In 1988 I wrote a book called The Demon Drink about the defining ingredient of all alcoholic drinks. It did not exactly fly off the shelves, and at one wine tasting soon after publication I was approached by an elderly fellow taster who hissed at me, ‘How could you?’
Now that the World Health Organization is waging a war on alcohol, asserting that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption (a bit like crossing the road, then), wine drinkers are being forced to confront the least palatable aspect of their favourite drink: that it contains a toxic drug.
The WHO message makes a good headline, one that has been widely circulated without comment or analysis, with the result that some countries have already reacted. The Finnish alcohol monopoly Alko justifies its role as ‘protecting’ Finns from alcohol. And, in a television segment featuring wine-drinking, the Dutch are being told that this will expose them to seven different cancers.
Some of us will remember the early 1990s when it was claimed on CBS’s influential 60 Minutes news programme that a Mediterranean diet, necessarily including wine, would stave off cardiovascular disease. So how did wine go from medicine to medical no-no?
Much of the explanation lies deep within the O of the WHO. Felicity Carter is a journalist who works harder than most of us at getting to the truth. After considerable investigative work, she finally reported on 1 April 2024 in Wine Business Monthly, tracing the surprisingly close links between temperance groups and several of those advising the WHO on alcohol policy.
At a conference last week on wine and health organised by the think tank Areni Global at the headquarters of the Institute of Masters of Wine, she explained that as soon as her article was published, ‘all hell broke loose in my inbox. Some very well-placed individuals, from government officials to lobbyists and scientists, said I didn’t go far enough in my exposé.’
Carter has studied the NGOs who work with the WHO on alcohol policy in great detail and has observed that many of them are veterans of the much more understandable campaign to limit and control sales of tobacco. She claims that they are using the same tactics towards alcohol, even though there is no medical proof that a drink is as harmful as a cigarette, attempting to ‘denormalise’ drinking by eroding the extent to which we accept and tolerate it.
They are focusing on the total amount consumed rather than on how it is consumed, which varies enormously, and which consumers need most help in dealing with it, often because of their genetic make-up. (I am banking on having inherited the genes of my paternal grandmother, who was a great fan of gin but, when in her eighties she heard on the radio that too much gin was bad for you, switched to whisky and lived to the age of 98.)
The timing of the WHO’s anti-alcohol bombshell, which was dropped in January last year, was also a little strange as global alcohol consumption has actually been declining steadily – in the case of wine, since 2007. Total global wine consumption last year was the lowest in this century. The number of abstainers from any form of alcohol – whether for health, fitness or financial reasons, or a preference for other intoxicants – was increasing considerably long before the WHO weighed in.
For a more balanced and informed view, I particularly enjoyed an article on alcohol and health published in Harvard Public Health at the end of August this year, written by Kenneth Mukamal and Eric B Rimm, who have been researching the topic for a total of 60 years. It’s all in the title: ‘Is alcohol good or bad for you? Yes.’
We can see clearly that alcohol was the cause of harm when a drunk falls in front of a car. But the associations between drinking and various diseases are simply that: observed correlations rather than known causes. Those correlations are particularly strong with breast cancer and cancer of the oesophagus and mouth. It therefore makes sense for female drinkers, especially those with a history of breast cancer in the family, to be sure to have regular mammograms. And it is also sensible for anyone who drinks or tastes alcohol regularly to have a close relationship with a dental hygienist who can look out for any changes inside the mouth. Wine professionals certainly should.
In response to the Sober October initiative that has sprouted up to mirror Dry January, my Napa Valley counterpart Karen MacNeil spearheaded a campaign last month, Come Over October, in which Americans were encouraged to celebrate wine’s special contribution to conviviality. There is certainly joy in sharing a bottle with friends, though I have to confess that a certain group of wine-minded friends and I share too many bottles several times a year. We know it’s bad for us, but we continue to do it because the sensual and cerebral pleasure outweighs the lack of mental acuity the next morning. (My predecessor as FT wine writer Edmund Penning-Rowsell used to describe how he felt after a particularly heavy wine tasting as ‘rather jaded’.)
I do drink, certainly taste, wine virtually every day, even if less and less of it as I get older. In the old days my husband and I could manage a bottle between us, but not any more. The amount of pleasure that wine gives me is inordinate, but it’s not a guilt-free exercise, as I am uncomfortably aware that there is a cohort of drinkers who regard wine-drinking not as an intellectually stimulating adventure but as an addictive necessity. While I feel no desire to drink a wine unless it’s different from the last, such compulsive drinkers are presumably less discriminating.
Under threat from health campaigners and aghast at falling sales, European wine producers hit back a month ago with the launch of the VITAEVINO declaration, a petition to preserve ‘wine culture and heritage’; to acknowledge the economic role of wine production; and the right to enjoy wine in moderation. There’s also a Brussels-based Wine in Moderation campaign whose Wine in Moderation Day is this Friday, 8 November. I’m all for this. Moderation as always is the key. But it’s probably dangerous to argue that wine is a special exception among alcoholic drinks on a cultural level. Of course, it’s an endlessly fascinating subject with its millennia of history, complex and ever-changing geographical expression and famous affinity with food. But then drinks such as artisan cider, local rums and, of course, whiskies aplenty can make similar claims.
We are right to be cautious in our consumption of alcoholic drinks. I try to drink as much water as wine but many others will welcome the increasing availability of interesting non-alcoholic, or reduced-alcohol, drinks. The Champagne giant Moët Hennessy, no less, recently took a stake in a non-alcoholic sparkling wine, French Bloom. The race is on in the wine industry to find a delicious alcohol-free version of wine – beer and spirits having already managed it. I have yet to taste an alcohol-free version of wine that is preferable to a glass of water but, knowing how much R&D work is being devoted to solving the puzzle, I’m confident that it will happen.
In the meantime, I would remind readers of the virtues of half bottles (a specialist UK retailer of them is the Little Fine Wine Company run by a fellow Master of Wine) and of those wines that are naturally low in alcohol such as fruity Mosel Rieslings that may be only 7% alcohol and Moscato d’Asti that’s often only 5.5%. And in the UK, now that duty rates are linked to alcoholic strength, we’re seeing a fall in the average alcoholic strength of wines on supermarket shelves – a welcome corrective to the overall increase in the last few years thanks to warmer summers and riper grapes.
Next year the US will revise its official dietary guidelines and a UN declaration on non-communicable diseases is also expected, with lobbyists lining up to influence the alcohol-related aspects of these diktats. I belong to a generation whose parents had no qualms about smoking, nor about drinking and driving, something our children would never dream of doing. Societal behaviours can change for the better. I’m just concerned that the drivers of social change be based on facts rather than dogma.
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