My parents, like so many of the generation who became parents in the 1940s and 50s, drank spirits—in their case, Seagrams whiskey highballs. They drank a lot of them. Too many in fact. As a result, I grew up wary of alcohol.
Then, as a young woman out on my own, I discovered wine. There was a gentility about wine, a thoughtfulness that I found compelling. I was awed by the magic of wine; by its beauty. In college I began drinking a glass of wine every night while doing my homework. It was a Bulgarian red wine; 89 cents a bottle. Humble though it was, I loved it. Somewhere far away someone had cared for a vineyard and now this delicious drink was here on my kitchen table. It seemed amazing.
Wine—writing about it—eventually became my business. I taste (and spit out) 2000 or so wines every year. And every night I drink (and swallow) a glass or two of wine with dinner.
Until recently, having wine with dinner would have seemed innocent enough. But for the past year, a media storm of articles, spurred on by a broad coalition of anti-alcohol groups, have decried alcohol as a “poison.” The image that accompanies these alarmist pieces is often, if not usually, a wine glass.
Here, however, is what the anti-alcohol dogmatists don’t seem to get: wine isn’t just alcohol. Wine is threaded into a rich tapestry of culture, history, art, spirituality, and religion. Wine—an ancient beverage going back 8000 years—has always been a communal beverage, a beverage that encourages sharing and therefore human connection. Over wine, people don’t remain strangers for long. I have always found it psychologically fascinating that when you ask someone about the best wine they ever drank, the person always remembers who they were with when they drank that special bottle.
As I’ve come to think of it, wine is one of the last true things. In a world digitized to distraction, a world where you can barely get out of your pajamas without your cell phone, wine remains utterly primary. The silent music of Nature. A beverage that documents place and time, the passing of the sun and the seasons. In every sip of wine taken in the present, we drink in the past—the moment when those berries were picked; a moment gone but recaptured, and so profound that our bond with Nature is welded deep.
Wine matters because of this ineluctable connection. Wine and food cradle us in our own communal humanity. As Lionel Tiger, the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, points out in his book The Pursuit of Pleasure (Little Brown & Company 1992), wine and food are among the pleasures that carried life forward and sustained us through the sometimes dark days of our own evolution. Drinking wine together—as small as that act can seem–is both grounding and transformative. It reminds us of other things that matter, too: love, generosity, friendship.
I live in the small town of St. Helena in the Napa Valley. I moved here from New York City 25 years ago to be closer to the land. I believed—hoped anyway—that living next to vineyards would enrich my life in some way I couldn’t quite articulate.
I thought it would be the wine that would do it.
But it was the people. That first year, as the harvest neared, you could feel the anticipation, the anxiety, the pins-and-needles excitement. Everyone in my little town buzzed with emotion, from the checkers at the small grocery store to the guys at the gas station. It was as if an invisible cloak had descended on all of us. Subconsciously, we were bound together as a community. We would all live or die based on the harvest. This may sound funny or exaggerated to a city dweller, but every rural wine community knows what I am talking about. Rural wine communities have a common heartbeat. You can feel it.
And there are a lot of rural wine communities in America. According to the trade group Wine America, there are more than 10,600 wineries in the U.S. spread over all 50 states. Those wineries generat 1.8 million jobs and nearly $23 billion in taxes. Anti-alcohol groups call them “Big Alcohol.” But in fact, a majority of America’s wineries are small and family owned.
It was as a means of protecting small rural wine communities that the advocacy group VitaeVino, headquartered at the E.U., was founded last fall. In its official declaration, the group stated, “Wine is more than just a beverage; it is a symbol of Europe’s millenary culture, with a deep anthropological and historical role in shaping societies. It fosters social bonds, celebrates cultural heritage and is a key contributor to Europe’s rural economy.”
VitaeVino and indeed the two U.S. campaigns I co-founded called Come Over October and its upcoming “sister campaign” Share & Pair Sundays are in response to the World Health Organization’s bombshell announcement in 2023 that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption. At first, I thought, well there’s no probably safe level of brownies or bacon either.
But it was the WHO’s “Guide for Journalists Reporting About Alcohol” that really stopped me in my tracks. Point #6 under “Categories of alcohol-related social harm” listed: violence, vandalism, public disorder, property damage, family problems, divorce, marital problems, child mistreatment, financial problems, and work-related problems among others.
This is not the wine industry I know.
I understand that alcohol can be abused, and I firmly believe it should never be. I understand that some people have medical problems with alcohol in any form, and I am sympathetic. I also believe that the wine industry has an obligation to educate about responsible adult wine consumption, and do everything in its power to prevent underage drinking. I also know that while the “just stop drinking” message is simple and seemingly conclusive, the actual science regarding alcohol is complex and ongoing.
It is the beginning of January as I write this. The Surgeon General has just issued an official “Advisory” saying that alcohol is a cause of seven different types of cancer. The mood here in wine country is despondency and disbelief. Disbelief because just weeks before the Surgeon General’s statement, the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) said that it had concluded with “moderate certainty” that people who drink alcohol in moderation have a lower likelihood of dying from all causes than those who don’t drink. The one exception NASEM notes is breast cancer for which there may be a slight elevated risk.
The NASEM report was based on research conducted by a large group of scientists and doctors with expertise in the field of alcohol and health. It’s one of many reports that come to a conclusion in direction opposition to the Surgeon General’s blanket statement.
It is also, of course, Dry January. I know that over the next month I will read, with a heavy heart, scores of morally-loaded articles suggesting that abstinence will improve everything from my sleep to my sex life, and as one blogger self-righteously put it, I’ll “be able to watch all the beautiful things that happen to me when I’m not filling my body with a toxic substance.”
For a month, the awe and beauty of wine will be under attack. But its ability to connect us will live on, including at my dinner table.
