Drink

by Iain Gately

  Women were also responsible for growth in wine consumption, which climbed from 464 million gallons in 1995, or 1.77 per head of population, to 703 million gallons (2.37) in 2005. As in Britain, a Bridget Jones factor was at work, which gave America’s women the confidence to drink like men as well as work like them. Their self-belief, and thirsts, were reflected in books, movies, and on TV. The soap opera Sex and the City, which ran from 1998 to 2004, pictured its four career-women heroines lubricating their discussions of love and life with a profusion of cocktails and wine coolers.

  American demand for wine, especially California wine, continued to be stimulated by its craft wineries, whose numbers increased year after year. All over the state, people were prospecting for that perfect terroir that might one day produce a vintage to equal or exceed a 1955 Haut-Brion, or a 1972 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon. A new spirit of wine gourmandisme appeared that was caricatured in the movie Sideways (2004), which laid bare the passion and antics of twenty-first-century American oenophiles. Sideways is the story of two college friends, Miles and Jack, who spend a stag week in wine country before Jack’s wedding. Miles is an aspiring novelist, a wine lover, and neurotic; Jack is calm, a working actor, and wants to spend his last days before marriage in promiscuity. Although both boys meet girls and sleep with them, wine love has all the best lines; indeed, the film gives lessons in the art. Maya, Miles’s paramour, whose heart melts when she hears him speak with feeling about Pinot Noir, betters him in her response, when she describes what passes through her mind as she takes her first sip of some exceptional vintage: “I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained. . . . I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes and, if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle it’s going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive—it’s constantly evolving and gaining. . . .”

  The upward trend in wine consumption was also helped along by more good news on the matter of the French Paradox. Proof of the beneficial powers of wine in particular, and alcohol in general, had continued to mount over the years since Morley Safer and 60 Minutes had brought it to the attention of the nation. In 1995, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines included for the first time, alongside its usual strident warnings, a cautious endorsement of alcohol, as follows: “Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease in some individuals.” The guidelines also hinted that the fluid might just possibly have a cultural value: “Alcoholic beverages have been used to enhance the enjoyment of meals by many societies throughout human history.” Winemakers in California were delighted. Surely they could direct their customers to the good news, now that it was official, via a few short words on their labels? Laurel Glen Winery applied to the BATF with samples and, in 1998, got clearance for a label encouraging drinkers to “consult your family doctor about the health effects of wine consumption.”

  This modest concession evoked a tempest of protest from American drys, who could not countenance any praise of alcohol, however fainthearted, in any publication whatsoever. They were led by the evergreen senator Strom Thurmond, who was still utterly opposed to letting adult Americans know that a glass of wine a day might help them live longer. The ninety-six-year-old teetotaler held up treasury appointments and threatened to remove jurisdiction of wine labeling from the BATF to the Department of Health and Human Services unless the approval was rescinded. The BATF backed down and suspended clearance until hearings had been staged in 2000. The key test was whether a message suggesting a wine buyer speak to his or her doctor about the “health effects” of wine contravened the Federal Alcohol Administration Act, which stipulated that the manufacturers of alcoholic beverages should not claim their products had curative properties.

  Prima facie, the evidence was on the side of California’s vintners. “Health effects” was, after all, a neutral phrase. Following the rules of chance, a prospective drinker might well consult a teetotal doctor, who was only interested in showing them pictures of damaged livers and alcohol-induced automobile crashes. The matter, however, continued to be stalled until Senator Thurmond retired in January 2003, a month after his hundredth birthday. It was settled in favor of wine later that year by the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which decided that scientifically truthful statements in their proper context might appear on labels, so long as they also warned of the risks of drinking and included a disclaimer such as “This statement should not encourage you to drink or to increase your alcohol consumption for health reasons.” It was a victory for principle—the TTB had made the formal admission that alcohol could be good for people—but in practical terms it was a defeat. There was scarcely enough room on a magnum-size bottle label for the “health effects” suggestion, the necessary warnings, a disclaimer, and a modicum of information about the type of wine inside. There was, however, space on promotional material such as posters to advise Americans thinking of buying wine, in wording simultaneously prosaic and suggestive, to see a doctor.

  Ridiculous as the dispute may seem, it was indicative of the reviving power of the antialcohol lobby. Neotemperance was in tune with neoconservatism. President George W. Bush, who stopped “heavy drinking” in 1986, after a booze-soaked youth, was emblematic of the new dry minds, and federal policies toward alcohol reflected the influence of the health care industry, whose focus was on treating problem drinkers. The hand of neotemperance was apparent in new restrictions on drinking among members of the U.S. armed forces, whose personnel, like the doughboys of 1917, were compelled, by a change in law, to stay dry while on active duty. Those serving in Iraq, where the cult of Ninkasi had originated, and one of the few Muslim countries to have had a tolerant attitude toward alcohol in the present millennium, were restricted to “near beer” on base and, unlike in Vietnam, could not rehydrate themselves with slabs of Bud from the PX. Combat troops were also vetted before deployment. According to official guidelines, a Marine who drank a couple of six-packs in the week before going overseas was “at risk,” faced “a potential problem with alcohol,” and should be pointed toward a remedial program rather than a war zone.

