A wine cooler is an made from and , often in combination with a and .

Traditionally home-made, beginning in the early 1980s, wine coolers have been bottled and sold by commercial distributors, especially in are as where their lower alcohol content causes them to come under less restrictive laws than wine itself. Because most of the flavor in the wine is obscured by the fruit and sugar, the wine used in wine coolers tends to be of the cheapest available grade. Since January 1991 when United States Congress , most producers of wine coolers dropped wine from the mix, substituting cheaper . These malt-based coolers, while sometimes referred to as "wine coolers," are in a different category of beverage - sometimes called "malt beverage," "malternative," or just "cooler." refers to their malt beverage as a "flavored malt cooler".

In , however, wine coolers became popular in 2004, when the German Government imposed an extra duty on of 0.80 to 0.90 euro per bottle effective August 1, 2004. To circumvent higher taxation, some German producers have switched to wine coolers, which are being marketed in the same way as alcopops.