How giving up booze for just one month banished our wine critic’s wrinkles
POP. Glug, glug, glug. Chink. Ahhh. These are a few of my favourite noises, marking as they do the most sacred of my nightly rituals. Wine O’Clock. The moment I breathe out and enjoy a glass with dinner — and perhaps another on the sofa. The moment I know the working day is finally done. I’m sure many of you feel just the same. The thing is wine is my work, too. I’m a wine critic, writing the Knackered Mothers’ Wine Club column for this newspaper.
Wine fills every corner and crevice of my life. I love drinking, be it for work or pleasure. And after 20 years in the wine industry, vino and I are very old friends. Even when I’m not working I’ve been known to absentmindedly swirl and sniff my tea, forgetting it was a mug in my hand and not the stem of a wine glass.
So how on Earth would I cope when I gave up alcohol for a month? Even the most ardent of wine-lovers among you has probably given up the habit for a good stint. Not me. Since my last pregnancy seven years ago, I’ve never even had a dry week.
So this wasn’t a decision I took lightly. And it wasn’t even driven by concerns for my health. I’ve long been of the opinion that a little drop of wine does more good than harm.
Putting the cork back in the bottle was caused by something far more profound: my droopy eyelids. Not to mention the lines around my eyes, which looked worryingly deep all of a sudden.
When I first noticed my expression was a little more hangdog than usual, I wrote it off as tiredness. I am, after all, a 43-year-old knackered mother of three — and small children would take their toll on any woman’s complexion.
Then, with no small amount of horror, I came across an article about ‘wine face’.
Apparently, skincare specialist Dr Nigma Talib has identified the specific effects drinking wine can have on your skin. She claims she can instantly spot when a woman is drinking too much wine as she’s more likely to be puffy and have pronounced lines or redness between the eyes.
As well as this, she’s also likely to have enlarged pores, dehydrated skin with feathery lines across the cheeks, redness to the cheeks and nose, deep nasolabial folds (the lines running from the edge of the nose to the corners of your mouth) and — hello new friend — droopy eyelids.
There is one easy cure, according to Dr Talib. Stop drinking wine. The difference to my face would be instantly noticeable.
My average drinking day starts early if I’m working — just after the school run, when my tastebuds are fresh. In my days as a supermarket wine-buyer I would taste at least 40 wines a day. Now it might be anything from a couple of bottles to 30, all lined up on our kitchen table.
That’s if I’m working from home. If I’m at a tasting put on by a supermarket or wine retailer, it’s more like 100 wines in an afternoon.
Obviously not even I could actually drink 100 glasses of wine a day. When tasting professionally, I swirl it around and savour its deliciousness — before spitting it all out. I know, what a waste.
I’ve had a few awkward moments when, forgetting that it isn’t entirely normal to be standing in the kitchen with a line of open bottles at 10am, I’ve opened the door to someone coming to check the electricity meter or deliver a parcel.
They go from looking surprised to slightly relieved when I tell them what I do for a living.
Even when I’ve tasted wine all day long, I still look forward to my evening tipple. Most nights I’ll have at least one glass, sometimes two. I don’t go over this amount on a school night, though. And I’ve long kept two nights a week strictly alcohol-free — not to give my liver a break, but because sometimes being surrounded by booze all day can drive you to desire nothing more than a cup of weak tea.
The weekends are not quite so abstemious. There are usually bubbles before wine if we meet up with friends on a Saturday night. And there are always a few glasses at lunchtime on a Sunday.
With wine so woven into the fabric of my life, you can imagine how sad our parting was. On New Year’s Eve, I raised my glass, filled with particularly lovely pink champagne, and bid it adieu.
I had already visited Nick Miedzianowski-Sinclair, founder and CEO of The Cosmetic Imaging Studio in London, to analyse my skin. I wanted scientific evidence as to whether giving up drink would improve my complexion.
Nick scanned my skin with a special VISIA machine, which measures everything from wrinkles to redness, the size of pores to the texture of my skin. We agreed that he would scan me again at the end of my dry month.
What drama for just a few weeks off the sauce, I hear you cry. Well, my task was going to be so much harder because I would still be surrounded by wine.
Endless bottles would still arrive at my house, courtesy of all those kind
As I sipped a soft drink, I dreamt of a juicy glass of red Three weeks in and finally my skin looked fresher
vineyards and shops, and I would still be writing about it.
