A wine cooler is an alcoholic beverage made from wine and fruit juice, often in combination with a carbonated beverage and sugar. Traditionally home-made, wine coolers have been bottled and sold by commercial distributors since the early 1980s, especially in areas where their alcohol content, lower than wine, causes them to come under less restrictive laws than table wines. Because most of the flavor in the wine is obscured by the fruit and sugar, the wine used in wine coolers tends to be of the cheapest available grade. Since January 1991, when the United States Congress quintupled the excise tax on wine, most producers of wine coolers dropped wine from the mix, substituting it with cheaper malt liquor. These malt-based coolers, while sometimes referred to as "wine coolers", are in a diff