OOn a hot summer evening several years ago, in a well-connected Parisian holiday home in Provence, I witnessed a French magic trick. There were about ten of us gathered: eight from France’s intellectual elite and four thirsty Brits. The host brought out a bottle of champagne and then poured equal micromeasures into twelve compartments.
The quartet of these islands watched in disbelief as he accomplished this extraordinary feat of rationing, promptly drank the meager contents of our glasses as soon as we handed them over, and then waited impatiently for the second bottle to be opened.
As we eventually learned, much to our chagrin, there was no second bottle, yet the Parisians sipped their champagne very happily for what seemed like an eternity, chatting and enjoying the beautiful surroundings on that balmy August evening.
I remember thinking, as I looked at my terminally empty glass, that this was a different way of drinking, of enjoying the wine, of enjoying pleasure with the usual self-discipline of a squirrel hoarding nuts. And I also remember thinking that I definitely didn’t want to be a part of it.
But already three weeks into my first dry January, I’m wondering if there isn’t something to admire, or even adopt, about Gallic restraint on social drinking.
It’s not just the well-publicized health costs of consuming alcohol – reportedly the fifth biggest cause of death and disease around the world – that is prompting this damning reconsideration. It is also the crude aesthetic of excess. Chief among these are undoubtedly those fishbowl-sized glasses in which you often see wine served in British pubs. They represent the opposite of good taste, because you don’t have to be an oenophile to realize that a third of a bottle – 250 ml – in your oversized glass is just the trop.
A recent study from the University of Cambridge, carried out over a four-week trial in 21 bars and pubs, found that removing 250ml wine measures from the menu reduced the total amount people drank by 7.6%. It’s a classic piece of nudge psychology from the paternalistic school of behavioral economics and as such its findings will undoubtedly be ignored by the drinks industry – the people who increased wine standards in the first place.
The more alcohol sold, the more profit. But it will only be a short-term gain if the trend of café closures continues. There were 46,800 pubs in Britain in 2020, up from 55,400 a decade earlier. Our drinking culture is changing. There has been a steady shift from beer to wine, and from pubs to home, over the past half century. Today, younger people, Generation Z labeled ‘sober curious’ (interested in drinking less) or ‘Californian sober’ (no booze but microdosing on mushrooms or cannabis), are less likely than previous generations to drink alcohol or go outside . pubs.
In terms of cancer prevention and liver preservation, it’s hard to see this rejection of booze as anything other than a healthy development. But we have to be careful not to throw the kid out with the beer.
Because there is a good argument that says alcohol helped create civilization. According to Edward Slingerland, a professor of philosophy, who laid out his case in his 2021 book Drunk: How We Drunk, Danced, and Stumbled on the Way to Civilizationthe fermentation of beer 13,000 years ago allowed us to turn off the self-interested focus of our prefrontal cortex, and in our temporarily altered state we were able to build trust and communal innovation. Drawing on anthropological data, Slingerland suggests that alcohol was not a byproduct of agriculture; rather, that agriculture was the result of our need to increase the production of alcohol. He also cites a study showing that patent filings in the US fell after Prohibition and only rose with the creation of speakeasies.
He attributes some of this decline in creativity to the inhibition of sobriety, but much of it to the absence of social interaction that caused the closure of bars. The problem is that nowadays people increasingly drink with just one person or alone, and they drink stronger alcohol – in the 1970s the alcohol by volume of a bottle of wine was probably around 10%. , while today this is 13-14%.
Since it was first created, alcohol consumption has been a heavily socialized ritual, not a solitary pastime. We tend to celebrate the Bacchanalian drink, but these were exceptions rather than a way of life.
To make the most of what alcohol has given us, while minimizing its worst side effects, we need to create modern rituals or social rules that make sense in today’s world. One place to start might be to encourage the idea that excessive drinking—or drinking from a huge glass—is, well, a little uncool.
“Moderation in all things – including moderation” is the old drunken adage attributed to everyone from the ancient Greeks to Oscar Wilde. It’s not a bad guideline to live life: boire with moderation, with only the occasional British thirst. With that in mind, I’m eagerly awaiting February 1st.
Andrew Anthony is an Observer writer