A peek at the road trip, and cheap wine

Last night I got drunk off a three dollar bottle of wine. Actually, it was $2.77, and I'm not proud of it. but let me explain (also, the shift key on this computer doesn't really work (and neither does the space key apparently) so I apologize for some errors).
Madic and I had decided the only way to make it safely through our moving process (2,000+ miles of driving, countless hours in a cramped car, and a broken ipod) was to treat it as a full blown road trip. Which means - go all out - spend money without thinking about it - cry later.

This meant packing our entire lives into a tiny subaru sedan - so much that we had zero visibility and very, very little leg room (my legs are still getting used to the fact that they can stretch out). This meant deciding, once we found out we had no where to stay in Pennsylvania or Maryland, to drive through the night and sleep two hours in the parking lot of a Huddle Hut somewhere in Virginia - actually I only slept an hour because I was convinced someone was going to break into the car and kill me.

Thankfully we stopped in at my aunt's house in North Carolina where she fed us, gave us a bathroom to shower in, and got us sufficiently drunk. She also provided a pool where we spent two days being extremely lazy and dreaming of moving to Charlotte rather than Austin (that may have just been me).

Then it was off again, and oh, look at that! Our path to Austin went straight through New Orleans. We stopped for two nights. And this is where things got messy. Madic and I morphed into full vacation mode. We were in New Orleans! We had to try everything - do everything. Eat craw fish to our hearts content, sample alligator, drink a Jester, drink a hand grenade, sing karaoke, ride a bull, dance in the streets. And somehow wake up and do it all over again. We had no hesitation dolling out money, sad to say a fifty dollar bill came out a couple of times. We were there to have fun.

Soon the fun was over, we crammed back into our little sedan and set off again. About halfway through that last eight hour drive, it hit us. Holy craw fish we have no money. It was a stressful drive. When we finally got into our apartment, paid our first months rent, got the batteries to blow up our air mattresses and bought a $25.00 coffee table (our one piece of furniture) off craigslist, there was little left for anything else. (Don't be concerned, this does not include the next couple months rent - I've got that covered. Food on the other hand...).
We got to work scrambling for jobs. Sending out resume after resume, stopping in to pick up applications to any establishment that would hand one out. I've been living off peanut butter and rice and salsa. Which brought me to yesterday, strolling around the Wal-Mart Superstore hoping to find a cheap loaf of gluten free bread, but instead stumbled across a display of wine for $2.77. I stared at the display for awhile, fighting with my inner wine snob. It had been five days since I had any alcohol and a week since I had wine. And I love my glass of wine a few nights a week. So I picked one up and hurried away.
I planned to have only one glass, but after the debacle of trying to open it (how did I forget my wine key???) I needed two. And that cheap bottle of wine packed a lot of punch. Drunk.

My question is, how in the world can anyone sell wine that cheap?? what is it made of?