Just kidding, there won’t be Handmaid’s Tale wine after all

Well, The Handmaid’s Tale wine may have had the shortest shelf life possible, since it didn’t even last a day on the market.

Yesterday, we here at Culturess brought you not only the news that The Handmaid’s Tale would have bottles of wine sold to tie in with the show, but also recommended some episodes for each of the characters. Fortunately, you can still watch the episodes, but you won’t be able to drink the wines with them. Per Entertainment Weekly and Pret-A-Reporter, the wine has already been pulled. Indeed, if you go to Lot18‘s page for the collection, you’ll simply get a “Page Not Found” response.

What can we say that Twitter hasn’t already said, as Pret-A-Reporter points out? In particular, the copy was what earned the internet’s ire; we don’t disagree that it was bad, to put it as mildly as possible.

Of course, some made the case that “The Word,” today’s episode and the conclusion of season 2, may justify the wine being brought back (or, you know, you could just buy another wine with less terrible marketing and that doesn’t need to be shipped to you):

Honestly, there are some shows where tie-ins of any kind don’t feel particularly right. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of them. Would you buy a June Pop! from Funko? Even a T-shirt with the infamous Handmaid uniform feels like too much, particularly when that same uniform has been used as a symbol of protest in the real world.

Moreover, why wine? Drinking doesn’t happen too often on the show anyway. For a show like Game of Thrones, on the other hand, the plethora of brews from Brewery Ommegang pairs well (pun intended) because characters drink all the time.

Yes, MGM also has a lot going on with its debt, but perhaps trying to sell $20 bottles of wine … well, that probably won’t put a dent in the loans anyway.

Next: The Handmaid's Tale season 2 finale review: The Word

So there’s not much justification for the idea on that front, either.