Bravo Orders Ten Episodes Of 'America's Next Top Alcoholic'

Two days after voting to redirect its marketing budget toward the heaviest tier of drinkers, the National Vintners Alliance announced Thursday that it has ordered ten episodes of America’s Next Top Alcoholic, a weekly competition series in which twenty-four contestants drink against one another until one remains, sources confirmed. “It’s a rigorous format. Every week is a different skill,” said Brenda Lisk, 41, supervising casting producer, adding that contestants who fail to advance are asked to surrender their glass and exit alone through the cellar door. “Week two is the Excuse — you give the same story to a boss, a spouse, and a landlord, and we score how well the three of them line up. Week three is the Refill, which is nine glasses at a dinner party for six without anybody at that table noticing. Week five is the Reset, where you’ve got twenty minutes to make yourself presentable for a two o’clock dentist appointment. Then the bottom two go to the Nurse. She asks how many drinks a week, they answer, and whoever can’t sell it goes home.”

Lisk said producers filled the field in six weeks without running a single casting notice. Teams worked the sidewalks outside wine bars in Portland, Nashville, and Scottsdale between 2 and 3 a.m., ran a second unit out of a hollowed-out endcap in the wine aisle of a Kroger outside Columbus, and supplemented both through a practice the casting bible calls gutter recovery. “You can’t cast this show from an application. Anyone sober enough to fill out an application isn’t at the level we require,” Lisk said. The Kroger unit accounts for eleven of the twenty-four finalists, all of whom were removed through the loading door on the north side of the building, and two of whom have since been reported missing by family in Ohio.

The series was greenlit over initial objections from Bravo, where it is set to air. Network executives raised concerns during development that at least eight returning franchises could be converted into America’s Next Top Alcoholic with minor retooling, and that the Alliance was effectively being handed a slate Bravo already owns. Those concerns were resolved in July, when the Alliance agreed to a title card clarifying that this one is scored. Eliminated contestants will receive a branded decanter and a case of the season’s presenting sponsor. The runner-up takes home a twelve-year supply of wine. The grand prize is a liver. “A new one. We think that’s a fitting reward for somebody who gives us everything they have,” said Dale Ostrander, 54, the Alliance’s vice president of category strategy, who stressed that the organization is making no health claims of any kind in connection with the series and considers the entire production a favor to the men and women involved. “Mostly we just wanted to give the modern young person a role model. Somebody a fourteen-year-old can point at. And it’s extremely healthy. I’m not claiming that. I’m saying it.” At press time, the Alliance had not yet identified a source for the liver.