Moderating my drinking: it's a real pain, albeit with some gain
How easy is it to stay within the UK government's recommended guidelines of 14 units a week when you love wine? Plus: a taste of Canada
I saw a fantastic film the other day called A Real Pain. It hasn’t received an Oscar nomination for best film, although it deserves one, but Kieran Culkin has been nominated for best supporting actor and Jesse Eisenberg (who also directed and stars in the film) for best original screenplay.
The film centres around two cousins, Benji (Culkin) and David (Eisenberg), who travel to Poland for a Jewish heritage tour in order to connect with their family history and pay homage to their late grandmother by visiting her former house.
It’s both funny and sad, and the performances are excellent – the character differences between Benji and David are at the heart of the film and Culkin deserves an Oscar (he’s already won a Bafta for supporting actor). The film is also short at 90 minutes, which is something of an anomaly these days, so no need to devote an entire afternoon or evening to viewing it (like you would have to do for Oscar-nominated The Brutalist).
You may be wondering why I’ve started this newsletter on a subject other than wine, but the truth is, I haven’t been drinking much wine recently – at least not as much as I have in the past – and have been seeking alternative methods of enjoyment as I attempt to stay within the UK government’s recommended alcohol guidelines of 14 units a week.
Needless to say, drinking too much alcohol can result in serious health problems, and I’m at an age where I need to start cutting back a bit, but it’s been tough – it’s been a real pain (excuse the pun).
One unit of alcohol is classed as 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol, and you can measure the amount of units in a drink by multiplying the volume of the drink by the abv, and then dividing by 1,000. So, the number of units in a 175ml glass of wine with an abv of 13% is 2.275. If you drink a bottle of wine with an abv of 13% then that’s 9.75 units. A bottle of wine with an abv of 15% equates to 11.25 units, so depending on your preference of wine style, the UK recommends you drink approximately no more than a bottle of wine plus a couple of glasses a week.
In the past I drank far more than that, and it fluctuated depending on my diary for the week. On a social night out it was far too easy to get through at least one bottle, so if I had two nights out a week, that would already be approximately 20 units. I tended to have two nights a week without drinking (the UK recommendation), but the three other nights when I was at home I tended to have at least two glasses of wine with a meal, so that’s approximately another 14 units on top of the 20 units. In total I would hazard a guess that, on average, I was drinking around 34 units a week – more than double the recommended intake.
I’m guessing this is not an excessive amount when you compare it with some professionals in the wine trade. For example, I read somewhere that Steven Spurrier, the famed wine merchant and creator of the iconic 1976 Judgement of Paris, consumed on average a bottle a day. He lived until 80.
I’m not in the trade, so I can’t comment on current drinking habits (but it would be interesting to find out), but I would have thought the long lunch is a thing of the past, although Instagram reels of popular wine content creators gives the impression they are drinking every day, such is the vast array of bottles they promote on a daily basis.
Of course, 14 units a week of alcohol is only a guideline, and how much you can drink in a week without an impact on health is down to personal circumstances. I could almost certainly drink more without it damaging my health, but I decided at the start of the year to cut down, at least in the short term (and modify my diet).
There has been plenty of debate in relation to what constitutes safe drinking limits, with some studies concluding that there isn’t a safe number of units to consume (see Canada, in the flights section before). An opposing view is that moderate drinking can be good for you, with those epidemiologists in this group often pointing to a well-established J-curve that shows that teetotallers have a higher risk of premature death than moderate drinkers. Christopher Snowden’s newsletter ‘Modern Drinking And Its Enemies’ elaborates on these arguments.
Under my new regime I don’t drink Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday (unless I’m on holiday or have a social engagement). When I go to trade tastings I spit out all of the wine, and I even spat out everything I tasted at a Rioja a couple of weeks ago, despite paying £50 for a ticket. You still digest some alcohol even if you spit out but the amount is negligible.
At home I tend to limit myself to one 175ml glass of wine (sometimes two) with a meal on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which is a rather pleasant approach to drinking if the wine is of a decent quality (I use a Coravin to preserve the remainder of the bottle, so I don’t feel the need to drink it all before the wine becomes too oxidised).
The real challenge is when drinking out with friends and colleagues. I am a journalist, a profession not really renowned for alcohol abstention, and after-work drinks have often, in the past, turned into fairly hefty sessions
The real challenge is when drinking out with friends and colleagues. I am a journalist, a profession not really renowned for alcohol abstention, and after-work drinks have often, in the past, turned into fairly hefty sessions (involving beer, not wine), so those have had to be curbed. It is harder to moderate drinking when out with fellow wine lovers, as everybody wants to try lots of different wine and the units can quickly accumulate. Needless to say, these can be extremely pleasurable evenings, and I’m left feeling that I’m sacrificing enjoyment for health on occasion.
And perhaps this is the crux of the dilemma, as surely personal mood is a component of health, and restricting something you enjoy doing will, in the long run, have a detrimental impact on happiness.
Am I a healthier person now than three months ago? Yes - I have lost weight and my tolerance for exercise has increased. Am I a happier person? Probably not – despite devoting more time to watching some great films (as well as A Real Pain, A Complete Unknown is also recommended), and having the capacity to run for longer.
In time I will probably start to exceed the UK government guidelines, provided there is no detrimental impact on my health, but without resorting to continuous binge drinking. Like a well-made, fine wine, I guess it’s all about achieving the correct balance.
Flight 44: Canada
Given I have focused on drinking in moderation it seems appropriate to focus on Canada for this week’s flight. The country’s national recommendations, published a couple of years ago, state that zero alcohol is the only risk-free approach, and two drinks a week (a drink equates to 142ml of wine with an abv of 12%) is the recommended intake and deemed “low risk”).
Let’s hope Canadians don’t adopt this advice: some of the country’s wine is excellent and more of it deserves to be drunk. Below are my favourite wines from a Canada drop-in tasting at the beginning of February:
Quails’ Gate Stewart Family Reserve Pinot Noir 2021, Okanagan Valley (£48.55 VINVM)
Intense on nose with sweet spice. Quite full-bodied, great structure, fine-grained tannins. Complex.
Cloudsley Cellars, Foxcroft Vineyard Chardonnay 2019, Twenty Mile Bench, Ontario (RRP £49 but unfortunately hard to purchase in the UK at present)
Savoury owing to oak influence and flinty. Green fruit and honeysuckle. Excellent freshness and balance on the palate. Long finish. Would love to get hold of a bottle of this.
Cloudsley Cellars, Hanck Vineyards Pinot Noir 2019, Twenty Mile Bench, Ontario (RRP £60)
Delicate and ripe red-berried fruit – elegance over power. It reminded me a bit of Felton Road pinot from Central Otago in New Zealand.
Henry Of Pelham Riesling 2021, Niagara Peninsula, Ontario (£16.25, Cellar Door Wines)
A good budget riesling – ripe and concentrated. Only 10.5% abv – that will please the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
Glad you enjoyed it David. Yes, exercise is great. Non-alcoholic beer less so
Another great post, Dan. As I’m getting on, yet feeling like a naughty kid chastised by the nurse at my annual blood pressure review, I’ve also tried to adapt my drinking habits. I’ve found that focusing on exercise actually makes you enjoy the days without alcohol and then on nights out, some ‘zebra’ drinking is a great tactic. Definitely with zero-alcohol beers coming on leaps and bounds, alternating ‘proper’ points with alcohol-free ones leads to more refreshed (and date I say, smug) mornings-after.