The bloom had started to come off the Rose in the 1980s, and Marvin even considered selling the company. One of the oddities of the Sandses success as wine moguls is that Wild Irish Rose is one of the very few wines they actually made themselves.Īnother, if it can be called a wine, was the wine cooler Sun Country. Taking over for his father in the 1970s, Marvin bought out venerable labels Old Duke and Manischewitz, adding two more cheap wines to the stack. “Stack ’em high, let ’em fly” was Marvin’s business philosophy, as reported in Forbes magazine. The Sandses plowed their profits into purchases of destitute wineries and bottom-shelf labels, a cycle they would repeat all the way to the top of the wine world. Richards turned out to be a good seller, if not an instant hit. The problem was solved, Cattell writes, when the sales manager at Richard’s happened to mention a Brodway show he saw that included a performance of the old ballad “My Wild Irish Rose.” The name struck some of kind of chord with Marvin, and so was born Richards Wild Irish Rose. But, according to the book Wines of Eastern North America, by Hudson Cattell, he feared the French pronunciation would be confusing or off-putting to his primary customers, winos. Although it was in no sense a French-style rosé wine, Marvin wanted to suggest rosé to potential dessert wine customers looking for a discount juice. The final product had a pinkish coloration. Marvin concocted a “dessert” wine originally made from a mad-scientist’s blend of labrusca, concord, elvira, and catawba grapes, but spiked with 190-proof brandy. Mack put his son Marvin in charge, even though Marvin had little experience in the wine business. Mack stayed busy with a winery he bought in Virginia, which he renamed Richard’s Wine Cellars after his grandson, three-year-old Richard. Following Repeal he became a partner in an operation called Geffen Industries, which sold suspiciously watered-down wine until the feds forced him to close up shop. One Mordechai (Mack) Sands got his start in the booze business as a bootlegger, smuggling illegal liquor from Canada into his native New York in the 1930s. The murky origins of Richards go back to the days of Prohibition. Maybe there is no explanation for the success of a street wine named after a 3-year-old boy. Delicious taste doesn’t explain its staying power. Richards Wild Irish Rose has been helping people survive cold nights on sidewalks and park benches since 1954.
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