How women are being cynically seduced into DRINKING too much

Christmas baubles filled with gin. Pink port. Even glitter to pep up your prosecco...

FOR generations of children, opening the doors of an advent calendar in the run-up to Christmas has been a delightful tradition. But the new breed of festive calendar isn’t aimed at under-18s.

From tomorrow, many of us will be ticking off the December days with a slug of gin or a glug of prosecco — because stores from Aldi to John Lewis are awash with boozy versions.

Forget Nativity scenes and chocolate treats. Nestling behind each cardboard window is a little bottle — and as they all contain alcoholic drinks mostly favoured by women, it’s clear who the makers are targeting.

There’s the Superstar Sparkling Advent Calendar (£125 for 24 20cl bottles of white and rose fizz from

thepipstop.co.uk); the Ginvent Calendar (£125 for 24 3cl bottles, waitrosegifts.

com); or the Boutique-y Gin Company Advent Calendar (£99.95 for 24 3cl bottles, amazon.co.uk).

The list goes on — and they are selling like hot cakes. Aldi boasts that its £49.99 wine calendar sold out within two days of hitting the shelves on November 1.

Even that bastion of good sense, Good Housekeeping magazine, raves about the calendars. ‘ From quirky flavoured gins to sparkling wine and a whole calendar devoted to spicy vodka, these are the boozy advent calendars you need to try . . .’ it raves.

But this latest push to target women drinkers has been greeted with dismay by medical experts and alcohol charities, not least because recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show young women are the biggest binge drinkers in the country.

Women aged 16-24 now outdrink men of the same age.

The definition of ‘binge drinking’ for women is consuming six units (two large glasses of wine) in one session. And research by the Organisation for Economic Co - operation and Development (OECD) found Britain is the worst country in the Western world for heavy drinking among professional women.

BRITISHwomen, according to the OECD, are twice as likely to be problem drinkers if they have a good education — Britain is one of the few countries in the world where professional women appear to be drinking to keep up with men.

One university- educated English woman in five regularly drinks too much, the report found.

It’s not just young women, either. Figures reveal that the likelihood of a woman in her early 60s dying from drink has shot up by more than a third since the turn of the millennium.

But how has this heavy- drinking culture among women become so entrenched so fast? Look at the shelves of any supermarket and the clues are obvious. Take the fact that nearly every other bottle is pink — there’s pink prosecco, pink gin, pink port.

After decades of ignoring women, drinks companies have finally realised we are ripe for exploiting. Experts say what we are witnessing is the feminisation of alcohol.

Advent calendars, encouraging us to have a daily drink despite compelling advice that we should have at least two booze-free days a week, are just the latest way to encourage us to buy more.

Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the 40-strong group of charities Alcohol Health Alliance UK, is clear that the rise in heavy drinking among women is the result of targeted industry efforts.

‘ Disposable income among young women has gone up, and the alcohol industry has sought to develop marketing strategies aimed at attracting more women to spend their income on alcohol,’ says Sir Ian. ‘This explains the rise of fruitbased beers and ciders and drinks marketed as low-calorie.

‘At the same time, wine and vodka — preferred by women — have come down in price in real terms in recent years.’

The tactics are certainly working. Sales of female favourites gin and prosecco are soaring.

The trend of colouring drinks pink is also paying dividends.

For example, Lidl’s Christmas range of Hortus pink gin liqueurs (‘ rhubarb and ginger’ and ‘Scottish raspberry’), launched on November 1 at £11.99 each, have been selling at the rate of seven bottles a minute. ‘ The three fastest-growing sectors are prosecco, gin and rose wine,’ says wine expert Helen McGinn, author of The Knackered Mother’s Wine Club.

‘When companies like Waitrose sell prosecco and gin-flavoured lip balms, you can see how feminised these products have become. Can you imagine a beerflavoured balm? No.’

A recent paper from The Institute of Alcohol Studies states: ‘Alcohol industry growth can come in three ways: by encouraging more people to drink, by encouraging people to drink more, and by encouraging them to drink more expensive drinks.

‘In Western countries companies have sought to appeal to demographics that typically drink less. For example, the brewer Molson Coors has set up a unit to develop brands and marketing messages to appeal to women, with the goal of creating “a world where women love beer as much as shoes”.’

Of course, no one would claim that all boozy advent calendars target women exclusively. But when Waitrose advertises the Ginvent Calendar on its ‘Gifts For Her’ web page, the message is pretty clear.

THEcalendars join a huge raft of drinks and drinking accessories aimed at women. In time for Christmas, Aldi has just launched a range of gin, port and champagne — all pink.

The stand-out cocktail in bar chain All Bar One’s Christmas range this year is ‘Bailey’s Blush’, a mixture of the Irish cream liqueur, milk, cream and cherry brandy, which naturally is eyepoppingly pink.

Even good old Lakeland, supplier of household gadgets, has a range of colouring powders, fizzy balls and gold leaf to scatter over drinks.

Industry experts are in no doubt the tactics are being cleverly thought-out.

Vhari Russell, of The Food Marketing Expert, which advises food and drinks companies on marketing strategies, says: ‘There has been a huge rise in gin sales, fuelled by the rise of trendy artisan gin-makers. But there’s no doubt the biggest driving force has been women.

‘That’s why brands are going all- out to make their products more feminine.

