Booze

[poliphilo]

I used to like a glass of wine. With a meal. If I was cooking.  Not any more. These days I reach for the lemonade. 

We were out to dinner at a very fine restaurant the other night. Some of the party were drinking wine but I was happy with iced water. Ailz ordered a cider and shared some of the bottle with me. I didn't particularly want her to.

Non-alcoholic apple juice would have been just as nice. No- nicer. 

The change has come about gradually, without incident, over- say- the last 6 months. 

(I'm not going teetotal. This isn't about ideology. Well, maybe a teensy-weensy bit. I've never liked pubs and I'm a bit old-maidish around the alcohol culture. I've just been reading about Dylan Thomas. What a tiresome man! How I'd have hated him!)

Children rarely like the taste of alcohol. They have to be taught - conditioned- broken in.  Between 16 and 56 I was under the impression I enjoyed the stuff. I wonder if I ever really did.  Now that I'm approaching my second childhood- and no longer under pressure to impress and compete with other adults- I can say what I really think.

It tastes horrid and makes me feel poorly.

Take the nasty stuff away.

Comments

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

I love good wine, especially red wines. I like to collect them and taste them and share them with friends. I like all the subtle flavors and scents and the alchemy that goes into making them. I've never drank to get drunk- I think that my parents innoculated my sister and I against that sort of binge drinking by permitting us to have diluted wine and sips of beer as children. The drinks were for grown-ups, and we were delighted to be allowed to have a taste. When we in turn grew up, wine and beer was not such a big deal.

It was to our peers, though- in a state where such things were considered forbidden, 'sinful' and therefore desirable, many of my peers snuck alcohol and binged on it. This continued well into college- or the military. When I got to tech school in Biloxi, MS. most of my peers wanted to go get drunk the first chance they got. I wanted to go see the new Star Trek movie. I never got into drinking to get drunk, which seems to be a scourge of youth.

(My brother was not given the same gradual exposure and attention to his consumption of alcohol, and became an alcoholic. The gradual exposure technique does work.)

There is a recent trend- and an unfortunate one, to us oenophiles- of boosting the alcohol content in wines. (This might be why you don't enjoy it as much.) Some of these newer wines have much higher alcohol content than traditional wines, and that alcohol masks poor craftsmanship. These are not what Brits would call 'cheap plonk' wines- these are winemakers who ought to know better, and who are sheep following a unhappy trend. Hopefully, they'll start easing back. I drink the wine for the flavor, not the alcohol.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I can't explain what's happened. We used to buy wine by the case. I was never a oenophile, but I thought I could recognise quality when I sipped it.

My parents had the same sort of policy. As we moved into our teens, my sister and I were allowed to drink moderate ammounts of alcohol at home- so it never became a big thing to us. I went on one or two famous drunks as a kid- and quickly decided it wasn't much fun.

Maybe you're right about the added alcohol. Over the past five years or so I've moved from drinking mainly red to mainly white to mainly nothing at all.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

It's not only the higher alcohol content - which you can read on the label, its the added sulfites as well as the pesticide residues that make their way into the wine. I love good wines and will have a glass or 2 of good wine with a fine meal, but am not interested in drinking to excess. Recently, because I have been working in an Organic foods restaurant, I have had the chance to sample organically produced wines and they do - in moderation - make for a happier morning after.