  Similarly Draconian interpretations of problem drinking were applied in Texas, where, in 2006, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) launched Operation Last Call, whose aim was to root out drunkenness at its source. A team of undercover agents was sent to patrol bars, arrest any people they deemed to be drunk, and haul them in for a breath test. Those with a blood alcohol content too high to drive were liable to fines up to five hundred dollars for public intoxication, even if they didn’t possess a car. According to Captain David Alexander of the TABC, “Going to a bar is not an opportunity to get drunk. . . . It’s to have a good time, but not get drunk.” While many drinkers might disagree with the suggestion that being drunk and having a good time were mutually exclusive, Operation Last Call was pursued with sufficient vehemence as to raise an outcry among liberty-minded Texans. Bar owners, in contrast, were afraid to complain, mindful of the fact that TABC was also responsible for issuing liquor licenses. “Do you think I want a half dozen of these baboons camped on my doorstep?” said one, speaking anonymously. “They can close me down in a New York minute.”

  The hand of neotemperance was also apparent in the 2005 edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which declared in the preamble to its section on alcohol that nearly half—“forty-five percent of U.S. adults”— did not drink at all. According to sources as diverse as the World Health Organization, the NIACC, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and U.S. household surveys, perhaps 33 percent of Americans over the age of fourteen are dry—a statistic that would have amazed the Founding Fathers, but which is nonetheless well short of nearly half. Moreover, 83.1 percent of Americans confess to having used alcohol at least once in their lives, as do 90.2 percent of the coming ge
neration.80 The neotemperance influence over the 2005 guidelines extended beyond the preamble. The cautious cultural blessing of 1995—that people had been recorded as drinking alcoholic beverages with their food throughout history—had been censored, and the proven protection such drinks offered against heart attacks had been watered down. This is the current wording :

  Moderate alcohol consumption may have beneficial health effects in some individuals. In middle-aged and older adults, a daily intake of one to two alcoholic beverages per day is associated with the lowest all-cause mortality. More specifically, compared to nondrinkers, adults who consume one to two alcoholic beverages a day appear to have a lower risk of coronary heart disease. In contrast, among younger adults alcohol consumption appears to provide little, if any, health benefit, and alcohol use among young adults is associated with a higher risk of traumatic injury and death. . . . Furthermore, it is not recommended that anyone begin drinking or drink more frequently on the basis of health considerations.

  The last nonrecommendation, advising nondrinkers not to start, may be contrasted with the position in Great Britain, where, despite a government-inspired binge-drinking scare, the Royal College of Physicians nonetheless advised dry British subjects to get wet for the good of their hearts.

  The appearance of neotemperance resulted in a revival of the temperance genre in fiction. Once again, Americans were able to titillate themselves with stories of raging drunks harming themselves and terrorizing others. However, twenty-first-century examples of the genre tended to give more weight to redemption than Victorian-era tomes, with degradation serving as a prelude to uplifting demonstrations of willpower. A Million Little Pieces (2003) by James Frey, initially presented as a true story, was typical of the new wave of temperance fiction. The book chronicled the efforts of its author to overcome alcoholism and addiction at a treatment center modeled on Hazelden in Minnesota. Written in direct and effective prose, A Million Little Pieces offered willpower as a way of escaping the treadmill of alcoholism. It was, moreover, critical of the AA twelve-steps program, which formed the core of treatment at Hazelden in real life: “I have been to AA meetings and they have left me cold. I find the philosophy to be one of replacement. Replacement of one addiction with another addiction. Replacement of a chemical with God and a Meeting. The Meetings themselves made me sick. Too much whining, too much complaining, too much blaming. Too much bullshit about Higher Powers. There is no Higher Power or any God who will cure me. There is no meeting where any amount of whining complaining and blaming is going to make me feel any better. I am an Alcoholic and a Drug Addict and a Criminal. . . . I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. . . .”

  In addition to stimulating a revival in temperance noir, contemporary attempts to demonize alcohol provoked a counterculture, which glorified booze and drunkenness. Publications such as The Modern Drunkard magazine (motto: “Say it loud, say it plowed”) celebrated the pleasures of overindulgence and intoxication, highlighted some of the excesses of the neotemperance brigade, and also served the serious purpose of questioning the power and influence of campaigning bodies such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD had proved to be an extremely effective lobbyist in the decades since its formation. It had fought for and won stricter federal controls over drunk driving. By 2002, all states had lowered the Blood Alcohol Content, above which drunk driving became a per se offence, to 0.08. MADD’s present ambition is to prevent any drinker from ever driving at all, through further reduction of the permissible BAC, stricter penalties for drivers who exceed it, and compulsory ignition interlock devices to be fitted to every auto in America. The program is justified by the MADD assumption that even one is too many. According to Penny Wagner, a MADD chapter president, “once you’ve consumed your first drink, you’ve lost that ability to make a sound judgment,” which is simply untrue. Analyses of accident statistics suggest that impairment commences when the driver’s BAC is above 0.1, so that the current limit of 0.08 has a built-in safety margin. Moreover, should MADD’s ambitions to lower the BAC to .02 be realized, the result would be a law that declared sober people to be drunkards,81 denied them their driving privileges, punished them with fines and prison sentences, and robbed them of their civil rights, not least of all the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in criminal trials.

