Wine Cooler
ClassicWhite wine, lemon-lime soda, and fruit. The bottled 1980s icon, built fresh.
Sweet, fruity, and fizzy, with the soda softening the wine into something closer to a sparkling fruit punch. Nostalgic on purpose — this is the flavor an entire decade of wine drinkers cut their teeth on.
Ingredients
- 3 oz White Wine
- 3 oz Lemon-Lime Soda
- 1 Orange Sliced
- 2 Strawberry Sliced
- Orange slice · optional garnish
- strawberry · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Fill a wine glass with cubed ice.
- 2
Pour in the white wine, then top with lemon-lime soda.
- 3
Stir once, gently.
- 4
Garnish with an orange slice and a strawberry.
The Story
Wine coolers were a genuine 1980s phenomenon in the United States, sold pre-bottled by brands like Bartles & Jaymes and California Cooler as a sweeter, more approachable entry point to wine for a generation that found straight wine intimidating. The category collapsed by the early 1990s under wine-cooler-specific tax hikes and a shift to flavored malt beverages, but the drink itself — wine, lemon-lime soda, and fruit over ice — never actually needed a bottling line, and holds up fine built fresh.
Recipe card
The whole recipe in one shareable image.
