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The bottle
Barefoot x Oreo Thins Red Blend Wine, $24.99 for shipment of two bottles (with a package of Oreo Thins)
The back story
And you thought things were already weird enough in the world of booze when Arby’s came out with its French fry-flavored vodka.
But no Barefoot Wine, the top-selling purveyor of budget vino (its bottles are generally $6 to $10), has partnered with Nabisco’s beloved brand of Oreo cookies
MDLZ,
— specifically, the Thins kind — to create a sip that tries to cover both bases. As the bottle’s label says, “Name a better duo than red wine & chocolate.”
This is obviously as much about marketing as wine-making. To wit: The bottle was a limited-edition offering and sold out in one day earlier this week (don’t worry — we secured a sample before then). But it does seemingly speak to the Barefoot ethos, or as the company’s longtime winemaker Jen Wall said in a statement: “Barefoot Wine is a brand that stands for fun, flavor, and expressiveness — all values that Oreo Thins upholds as well.” Meanwhile, the Oreo team is using the wine to position its Thins line as a more sophisticated, adult-style version of the cookie we all dunked in milk as kids. “Oreo Thins cookies have always been the perfect Oreo cookie for adults — so we are excited to showcase a new grown-up pairing with Barefoot Wine,” said Oreo Thins brand manager Sydney Kranzmann in a statement.
Barefoot, a label whose roots go back to the ‘60s and is now part of the E. and J. Gallo wine portfolio, didn’t provide many details about what goes into the Oreo wine. The label simply identifies it as a “grape wine with natural flavors” and notes the wine’s “jammy dark fruit aromas” and its “flavors of chocolate, hints of blackberry and dark cherries and smooth lingering finish.”
What we think about it
Blech! This is a tough sip to swallow — there’s something unnatural, unseemly and just plain unappetizing about a wine that’s like a liquid version of those cheap chocolate-covered cherries you buy by the box at a post-Valentine’s Day drugstore discount-bin sale. The only salvation comes in the form of those Oreo Thins, a delectable version of the classic cookie that does actually make sense with this — the chocolate in the cookie seems to nullify some of the wine’s sheer weirdness. Or maybe we like Oreos so much they made us forget about the bottle.
How to enjoy it
In short, don’t even bother trying it (and as we said, the bottle is already sold out, though perhaps it will end up in some kind of alternate-universe wine auction). If you’re really a fan of Barefoot, just get a bottle of one of its many affordable wines — we sorta liked one of the label’s sparkling offerings years ago — and let it go at that. Or just stick with the cookies.
