitol Centre Foods say that they have to sell it. I’m not sure what the question was, but I am guessing that this means that if they sell it to the public they have to sell it to people with Quest cards, which would make sense to me, but can’t they just pull it from the shelves entirely and not sell it at all, irregardless of how people pay for it? I can’t imagine they are REQUIRED to sell it to take the Quest card.
Then again, I guess this is not appropriate to suggest, because it is “bad for business”, since they seem to be selling quite a bit of it and must be profiting from it. All hail the almighty profit!
Um . . . if you want to contact them and ask them to be good corporate citizens, you may do so here: manager@capcentremarket.com
Listerine is another favorite (I don’t know if you can buy it with Quest cards). 40% alcohol, but is really bad for people to drink. . .the truly alcoholic won’t be stopped until they choose to stop. There is always a way which is why prohibition, in any form, simply doesn’t work. Btw, they would get a much better deal by going to Trader Joe’s or Jenifer St. Market for the $3 bottles of 750 ml wine. . . Maybe the city should advertise that to get them out of the downtown. 😉
Listerine packs a whopping 40% alcohol content and people drink it in the same way when the cooking wines aren’t available. Instead of trying to prove that prohibition still doesn’t work when you are trying to ban something that anyone can make (distilling, brewing, etc), come up with some real money to work with the chronic folks and help them to see the need to change their life (and accept that a small percentage simply won’t). By the way, the folks buying cooking wine would do a lot better by going to Trader Joe’s, Jenifer St Market and Woodman’s to get the $3/bottle or less 750 ml wine selection. At least then they would be out of the eyesight of the precious downtown elite.
“To hell with poverty! Let’s get drunk on cheap wine!”–Gang of Four
My husband worked his way through college working at a convenience store. Nyquil was popular for the same reason. He always assumed if there was a will there was a way. He would try to talk them out of it, but they bought it week after week anyway.
irregardless is not a word. this article is not credible.
You wrote a whole thing on why people might drink this and you refused to take a single sip? Pretentious. You will get no where in your career as a journalist with that kind of attitude. I hope you have changed since.
dude, you need to proofread your shit… your spelling and grammar are deplorable.
better yet…drink Vanilla (not THE IMITATION)
People drink this (Sherry) crap because they are going through with drawl from Vodka or whatever, from the night before. The real issue is helping people get off the alcohol with out having to suffer and then MAYBE can be convinced to being sick of being sick. Let’s stop band-aid solutions to the REAL problem. Oh sure lets drug test and omit cooking Sherry from quest card purchases, but let me tell you that are less legitimate ways to help yourself from Alcohol!!! Do you want to help people or create a whole new crime wave….. Christ….get smart
LOL! I used to drink that shit and pure vanilla all the time when I was under 21. I never got carded for it either except only once at the self checkout at a tops. My favorite was the Holland House brand of 12 oz cooking sherry which clocked in at around 17% and the McKormic 16 ounce bottle of Vanilla Extract which is 41% Alc by volume. Both you can still get at any age at Walmart or similar super markets.
Vanilla mixes best with any brand coke and I never mixed the cooking sherry with anything. I just drank the whole bottle really fast.
40% wtf flavour or brand of listerine were you drinking? I drank mouthwash when I was under 21 and the highest alcohol content i could find was the golden color bottle and it didn’t matter if the brand was Listerine or not all the gold mouthwashes were 26.9% Ethyl Alcohol. Or 53.8 Proof to the Britts. All other colours and flavors were 20% or 40 proof. Did you mean to say 40 proof?
You mean 40 proof? I drank Listerine before they’re all 20% except the gold kind which is 26.9%.