Though he's recently announced his retirement , the chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson still seems to have a fair bit of fight in him. Today he's announced that there's no evidence whatsoever that introducing kids to alcohol early encourages sensible drinking in later life. In doing so he's charging directly at the dearly held middle class myth of 'wine weaning'. If we all just behaved like they do on the continent, the theory goes, giving kids watered wine as we all snarf local cheeses and fresh bread under the loggia, then they won't turn into drunken hoodies when they grow up.

It's a lovely notion, and fiercely cleaved to by those who summer in Provence and Umbria. Maybe they're right - they have the experience. On the other hand, I heard a similar theory of child rearing in the backwoods of Tennessee as I watched a 10 year old girl put 30 rounds in a 5" group with an AR15 assault rifle. 'Yep. We teach em about guns early so they'll be able to handle 'em safely when they get older'.

When I was a kid my parents certainly weren't as middle class as they later became. We were part of the post-60s wave of social mobility that enabled working class boys to enter the middle class by the back door of the Grammar School. At first alcohol belonged in the pub - there was no need for a family to have it at home. Then, slowly, wine arrived. A bottle of Mateus Rose appeared on special occasions as Mum and Dad got into the idea of having friends round for dinner (or possibly when we needed a new decorative lamp base) then, as I grew up, they rode waves of Blue Nun, Black Tower, Bull's Blood and appallingly over-oaked New World whites with along with everyone else in the country.

What I can't seem to remember is any kind of 'policy' where my drinking was concerned. I must have drunk the tankered and anti-freezed Liebfraumilches because I can remember their perfumed, instant headache quality, yet I certainly don't have any recollection of being handed a small glass for my betterment or of getting quietly smashed while grazing on the leftovers.

My introduction to the demon alcohol was more to do with height and depth of voice than any great plan. Like most people I started drinking illegally early by blagging my way into the pubs and bars of our dreary seaside town. Once I expressed an interest in sharing their plonk, the parents cheerfully poured it out. I think perhaps, the fact they were new to wine themselves meant they'd felt no need to devise a way of handling my alcoholic coming of age.

Today, of course, things are very different. The culture of guilt and prohibition that surrounds everything we indulge in makes us all keenly aware of the downsides of alcoholic consumption. On the other hand drinking wine and having the ability to appreciate it are still perceived as indicators of class, sophistication and refinement of palate.

All of which puts middle class parents into an exquisite quandary. Parents who won't let little Sky eat dairy 'in case she develops an allergy' or allow tiny Rufus to have the swine flu jab 'because you can't be sure its safe' would be truly appalled at the thought that they might one day confuse a Burgundy with a Bordeaux, buy oaky Cab Sauv in a box or pronounce a T in Montrachet.

What to do … what to do? And, as so often in middle-class parenting, any notion of coherent logic disappears like the smoke from a scented candle. No matter that the CMO brands it a brain-rotting poison, my kid is going to know his wine.

I suppose now I'm grown up, write for the Guardian and live in North London I'm about as thoroughly middle class as you can get (a truth which still, to his credit, appals my father) but fortunately it seems that I won't have to deal with a drinking policy for my own daughter for a while yet. At six and beset with media messages about health and 'wellbeing' she's already an obnoxious little puritan and turns from a proffered glass of an amusing little CdR with admonishments and grimaces. I live in fear of the day she smells the vodka in 'Daddy's special spicy tomato juice' and dobs me in to Childline.

I'm actually writing this on a train, on my way to pick her up from a couple of days with her grandparents where, I'm fairly sure, they haven't succeeded in feeding her Blue Nun. I, on the other hand, have a hangover like a cantilevered section of the Gardens of Babylon, a bastard behind the eyes that just won't stop throbbing because, relieved of parental duties for a night, the first thing I do is go out and drink enough Negronis to slay an ox.

I may be a little intellectually disadvantaged by my condition right now but I'm rapidly concluding that it's not my policy towards my daughter's drinking that's altering her behaviour - it's the other way around.

So, did you learn to drink from your parents? And how do you propose to pass on all your wisdom to a waiting generation?