What’s more, I was going to have to keep tasting it — how else could I do my j ob? — but I wouldn’t be swallowing a drop. I would experience the wonderful taste of wine — but none of the wonderful effects.
Thanks to the excesses of Christmas, the first few days passed relatively easily. I was bloated from festive cheer and wearing elasticated trousers. It was a bit boring to be without wine, but I certainly didn’t ache for it.
Then, five days in, at 7pm on Friday night, I watched my husband pour out his beer and felt my first pang. Water just didn’t compare.
Normally I’d be enjoying a perfectly chilled glass of white or a G&T. If I was to have any hope of making it through the four, long weeks of January, I was going to have to pep up my soft drink options.
By Sunday lunchtime, with a roast on the table, I was sipping a spicy ginger beer rather than a spicy glass of red. It wasn’t water — but it certainly wasn’t wine either.
I was surprised to feel a little subdued and more self- conscious than usual. Wine was obviously a much more significant part of my persona than I had realised — a fact hammered home when, again and again, I was amused to see just how surprised my friends were to hear I was trying to abstain for a month.
For better or worse, wine and I had become one, indelibly associated. It suddenly seemed like a very long road ahead of me.
My treasured Wine O’Clock became Green Tea O’Clock. Or Tonic Water O’Clock. One time it was Beetroot Juice O’Clock — j ust the once, though. It was so revolting I had to spit it out.
Week two, and the novelty of not drinking had truly worn off. Physically, I felt no different. Emotionally, I felt tired and weary. And professionally,
there was a difference. It didn’t affect my tastebuds — but without the promise of a proper glass to enjoy in the evening, I found tasting wines more of a chore.
As for my face, well, I certainly didn’t think I looked any different. In fact, two people told me how tired I looked.
To top it off, I stepped on the scales (big mistake) and discovered I’d put on 4 lb.
I put this down to drinking so much tea that I needed more cake than usual. It was only the thought of l ooking younger that kept me going.
Weekends were especially hard without wine, especially when sat round a table with friends, plates of bangers and mash with onion gravy and a juicy, bramble-fruit-scented, warming bottle of red in front of us — as happened on the second Saturday of the month.
Thankfully my friends had stocked up on non-alcoholic alternatives for me. I sipped a perfectly drinkable alcohol-free beer — but dreamed of wine.
There was a positive side to all of this: hangovers. Or rather the lack of them. Waking up without any kind of headache on a Sunday morning (something I get after anything more than two l arge glasses nowadays) was a joy.
Two weeks in, and there were other signs, too. I was sleeping better: deeply, with no loo trips required. I felt calm, relaxed and rested due, I’m sure, to the muchimproved sleep.
The morning school run felt less stressful. The children’s constant chatter didn’t grate. But my face? It looked no different.
Then, in week three, the change came. People started telling me I looked well. And I don’t mean those who knew I was booze-free.
At last, my skin seemed to be turning a very important corner. I looked fresher. Buoyed by sleep-filled nights and compliments, I pushed myself through the last week wine-free.
My energy levels were up and I felt less sluggish. I no longer even registered the fact that it was Wine O’Clock.
After 32 days of not drinking, 32 whole days of forcing myself to spit out every last morsel of luscious wine I had to taste, I returned to Nick’s clinic for the follow-up scan.
The results were astonishing. The wrinkles around my eyes had reduced by up to 12 per cent in length and depth. My pores had decreased in size and occurrence by around 6 per cent. And the texture of my skin — which experts say is the most ageing factor — had improved by a whopping 37 per cent.
I definitely wasn’t as puffy around the nose and mouth. Overall, my face had a much healthier hue: less dull, more hydrated. Nick said that, in general, it was cleaner and less congested. It wasn’t until I put my before and after pictures side by side that I saw it for myself.
I looked younger. And to top it off, I’d lost a couple of pounds from my starting weight.
So was all the pain worth it? In some ways, yes. I’m glad I’ve at last experienced what it’s like to live without wine — if only to make me appreciate it all the more.
My first sip after my month off took place last Tuesday evening. It was a glass of Blanquette de Limoux, a gorgeous, crisp sparkling white from France. Paired with a plate of fish and chips, it was absolutely delicious.
More than the taste of wine, though, I missed the simple, social pleasure of sharing a bottle with friends, with my husband, with my family. So while I’ll continue to have a couple of wine-free nights a week, on the whole I’m happy to add to my wrinkles.
After all, the whole experiment just goes to show that it takes only a month or so to iron them out . . .