What Is Moderation Anyway?
Today, we celebrate the second edition of The Wine in Moderation Day. Launched on 8th November 2023 by Wine in Moderation, the program launched in 2008 by the European wine sector to demonstrate social responsibility, this day aims to educate consumers to enjoy wine responsibly and in moderation and by sharing the culture of wine. To mark this special day, Wine in Moderation invited members and partners to talk about the importance of moderation in our everyday lives.
Pauline Vicard, Areni Global’s CEO, reflects on her own relationship with moderation and what it means when working in the wine trade.
As I walked the alleys of a major London wine show, looking for the producer’s wines that I wanted to taste, I held the hand of my two-year-old daughter.
Finally spotting the wines in the line-up, I started to swirl, sniff and taste. My daughter asked to do the same, and I handed her the glass so that she could dip the tip of her little finger in the liquid. A gentleman standing behind me raised his voice and asked: “Excuse me, Miss, are you French?” “Yes, sir, but how on Earth did you know?” “French people are the only ones that will let a two-year-old drink,” he laughed.
“Well,” I said. “She is not drinking. She is tasting”.
This had been one of the fundamental lessons my dad taught me growing up in the vineyards. Back in the nineties, both my parents drank wine every day, and there was always a bottle on the table at every meal but breakfast (don’t laugh, this habit wasn’t far gone…). But both of them agreed that we shouldn’t continue my grandparents’ tradition of cutting wine with water for kids but would let my brother and me experience the full strength of wine the minute we asked to taste it. We had the same policy for everything at home: from the moment I wondered how something could taste (the cat’s food, for example), a parent would reply, “Well, why don’t you try it?”
There is a strong belief in my family that if alcohol is not something that kids see as forbidden, then they will be less likely to abuse it growing up.
Now, I’m not saying that I haven’t consumed anything in excess as a teenager, but I surely have been a very reasonable drinker growing up, and this curiosity to try things has certainly helped my career. Although I don’t recommend cat food to anyone.
A few months after the London wine show incident, my father passed away from cancer. He was only 60 years old. See, my dad was a smoker and had been part of that generation of farmers who sprayed pesticides bare chested, because we didn’t know any better at the time. But he was also an alcoholic and had been taken into mental health institutions several times through my high school and university years.
So clearly, teaching one’s kids the difference between tasting and drinking wasn’t enough to protect someone from excess consumption, or from the harmful effects of alcohol.
I realised then that although I had been born into a winemaking family and been a wine student all my life — through university, the WSET and later the Master of Wine programme — and had been working in the wine trade for the best part of two decades, I had never been taught about the effect of alcohol on my own body.
So I started to learn about wine, health and moderation.
The blurry definition of moderation
For the last decade, the wine trade has fully embraced the moderation narrative, and studies show that people understand what drinking in moderation means: do not drink and drive, do not drink when pregnant, and do not get wasted and cause trouble.
Even so, I strongly believe that members of the alcohol trade need to understand and define moderation better.
Wine in Moderation defines moderation as “the level considered to be low risk”, but it turns out that no universal drinking guidelines exist. Look around the world and you’ll see a wide range of recommendations.
A comprehensive table compiling International Drinking Guidelines can be found on the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, and it’s interesting to note how much these guidelines differ. In France for example, moderation is defined as up to 20g of alcohol a day (that’s two standard drinks a day for both men and women) but no more than 100g a week, while the US guidelines allow up to 28g per day.
The definition of ‘standard drink’ also changes, depending on where in the world you are.
Wine in Moderation defines a standard drink as 100ml of 12.5% wine. But while a 100ml pour is standard in Germany, the standard in France is 125ml and up to 250ml in the UK, regardless of the wine’s ABV.
If I ordered a 250ml glass of 14% red at my local restaurant, I would ingest the equivalent of 28 g of alcohol in one single glass — fine in the US, but over the limit in France.
The impact of alcohol on your body
I am no scientist, and I have yet a lot to learn about the many different impacts of alcohol, and I have very little hope of ever understanding addiction fully.