  Notwithstanding the efforts of the neotemperance movement to demonize America’s favorite recreational drug and to introduce discriminatory legislation against those who used it, the opening years of the new millennium were full of good news for drinkers. The three-quarters-plus of American adults who drank, over 90 percent of whom did so in moderation, were found to be calmer, healthier, longer-lived, richer, and cleverer than their dry compatriots. In the years when Strom had raged against wine labels, further positive “health effects” of alcohol had been uncovered, including evidence that it offered some protection against a malady afflicting millions of Americans— stress. A 1999 paper concluded that “studies of the relationship between alcohol and stress suggest that drinking can reduce stress in certain people and under certain circumstances,” particularly “people who have difficulty controlling their behavior, are highly self-conscious, or have difficulty organizing new information when sober.” While the stress survey must be characterized as pioneering, rather than definitive, the body of evidence that had continued to accumulate in favor of the ability of all types of alcohol to reduce heart disease was now so substantial as to be irrefutable. Moreover, research into the mechanics of the protection offered by a drink or two every day was uncovering new and exciting potential in alcoholic beverages, especially wine.

  Experiments carried out in 2006 on a special breed of mice, genetically hardwired for obesity, revealed that if their diets were supplemented with resveratrol, a compound that occurs naturally in grape skins and red wine, they lived longer and more fulfilling lives than their obese peers, without themselves having to lose weight: “Fatrelated deaths dropped 31 percent for obese mice on the supplement, compared to untreated obese mice, and the treated mice also lived long after they should have.” The overweight overachievers on massive doses of resveratrol were also conspicuous for their activity. According to Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, “These fat old mice can perform as well . . . as young lean mice.” In his opinion, his program had found “the Holy Grail of aging research.”

  There was plenty more good news for alcohol fans. The same demographic surveys which showed that college graduates were much more likely to drink than the rest of the population revealed the truth that abstainers risked not only their health, but also their wealth, every time they said no to the bottle. According to a 2006 study of the relationship between alcohol and affluence, “self-reported drinkers earn 10-14 percent more than abstainers” and “males who frequent bars at least once per month earn an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percent drinkers’ premium.” The premium mostly applied to moderate drinkers, and since these constituted the majority, “drinking and socializing” was a “potentially productive investment that positively influences future earnings.” The report concluded that “anti alcohol campaigns can be considered harmful to individuals and the economy as a whole.”

  In addition to improving the mental, physical, and financial well-being of drinkers, and contributing to the prosperity of the nation, alcohol also seemed to make its aficionados brighter than their sober peers. In 2004, a decades-long survey of 10,000 British civil servants concluded that even those who drank only one glass of booze a day had “significantly sharper thought processes than teetotalers.”

  Established drinkers, and abstinent people tempted into joining them, enjoyed access to an unparalleled choice of drinks in the opening years of the present decade. American craft brewers and wineries produced thousands of idiosyncratic brands between them, the major manufacturers created an annual Niagara of beverages that were models of homogeneity and sheer drinkability, and domestic choices were supplemented by a host of beers, wines, and spirits of e
very grade of quality, from all over the world. Good news, and good booze, led to a sea change in official attitudes toward alcohol around 2005. It was recognized at the federal level that drinking was not just part of people’s lives, but also beneficial to the economy, beyond being a simple source of revenue. It was time to start to praise and encourage domestic manufacturers of alcohol, rather than to launch another doomed investigation into their advertising practices. On June 6, 2006, the House of Representatives gave its unanimous consent to Resolution 753, which put it on record that “American craft brewers promote the Nation’s spirit of independence through a renaissance in hand crafted beers like those . . . produced here by the Nation’s founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for the enjoyment of the citizenry.” The resolution further observed that the craft brewers’ diverse and “flavorful” beers had made the United States “the envy of every beer-drinking nation in the world,” and commended them for “providing jobs, improving the balance of trade, supporting American agriculture, and educating Americans about the history and culture of beer while promoting the responsible consumption of beer as a beverage of moderation.”

  American craft brews, excellent as they were, were nonetheless outshone by California wine. In May 2006, The Judgment of Paris contest between the best California Cabernet Sauvignons and Premier Crus of Bordeaux was re-adjudicated using the same ten wines, all now more than thirty years old, and the court found, once again, in favor of California. This time the Californians improved their rankings, winning all the first five slots. Best overall was Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello ’71, with Stags Leap ’73, the victor of 1976, in second place.