Side Note

There’s a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ wine now

The next time you ask your sommelier for a wine that goes well with a dystopian totalitarian state, they’ll finally have a more specific answer than “yeah, everything on the shelf.” As People announced today, wine website Lot18 is selling wines branded after The Handmaid’s Tale, with one variety each for characters Offred, Ofglen and Serena Joy. “These are the three wines to enjoy while you watch these women's stories unfold on screen, or while you contemplate their impossible situations afterwards,” the site said on its website. Fun!

This isnt the first time Lot18 has offered show tie-in wines. You can currently buy wines for a number of shows including The Walking Dead (and special “Ladies of The Walking Dead package!), Saturday Night Live, The Bachelor, and Portlandia. What makes their Handmaid’s Tale variety so interesting is that most people drink while watching Handmaid’s Tale because they are so stressed out, as the show delves into an increasingly harrowing portrayal of a future society where women have barely any rights, and drink to escape the pain.

That’s true to life, in a sense. Lot18 is just one company getting in on the pop culture fandom market. Just last year, Netflix and a California marijuana dispensary offered a dozen weed strains branded for 10 of its original series. One, “Poussey Riot”, was named for Poussey Washington, a character on Orange is the New Black who is incarcerated for possession and intent to sell a drug that is suggested to be marijuana... and is then killed by a prison guard. Branded marketing is fun, until it isn’t.