If you’re coming to the end of a dry January this weekend, you may well be rather looking forward to resuming your normal levels of alcohol consumption from Monday. But, as the chief medical officer suggested earlier this month, that may not be the best plan – especially for men, who have been advised to reduce their intake from 21 to 14 units a week.
I have some reservations about recommendations such as these that take no account of the size and circumstances of the person drinking (are they doing so with or without food, for example?); but there’s undoubtedly a problem with the amount we drink in the UK, and healthy eating messages can’t afford to be ambivalent. It’s just too complicated to say it’s OK to drink a couple of glasses of wine if you’re 6ft 4in and tucking into a Sunday roast, but not if you’re a 5ft 2in woman who hasn’t eaten.
What the new recommendations also play down is that some wines are considerably more alcoholic than others, so as well as taking a couple of days off a week, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to reduce the alcohol content and quantity of wine we drink on other days. Wine glasses in restaurants and pubs are far bigger than they used to be: a 250ml glass of 14% abv wine at 3.5 units contains more than double the alcohol of a 125ml glass of an 11% abv one, which is just 1.4.
It’s pretty easy to find crisp white and sparkling wines that won’t overtax the system – a glass of prosecco, say, or a light Portuguese white such as the Wine Society’s refreshingly spritzy Vinho Verde 2014 (£5.95; 11% abv) – but the real challenge is to find full-flavoured reds that deliver at under 13% abv (many are well over 14%). A quick trawl through my tasting notes shows that inexpensive Bordeaux, Languedoc, côtes du Rhône and northern Rhône reds are most likely to come in under that abv. Asda’s Wine Atlas Saint-Chinian 2013 (£5.97; 12.5% abv) and Tesco’s Finest Vin de Pays d’Oc Malbec 2014 (£5.50; 12.5% abv), for example, are both reasonably robust, though if you’re used to 14% abv reds, you may find them a little short to begin with. Tastebuds can be retrained, however, as anyone who has given up sugar in tea will testify.
I’ve also come across a couple of Romanian pinot noirs that, despite their relatively modest abvs, are surprisingly gutsy: Wolfhouse Pinot Noir 2013 (£4.99 Bargain Booze; 12.5% abv) and the very prettily packaged Incanta Pinot Noir 2014, which is currently £5.99 on a “mix six” deal from Majestic (12% abv): a good one if you’re already thinking ahead to Valentine’s Day, too.
- This article was edited on 29 January 2016. An earlier version was missing a crucial reference to a 125ml glass in the paragraph about strengths of wines of different abvs. This has been corrected.
