Tag Archives: binge drinking

Ask the WC 27: Pandemic wine sales, red Burgundy, wine competitions

pandemic wine
Binge drinking during the pandemic, baby!

This edition of Ask the WC: What’s the truth behind pandemic wine sales? Plus, looking for reasonably-priced red Burgundy and judging wine competitions

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Hey, WC:
You keep insisting there hasn’t been been a spike in drinking during the pandemic, but I see stories all over the place that we’re drinking more at home than ever. What’s the truth?
Baffled

Dear Baffled:
There are a couple of things going on. First, alcohol sales in the U.S. are difficult to measure, since companies like Nielsen mostly only record sales at large retailers. So thousands and thousands of independents aren’t surveyed, and neither are most restaurants or wineries. So while supermarket wine sales did increase, no one knows about independents, and we do know that winery and restaurant sales tanked. The best guess comes from Silicon Valley Bank’s Rob McMillan, who says the gains and losses in the various channels evened out. That’s a difficult concept for most reporters to understand, and especially when the bosses frown on them doing actual reporting. So when they see a survey that says, “Supermarket wine sales up 40 percent,” they write that we’re all drunk. Second, many of the medical studies, including the one in your link, rely on the dreaded “Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test” — the one that defines wine with dinner as borderline alcoholism. Of course, given that definition, we’re binging ourselves to death.

•

Dear WC:
I have never had a bottle of red Burgundy, the French pinot noir, since I’m put off by the high prices. Is there an American pinot noir that is comparable to the French? Or a reasonably-priced French red Burgundy that is easy to find? I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount, but when it gets into the hundreds of dollars, I can’t do it.
Looking for value

Dear Value:
That’s one of the great dilemmas in wine today, made worse by the tariff. There’s really nothing like red Burgundy in California, though Patricia Green and Panther Creek in Oregon have wines in the mid-$20s that are close, but only close. Anything decent for red Burgundy is going to start at $40, and even then there’s no guarantee. This is one of those areas where you need a local independent who can help.
•

Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
I haven’t seen anything on the blog lately about you judging wine competitions. Used to like to read about all the wine you had to taste. What’s up with that?
Curious

Dear Curious:
I’m mostly retired from judging wine competitions. I had cut back before the pandemic; tired of the travel, for one thing, as well as tasting 300 wines in two days. That starts to wear on one after a couple of decades. I may still do some regional events, though I will wait until we’re mostly rid of the pandemic. And, honestly, so many competitions are dominated by Big Wine these days that I’m one of the last people that organizers want to judge that stuff since I don’t give out a lot of gold medals.

Binge drinking during the pandemic — or not

binge drinking
“Forgive me, mom. I didn’t know wine with dinner would turn me into a binge drinker.”

One study says one out of three Americans are binge drinking during the pandemic; another says worldwide booze consumption will fall 8 percent this year

The Wine Curmudgeon has been trying to avoid writing wine and health posts on the blog for almost as long as the blog has been around. But then something happens, and I am forced to take keyboard in hand again.

This week, a Texas study claimed one in three of us are binge drinking during the pandemic. Meanwhile, a leading alcohol market consultancy says global booze consumption will fall eight percent this year, and “beverage alcohol volume consumption during the pandemic was down across almost all markets.” The U.S. and Canada were the exceptions – up a gigantic two points.

Sigh. Am I the only one who notices these contradictions?

Apparently not, given how much of this we’ve seen over the past couple of years, and especially during the pandemic. In this, the Mainstream Media will leap on the binge study to report we’re all passed out in front of our loved ones, reduced to a combination of drool and spittle.

So, once again, I will perform my journalistic duty and point out why the binge study can claim what it claims – and why these sorts of health studies are notoriously unreliable.

• The binge study lumps all alcohol together, which strikes me as problematic. Is binge drinking spirits worse than binge drinking wine? Does one binge one type of alcohol more than the other? Where does beer fit in? Or hard seltzer? Do we need a study to answer these questions? (That’s sarcasm, by the way.)

• The definition of binge drinking is full of holes – “four alcoholic beverages per occasion.” As noted here before, that makes anyone who drinks wine with dinner a binge drinker. Even the study’s authors acknowledge this problem, writing that the study didn’t take into account the time frame for drinking – four drinks in 20 minutes vs. four drinks in four hours. Which makes me ask: So what use is the study?

• The study acknowledges that many Americans don’t drink, then ignores that to come up with the one-third number. Hence, one-third is probably a lot less if we take non-drinkers into account. Which makes me ask again: So what use is the study?

• Serious sampling errors. The authors write that the study is skewed toward rich, white people, which might mean its “alcohol consumption is overestimated compared to the general population.” Which makes me ask a third time: So what use is the study?

