Cheap, bad-tasting wines are called plonk, a name that might seem to echo the sound of an empty wine bottle toppling over onto the half-eaten pizza it accompanied the night before. In fact, though, plonk has more highbrow origins: it appears to be a corruption of vin blanc, French for white wine. The transformation of vin blanc into plonk arose in Australia in the early twentieth century and spread from there to North America and Britain.