For many wine lovers, a period of pre or post-Christmas abstinence (Sober October or Dry January) represents an opportunity to cut back on alcohol temporarily, perhaps preparing for or due to a period of festive excess. Health and financial reasons for not drinking or drinking less are often cited and hotly debated, including on our own Community forum, although like many topics discussed online, supporters and critics of the idea would have you believe the debate is black and white.
Regardless of motivation and causation, many people are looking for alternatives to alcoholic drinks, and UK sales of low and no alcohol alternatives have grown over the last year. We launched our own selection last Christmas, applying the same rigour to buying as we bring to the rest of our range. The objective was to find products that can be sipped and lingered over, and that offer complexity and structure. Our view is that these drinks offer something to suit wine lovers on days when they don’t want to drink alcohol, and which might assist those looking to moderate their consumption or be more mindful in what they consume. Director of Wine, Pierre Mansour introduces the range here Our approach to building our new Low & No range.
This mindful drinking approach clearly works for a number of people and to my mind, is compatible with the appreciation of wine. Experts in the field, Club Soda, describe mindful drinking as ‘an approach that allows you to include alcohol in your life in a way that helps you live well’. They offer strategies that help drinkers switch off their autopilot, slow down and enjoy the experience of drinking, which aligns it with the tasting and enjoyment of wine, where pausing to enjoy aromas and flavours are central to the experience.
If you’re questioning the practice of automatically pulling the cork on a bottle just because it’s 6pm, that’s where Club Soda can help. Co-founder Dru Jaeger is particularly interested in the challenges that wine drinkers experience when looking to reassess their drinking. Wine culture around wine appreciation, he argues, makes stopping or cutting down harder. ‘If you could see fermented grape juice in a bottle as just alcohol, stopping drinking wine would be easier. But there is so much more going on…unlike other types of drinking, wine appreciation puts expertise front and centre. Even knowing a little bit more about wine than your friends confers some status. There are also strong emotional responses to wine that set it apart from other alcoholic drinks and leads to people getting stuck in wine culture.’ He also notes that very few wine writers (apart from Jancis Robinson MW in her book The Demon Drink) ever actually talk about the problems associated with alcohol.
Dru offers some practical steps and information on the Club Soda website (How to stop drinking wine, Struggling with drinking wine and cutting down?), as well as a selection of courses aimed at both those looking to stop drinking as well as drinking mindfully. These courses have now been made available free of charge to members of The Wine Society.
These approaches won’t be right for everyone, and neither this article nor the Club Soda support is intended as a substitute for medical advice. Indeed, members might question why we, as a business founded on selling wine, are talking about alcohol in this way. It is complicated (and we are not experts in the field of alcohol-harm reduction), but we are proud of our status as a member organisation and in many cases, this means we have lifelong relationships with our members whom we view as part of The Wine Society community.
We want our members to experience a lifetime of wine enjoyment in a way that they are happy with, and one that leaves them fit and healthy for whatever else they wish to do with their lives. Happily, I expect the vast majority of our members might have read this article out of interest alone, but for those who are thinking of making a change, we hope to be able to direct you to the people who can help. In the case of Club Soda: people who have the expertise, the personal experience and the understanding that wine is different, and that this creates its own challenges.
A free mindful drinking course with Club Soda
If you’re looking to change your drinking habits, all Wine Society members are eligible for a free, fully-funded course from Club Soda.
Further resources
If you are concerned that you might be physically dependent on alcohol, talk to your doctor.
Club Soda offers the courses mentioned above, plus articles and podcasts on mindful drinking.
Drinks industry funded charity Drinkaware gives easily accessible information based on the UK Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) low-risk-drinking guidelines, including easy-to-use unit and calorie calculators.
Food and wine writer Fiona Beckett’s book How to Drink Without Drinking has some great suggestions for those who don’t want to give up alcohol, but are keen to cut down.
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