Shane Watson
Drinking rules for when you’re not drinking...
‘We are drinking mindfully – wine with lots of ice, wine that is maximum 12 per cent. Or we are drinking out of tiny glasses’
IIt’s hot and such a lovely evening that it would be a shame not to. This is high up the list now, for obvious reasons. We drink all year round, but we’ve forgotten that. Now we are drinking because it’s summer, and not to drink a lovely chilly something would be like not bothering with a tree at Christmas.
It’s rosé season. And rosé season lasts, at a push, from May to September, so you have to take advantage – you snooze, you lose.
It’s cocktail season. You are well within your rights to say, a mojito: if not now, then when? A negroni… the taste of summer, and so on. Anything with Campari, particularly, is a now-or-never drink.
We slept badly (so hot!) and we need a pick-me-up.
We slept OK. We’re feeling pretty good and would quite like a drink.
We are on a diet, so are staving off hunger pangs with large glasses of wine.
We are drinking mindfully: either wine with a ton of ice and/or wine that is maximum 12 per cent and so practically non-alcoholic. Or we are drinking out of tiny glasses.
We are spending more per bottle. This way we won’t scarf it down as though it’s Tizer and will instead savour it, like French women or characters in The Good
Fight (who are always nursing a giant glass of red that never goes down). This sort of drinking is – in our opinion – like the difference between wrestling and tai chi.
We are having the Whatsits to stay/meeting the ex… and we have no choice. We need sharpening or dulling or possibly oblivion.
The Whatsits have brought some lovely looking cava, and you can’t just put it away for another day – that would be rude.
It’s the weekend. It’s nearly the weekend. It’s date night.
We’re out to dinner. We’re having something delicious and we’re not Donald Trump, so can’t drink Diet Coke with our sea bream.
There’s an offer on albariño at Lidl. We need to try some to see if it’s worth buying a case.
The depressing news continues. Until further notice, we are allowed a tipple, particularly when friends come round and we have to go over all the ghastliness, one event at a time, yet again.
It’s our friend’s 50th, and they have made their feelings on the issue clear: “Don’t give up the week of my birthday! Why do you have to give up This Week!” This is sort of flattering in a “we need you in full pants-on-head party mode” way, and also sort of exactly the opposite (“the uninebriated you just will not cut it”).
Someone is visiting who you hardly ever see (rude not to); someone has got a new job (let’s celebrate); nothing is happening and we are bored and can’t think of anything to say.
We are cooking a dish requiring a splash of white wine. It would be a waste to leave the bottle fermenting in the fridge.
We are doing a tasting. Who knows, we might have a party soon.
That’s it. Otherwise, teetotal all the way.