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I will not wax nostalgic for the restrictive alcohol policies of the North, though I grant the two points in favor of the system a well-travelled friend has pointed out:

With a government monopoly as the sole importer, there is a baseline quality control. The state does not import true swill. It has, after all, some pride.

With an obscenely high sin tax on the alcohol itself, by percentage, rather that the price of the goods, it pays in the long run to drink at the higher end of the available scale quality-wise. It isn't that much more expensive once you've put down for the ethanol itself.

These are good points.

Nevertheless, I am a believer in cheap red wine. I take barbaric glee in purchasing a monster bottle of something labelled merely red, any distinction between merlot and cabernet long mongrelized out of existence. For all I know it is the blended runoff from twenty dubious varieties, pushed from the pressing floor with a squeegee. It is certainly priced as if this were the case. I do not care. I hum a merry tune to myself and upend the thing over my biggest cooking pot, hold it affectionately as it disgorges its boozy contents in gouts like a friend who has overendulged at a party.

There is after all nothing wrong with cheap red wine that a long boiling with onions and meat will not cure. On the other hand there is much wrong with the cuisine of the North that a long boiling in cheap red wine would cure, but alas, it is not to be had there.