Apparently we’re all drinking less alcohol.
This is the headline you see everywhere now. Studies, surveys, lifestyle articles, wellness blogs — all announcing some version of the same thing: alcohol consumption is declining. Young people are drinking less. Millennials are drinking less. Gen Z is drinking even less.
And the explanation is almost always the same.
Health. Longevity. Wellness. Optimisation.
Fair enough.
Nobody sensible is arguing that drinking excessively every night is a brilliant life strategy. Moderation exists for a reason. Addiction is real. Hangovers are terrible. We all understand this.
But here’s my small confusion as someone who works in wine for a living — which I often describe, affectionately, as being a professional alcoholic with a résumé -
Why does every conversation about alcohol now seem to live at two extremes?
Either you’re drinking irresponsibly and ruining your life, or you’re completely sober and tracking your morning electrolytes like an Olympic athlete.
What happened to the middle?
What happened to the simple, deeply human tradition of opening a bottle and sitting down with other people?
Because wine, historically speaking, was never about speed.
Vodka is fast. Shots are fast. Canned cocktails are fast.
Wine is slow. Wine asks you to sit down. You open the bottle, someone else pours, someone smells it and says they detect cherries, someone else insists it’s definitely plum. Nobody is entirely correct but the debate becomes the point.
Before you realise it, half an hour has passed and the conversation has wandered into philosophy, work frustrations, childhood stories, terrible exes, and whether drinking dry Muscat is actually the equivalent of drinking expensive sunshine.
Wine has always been less about intoxication and more about conversation.
It’s one of the few drinks in the world that actively encourages people to stay at the table.
And yes, before someone points it out — I am aware that I am biased here.
I work in wine. Of course I’m biased. A baker will defend bread. A musician will defend music. A person who spends their life around vineyards is obviously going to defend fermented grapes.
I’m not pretending otherwise.
But I also chose this drink for a reason.
Wine isn’t just alcohol to me. Wine is agriculture, history, weather, chemistry, dinner, conversation, and occasionally a very long argument about the vintages and terrior.
Wine has this very specific social superpower. It gently lowers the volume of the world, relaxing people and bringing out honest opinions. Suddenly, people start saying things like - “I don’t know why I’m telling you this but…”
And then the evening becomes memorable.
You can’t really manufacture that kind of atmosphere with a protein shake.
Wine is what happens when humans decide that the night deserves a plot.
That’s a lot of personality for one beverage.
And maybe that’s what I find slightly strange about the modern conversation around alcohol. We talk endlessly about the dangers of excess — which are real — but almost nobody talks about the art of moderation.
The art of doing it well. The art of opening a bottle with friends and letting the evening unfold slowly instead of racing through it.
So if everyone is drinking less alcohol now, that’s fine. Truly. Drink less if you want to. Drink occasionally. Drink thoughtfully. Drink beautifully.
But allow me, briefly, to defend something slightly old-fashioned.
The romance of wine.
And yes, I do mean romance — both the candlelit dinner version of romance, and the broader idea of it. The romance of slowing down. Of sharing a table. Of conversation stretching past midnight because nobody is in a hurry to leave.
Wine has been part of human culture for thousands of years for a reason.
Civilisations didn’t build vineyards because they needed another way to get drunk.
They built them because wine created something social. Something reflective. Something that turned an ordinary evening into an experience.
And perhaps that’s the part we’ve forgotten.
We’ve become very efficient at living.
Breakfast to go. Meetings on the move. Messages sent between tasks.
Everything is optimised. Everything is fast.
But wine was never meant to be optimised.
It was meant to be opened. Preferably with other people. Preferably at a table. Preferably with the understanding that the evening might wander somewhere interesting.
So if the world is drinking less alcohol now, maybe the answer isn’t to panic about wine disappearing.
Maybe the answer is to remember how to do it properly.
How to romanticise a group setting. How to bring the right bottle to someone’s house when you really like them. How to open something good just because the conversation deserves it.
Call it old-school if you want. But if nobody else is going to talk about the art of it, I’m perfectly happy to be the person who does.
Someone has to remind people that wine was never just a drink. It was always a reason to stay a little longer.
Personally, I will remain optimistic.
Humans are many things — dramatic, chaotic, very confusing — but historically we have shown a strong ability to recognise a good idea when we see one.
And fermented grapes are, objectively speaking, one of humanity’s better inventions.
So if people truly are drinking less, I’m willing to believe this is simply a temporary misunderstanding and a lapse in judgement.
Trends come and go. Drinking habits shift. But the reasons wine exists in the first place — connection, food, conversation, celebration — haven’t disappeared. Humans still like to sit around tables together.
And when that happens, sooner or later, someone usually brings a bottle.
Which is why I suspect wine will be just fine.
After all, it’s been surviving humanity for about eight thousand years now. The ancient Greeks drank wine. The Romans drank wine. Medieval monks were making wine. Entire civilisations have fought wars, written poetry, and built trade routes around wine. It would be a shame if we suddenly stopped appreciating one of our better inventions.
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