But I found that understanding the sequence of events happening in my gut, liver and brain following the ingestion of a glass of wine really helped me not only moderate my consumption of wine, but also take a more mindful approach.
The science behind alcohol and its impact on the brain is truly fascinating and Prof. David Nutt’s book Drink? The New Science Behind Alcohol and Your Health reads just like those chose-your-adventure book, that left me feeling empowered now that I had more cards in hand to be the kind of drinker that I wanted to be.
Should you prefer an audio version, I interviewed Prof. Nutt a few years back for this Areni In Conversation podcast.
Moderation and the trade
I love wine, and I love its people: the winemakers of course, the “small hands” working in the vineyard, the importers, the sommeliers…You don’t need to convince me that wine is culture, I can feel it through my entire being.
But I truly believe that we don’t talk enough about moderation in our own ranks. In September, I spoke in front of 50 of the most promising sommeliers in the world. Only two of them had had any sort of training on alcohol, health and moderation, and they had both worked in Australia where everyone who works with alcohol, including waiters, are legally responsible for the safety of their customers.
I also strongly disagree with the use of expressions such as “nobody ever get drunk with Petrus”. If moderation is a conscious behavioural choice, then it has nothing to do with the bottle’s price tag, even within fine wine circles.
If we want to have long-lasting and successful careers in wine, we have to question our own intake, and our own “drinking strategy”.
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What kind of drinker are you?
So following David Nutt’s recommendation, I started to question myself. Of course, I am a wine taster, but what kind of drinker was I? What kind of drinker did I want to be? Here are the three steps that I followed to build my own drinking strategy:
Know your history
We know that genetics influences a lot. Young men with a family history of alcoholism have a high risk of becoming dependent, almost from their first exposure to alcohol. “Another very interesting question to answer,” says Professor Nutt, is “What stage of your life are you? Because some people never stop drinking like a 20-something.”
Although I am not a young man, I have a direct history of alcoholism and mental health issues. Being a mother of two young kids, I am constantly overtired, which puts me in a vulnerable position that I need to be conscious of.
Know your motivations
Nutt described four main motivations for drinking alcohol, and I added the fifth one:
- Social: one drinks to celebrate and have fun
- Conformity: one drinks to fit in
- Enhancement: one drinks because it’s exciting – they likely want the effect of alcohol
- Coping: One drinks to forget their worries
- Work: One drinks on a work-related occasion because they think they have to
I believe that my motivation for drinking can oscillate between all of the above, but as I grew older, conformity and work-related occasions are less and less predominant. I am also extremely cautious regarding the coping one. I allow myself to “want a glass of wine”, but I can’t “need a glass of wine”. Knowing my history, I am painfully aware that if I found myself in a situation where “I need a glass of wine” too often in my week, than I need to address the issues at the source, and not use alcohol to cope, and my partner is very efficient at raising that red flag when needed.
Build your own strategy
Knowing my history and being an active member of the wine trade, it seemed vital for me to establish a drinking strategy. Here are five key elements of it:
- Abstain from publishing or endorsing content promoting being drunk as something fun;
- Always bring my water bottle and spittoon to tastings and wine events. Although event organisers are much more thoughtful today than when I started working in wine, there are still times when spittoons are way too rare, and the water jugs are not refilled often enough;
- Always drink less than the men in the room. I grew up in a trade environment where the first advice I was given by female colleagues was, “You can’t afford to lose control”. The trade has made a lot of progress but encouraging moderation within the trade is also a way to encourage more women to join our industry;
- Pace yourself at cocktails, and never allow the waiter’s “automatic refill”, as it is otherwise very difficult to keep track of one’s intake; and
- Never ever pressure people to drink. As in so many other aspects of life, “no” is a complete answer, and no more explanation is needed.
While the conversations around alcohol and health continue to be debated by governments and researchers, we as the wine trade have no other options but to lead by example. And that starts by questioning our own knowledge of moderation, and our own behaviours.