The Dangerous Days of Drinking Cisco in College

October 28, 2026 by Shawn Collins

During college at the University of Maryland, my fraternity brothers and I heard about Cisco, a fortified wine produced by the Canandaigua Wine Company with the slogan, “Takes you by surprise.”

Cisco, also known as Liquid Crack, was known as a cheap and fast way to get drunk back then. You could get a 12-ounce bottle for like $1.50 and it was 20% alcohol by volume. One bottle contained the alcohol equivalent of five shots of 80-to-100-proof vodka,

One problem was that it tasted awful—just too sweet and artificial. So we also got a 40 of malt liquor (I chose Private Stock, “the malt liquor with the imported taste”) to chase that nasty sweetness.

All of that alcohol content got us pretty ripped. Around that time, I even went as a “Cisco Kid” on Halloween.

Because of the high alcohol content, Cisco was known to lead to blackouts and violence. The odds were about 50/50 that a guy would break up with his girlfriend on a night of Cisco drinking, yet we persisted.

In 1991, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Antonia Novello, spoke out against Cisco after it caused alcohol poisoning for more than a dozen teens. In January 1991, she denounced Cisco’s packaging and marketing and demanded repackaging so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a wine cooler.

Dr. Novello also pressured retailers to stop carrying it, and 7-Eleven removed Cisco from shelves nationwide. This negative attention was positive for us. A cheap and possibly dangerous drink appealed to a bunch of dopey guys in their early 20s.

Cisco was such a cultural touchstone that I wrote an article about it in The Greek Times, a newspaper I published at the time.

In the fall of 1992, I needed to come up with a cocktail for our Pi Kappa Alpha room-to-room party, where each of the 14 rooms in the house featured a different drink. I chose a Cisco Spritzer: a big container of Cisco mixed with 7-UP. My room was the most popular at the party.

Plus, this drink was pretty contained and didn’t make a mess, unlike my drink the previous year: Lemondrop Shooters. The next morning, when I woke up, there were ants all over my desk from the spilled sugar and simple syrup.

Like many fun, reckless things, I moved on from Cisco after I graduated college. I made it through my Cisco days without any arrests or other hassles. During that time, I wore my room key around my neck so I wouldn’t lose it.

It was a good time to stop, since I wasn’t really dealing with hangovers at that age. But just thinking about drinking a Red or Peach bottle of Cisco now gives me a headache.

Then again, if I saw it on the shelf at the liquor store, I might pick up a bottle for the nostalgia, and see how it tastes these days.

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