The Low Alcohol Era is Now Upon Us – and It Will Bore Us Silly

Bridget Jones era women cackling over a bottle of Chardonnay, men in quarter zips knocking back the negronis, highlighted blondes ordered vat-like glasses of rosé or ‘lady petrol’, groups of lads downing pints of Stella a.k.a. wife-beater, Cheltenham racegoers consuming lakes of Guinness, west country teenagers sloshing plastic glasses of sui-cider, couples sharing a bottle of Burgundy and a bag of kettle crisps on a Friday night – what was once a great nation of heroic drinkers is evaporating into a temperate nation of 0.0 boredom.

My own recent drinking experiences – or lack of them – mirrors the news that the UK’s appetite for alcohol is shifting. The low-alcohol market is growing apace and 35% of younger people are said to avoid drink altogether. Mintel, the market research firm, suggests that the low/non-alcohol market at £330 million in 2024 is set to grow to £800 million by 2028.

A combination of better products and a greater interest in health and wellbeing are understood to be driving the trend. 0.0 Guinness tastes, I’m told, exactly the same as real Guinness and is the UK’s top-selling non-alcoholic beer with over half of Ocado’s deliveries being the 0.0 version. While it’s tempting to celebrate this trend – let us not forget the tragedy of approximately 10,000 alcohol-specific deaths a year – am I wrong in thinking, Basil Fawlty-like, it’s a pity that that particular avenue of pleasure has been closed off?

I’m feeling particularly miserable after three recent damp squib social events. Meeting a friend I haven’t seen for a while in a pub, we curled up in comfy seats by the fire and settled in for a good catch up over what I hoped would be a warm bottle of rioja, only to hear her order half a pint of 0.0 Estrella. Drinking alone is no fun – I felt like an indulgent wastrel – so changed my order to a diet coke. Yawn. Then a dinner party where the host was encouraging us to try Waitrose’s best non-alcoholic white saying that we really wouldn’t notice the difference (a bare-faced lie). Finally, my usually drunken and joyfully argumentative book club where we were offered Seedlip or Pentire and tonic or Nozeco. Sure, we’re all getting older and can’t cope with any hint of a hangover, but really, is hoping for a couple of glasses of wine now verboten?

Kathleen Stock wrote a great piece about one of the overlooked side-effects of Ozempic being a gloomy dampening of our animal appetites. In general the prospect of a delicious meal at the end of the day is the only thing that keeps us going. The same goes for that crisp glass of Sancerre with lunch, glass of beer at sunset, or a lavish bottle of Lidl Champagne for a Friday night kitchen disco after a busy week. Why deny ourselves small daily pleasures?

Because, I think this is now the tenor of the world in which we live. The move towards 0.0 drinks seems to me to be motivated less by a concern for wellbeing and a pretend conviction that Crodino and ice is a patch on a Campari Spritz, more a general air of caution and inhibition. We can’t have heating because Ed Miliband says it will ruin the atmosphere, we can’t laugh because it might hurt someone’s feelings and we certainly can’t fall in love at work, let alone flirt, because it’s ‘an abuse of power’.

We are also skint as a country with disposable income falling for the average family. The YouGov national mood tracker consistently shows negative emotions (frustrated, stressed, sad) consistently outweighing positives in recent weeks and months. Lockdowns, mortgage rises, the Labour Government, inflation, record youth unemployment, nine million working age adults on benefits and war with Iran is not the background in which to revel as Merry Englanders.

And yet, wouldn’t a lovely drink help to alleviate the gloom? Could we give ourselves permission to have a bit of fun? Rather than punishing ourselves with Wim Hoff style morning ice-baths, could we not instead host parties where the cold-plunge is used to store the booze? As French diplomat Paul Claudel said: “Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.”

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.