I’m not even big on sweet wines or sodas, but somehow the combination worked, even if only by its ridiculousness. My best friend and I had a brilliant name for it: WineDew. This might be why the first mixed drink I ever began to hold close to my heart is the criminal combination of Barefoot Pink Moscato (or whatever other shitty pink or white wine I could get ahold of) mixed with Mountain Dew. But growing up in a rural region of Western Massachusetts called the Hilltowns, I come from a community of hillbillies. I’m not from Appalachia, and today I probably look a lot more like a coastal media elite.
The early marketing even referred to it as “ hillbilly joy juice, ” featuring a mascot named Willy the Hillbilly.īut I feel the same about Mountain Dew as I do Joe Dirt : They’re making fun of us, yes, but in some ways, they’re representing us, too. Even the name, a reference to its Appalachian origins and a slang term for moonshine, is suggestive of hillbillies. There is no beverage more closely associated with being “white trash” than Mountain Dew.