‘I notice it in every social group. By and large, the men will be drinking beer. The women will be drinking gin.

‘All the indications are that the sector is going to keep growing. The advertising is very specific — gin companies take stands at high-profile events where most of the audience are women, so they

will be out in force at the Good Food Show or Country Living Fair, selling 5cl bottles which they promote as “handbag-sized”.

‘Companies are also getting very clever on social media, fuelling our imagination with competitions.

‘For example, Simply Good Food TV — which provides recipe and cookery programmes to your iPhone — has been offering the chance to win a hamper of Pinkster gin. It’s pink. It’s girly.

‘And companies know the appearance of the bottle sways us, too. I have no doubt that Warner Edwards gin rebranded this year from a chubby square bottle to a round bottle with a floral design to increase their appeal to women.’

According to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA), gin sales rose ‘dramatically’ in the year ending June 2017.

Sales in pubs and restaurants topped £500 million for the first time, and we are also popping more bottles in our trolleys — gin is the ‘standout performer’, with sales in shops and supermarkets leaping up by 16 per cent to a staggering £687 million.

‘Gin is everywhere, from gin and tonic-flavoured crisps and ice creams to gin and tonicinspired drizzle cake on The Great British Bake Off,’ enthuses WSTA chief executive Miles Beale.

It’s much the same story with prosecco. According to the WSTA, we bought more than 85 million bottles last year. In the 12-week Christmas run-up alone we bought more than 40 million bottles of sparkling wine, including cava and English sparkling — a record that is set to be overtaken this year.

Sales of Lidl’s own- brand prosecco grew by 79 per cent in January 2017 compared with the same month last year, while Marks & Spencer’s prosecco sales rose by 25 per cent from 2015 to 2016.

Richard Halstead, from market researcher Wine Intelligence, predicted in 2010 that we would develop a passion for prosecco. But even he has been stunned by how deepseated that love affair has become.

It has been fuelled in part, he thinks, by another growing obsession — namely women posting pictures of themselves on social media. A bottle of prosecco or a glass of fizz in shot is proof that you’re having a brilliant time.

‘Women are also becoming increasingly aware that prosecco is lower in alcohol — around 10.5 per cent ABV compared with 13 per cent for a bottle of red wine — which means it’s lower in calories,’ he says.

‘You can already see companies such as Skinny Prosecco tapping into the market, highlighting the message that their bottles are even less calorific.’ Indeed, Amanda Thomson, the founder of Skinny Prosecco — which contains 67 calories a glass compared with the ‘ fullfat’ 80 calories — is frank about the giant potential of the female drinks market. Demand for her product, she says, has been ‘off the scale’. Yet Mark Pearson, the OECD’s head of health, says the rise in alcohol consumption among middle-class women is ‘ the dark side of equality’ as they risk their health by adopting traditional male drinking habits. When Marita Moore started her first job after graduating from u n i v e r s i t y, an occasional drink with colleagues turned into a heavy drinking habit. ‘I had a stressful job in social services,’ Marita, now 36, recalls. ‘Most of my colleagues were women. We routinely went out on Thursday and Friday nights and got hammered. ‘It was a clear sexual divide. We would be drinking gin, prosecco and white wine while the men would stick to a couple of beers, then go straight home.

‘We talked routinely about longing for 5pm and “wine o’clock” when we could get home and open a bottle of wine.

‘But it didn’t take long for wine o’clock to come every evening. I’d uncork the bottle and by the end of the night, the whole lot would be gone.

‘We were all the same. On the few occasions when I had a night off and mentioned it to colleagues, they’d look aghast and ask if I’d been feeling poorly.’

It was only when she decided to leave her female- dominated office that things changed.

‘I wanted to apply to the fire service. That meant starting an intense training programme to get fit and I quickly realised I couldn’t train with a hangover, so I stopped drinking. I thought it would be difficult but I was so focused on my goal, it was easy.

‘The hard part was changing my social life. I discovered the only thing I had in common with my “friends” was drink.

‘Going out with them stonecold sober was horrible. They felt I was judging them and I hated seeing them slobbering and slurring. I realised I must have been just the same.’ Since she stopped drinking, Marita’s life has changed enormously.

She has taken a second degree, retrained as a fitness instructor and now runs the Lotus Fitness Academy in her home town, Stockport.

But she is concerned by how many of her female clients seem to be trapped in the ‘wine o’clock culture’ and is eager to help them kick the habit.

‘Many young mums think it’s normal to drink every day,’ she says. ‘ It rapidly becomes a lifestyle choice.

‘They even drink wine instead of coffee when they meet in town — most of the trendy new cafes are licensed.

‘And of course, prosecco slips down a treat. It’s like fizzy pop. We are surrounded by messages promoting prosecco as a girls’ drink. I’ve even seen a piggy bank with the message “Mummy’s Prosecco Time”.’

AnDREWMisell, a director of Alcohol Concern, is firm about the increased risk to women. ‘The concerted effort from the alcohol industry to market products and brands specifically to women is worrying,’ he says.

‘no one wants to roll back feminism and return to the 1950s, when it was considered disgraceful for a woman to enter a pub alone, never mind appear drunk in public.

‘But nor should women be pressurised into drinking more. Concepts such as “wine o’clock” make a daily glass — or even bottle — of wine seem normal. And that’s disturbing.’