Call me crazy, but maybe Overhung should try Manischewitz kosher wine - to 'wine drinkers' it's notoriously bad, but it might be more along the lines of 'kool-aid', plus it's cheap. Some other crazy stunts to try would be adding a little salt or sugar to the wine. Adding salt is an old-school 'hack' from back when bad wine was really, really bad. (Personally, I think that adding sugar to a red wine would be gross, but then, I like red wine and I'm not 'drinking it under doctor's orders'!
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Everyone has been suggesting inexpensive Aussie Shirazes and Shiraz blends, but that may be sort of the opposite of 'kool-aid'. These wines have lots of 'bang for the buck' that red wine likers, uh, like. They are made to be fairly big, with a fair amount of tannins, acidity, fruit/berry and peppery-ness and they are often 'accelerated' in terms of adding as much oak flavor as possible (I've heard that some mfrs run the wine through wood chips to imitate longer barrel aging.) These may be the opposite of what you're looking for.
I think you're looking for 'light bodied' and either 'off dry' or 'slightly sweet' reds. You might try some eastern European reds if you can find them, like Hungarian, former Yugoslavian, Greek or even Turkish reds.
Bacon is meat candy.