Please, someone, stop these health researchers before they study again.

Photo courtesy of TheJournal.ie, using a Creative Commons license

Has wine with dinner been turned into binge drinking?

binge drinking
Please, neo-Prohibitonists: Stop these people before they binge drink again.

Yet another booze study characterizes responsible behavior as binge drinking

Another studying demonizing drinking showed up last week, replete with the flaws that have come to characterize these studies. The authors cherry-picked their study group, ignored relevant statistical data, and glossed over any socio-economic and demographic explanations for their conclusion. The result? Old people! Binge drinking!! Death!!!

The other thing that struck me about the study was its definition of binge drinking: four to five drinks in one sitting. In other words, drinking wine with dinner has become just as evil as frat boys chugging Everclear and men of a certain age pounding a six-pack after work and then passing out on the sofa.

My name is the Wine Curmudgeon, and I am a binge drinker.

On Saturday night, I had five glasses of wine with dinner. We had hard-cooked eggs in mustard sauce for a first course, followed by a mock cassoulet (turkey, sausage, a duck leg/thigh, and white beans) served with rice and a cabbage salad. I opened the $10 Pigmentum Gascon white blend with the eggs, which was a terrific pairing (the wine’s citrus fruit complementing the richness of the egg). I drank the fabulous 2011 Bonny Doon Bien Nacido syrah with the cassoulet, and it was an even better pairing – dark, earthy food with a dark, earthy wine.

So how did a full dinner eaten over two or three hours with five glasses of wine turn into binge drinking?

Your guess is as good as mine. The five-drink definition (four for women) comes from the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: Binging is “a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels to 0.08 g/dL This typically occurs after 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men – in about 2 hours.”

Not coincidentally, that 0.08 number is the legal definition of drunk driving in 49 states. If it’s illegal to drive after five drinks, then it’s easy to call something binging. Or, conversely, let’s lower the legal blood alcohol level to 0.08 since the experts call that binge drinking.

And do not think this is an apologia for alcoholism and drunk driving. I know first-hand the horror and pain of each. Rather, it’s a plea for a measured, reasonable, and rational approach to solving the problems they cause.

That’s because drinking is not the problem. Abusing alcohol is the problem. Trying to shame responsible adults into stopping behavior that isn’t shameful won’t do much to stop alcohol abuse. Didn’t the neo-Prohibitonists learn anything from Prohibition? Hopefully, they’ll eventually figure this out. Until then, I’m happy to do my part to explain it to them.

Photo: “company dinner” by Rivard is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 

More about neo-Prohibitionists, booze studies, and wine drinking:
• Cigarettes, wine, and cancer
• Drinking, scientific doom and gloom, and perspective
• The CDC alcohol death study

Winebits 457: International style, binge drinking, ingredient labeling

international styleThis week’s wine news: The Italian Wine Guy makes sense about the International wine style, while kids drink too much and consumers want to know what’s in their wine

• Here to stay: Those of us who appreciate terroir and that wine should taste like where it comes from don’t much care for the International style of winemaking, where the goal is to make every wine taste like came from Paso Robles. Yet there is more to the international style, writes Alfonso Cevola, the Italian Wine Guy. For all of its excesses, and Cevola has seen all of them, the international style means accessible wines that are clean and made without flaws, something that European producers have struggled with for centuries. We’re spoiled in the second decade of the 21st century, when technically correct wine is the rule. But it wasn’t that long ago – in my early drinking days – when it wasn’t unusual to buy a bottle of wine that had soured, turned, or was made so badly you didn’t want to drink it.

• Kids will be kids: The “typical” British 25-year-old regularly experiences a blackout after drinking, according to a survey. The research found the respondents have blacked out five times after drinking alcohol since turning 18, with 17 per cent experiencing a blackout 10 times or more. And one than one-half of the 1,000 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed said they would probably do the same thing within a month. Sound hard to believe? Perhaps, and I’m a little wary of any survey commissioned by a TV network, as this was. Still, it jibes with what I’ve been told by several experts, who say the British have some serious social problems related to drinking.

• Transparency: Just in time to reinforce last week’s post about nutrition and fact labels (and thanks for all the nasty emails), comes this from Nielsen: “Three-quarters of global respondents strongly or somewhat agree that they’re concerned about the long-term health impact of artificial ingredients. … In addition, 69% strongly or somewhat agree that foods without artificial ingredients are always more healthful, and just over half (52%) strongly or somewhat agree that foods and beverages with fewer ingredients are more healthful, with agreement even stronger in North America (61%).” But whatever you do, wine business, don’t tell consumers what’s in their wine. What do consumers know, anyway?