Rethinking Drinking

Tucked away in a remote page in the Guardian’s G2 magazine on October 2, you would be forgiven for having missed an interesting, though largely irrelevant, article on the recent growth of Britain’s (read London’s) cocktail scene. The article made allusions to the enhanced prestige of the profession, name-checking Tony Conigliaro, unofficially one of the world’s foremost experts in such matters, and was written in a manner that suggested that Britain (London) was finally coming around to the idea of serious mixed drinks. Quite whether this is true or whether it is merely an off-shoot of a prohibition-era revival in popular culture is hard to discern. Regardless, the article’s closing scoffing at London Cocktail Week’s organiser Hannah Sharman-Cox’s desire that cocktails could become as popular as cooking requires further thought, as it is symptomatic of the nation’s approach not just to mixed drinks, but to alcohol in general.
Britain’s drinking culture has for many years been the monkey on its back; a foul reputation of bingeing to excess, coupled with the public and private consequences, both short and long-term. Television has done little but accentuate our awareness of this, with shows such as Geordie Shore and other ‘real-life’ programmes either revelling in the debauchery or shaming all those that have over-indulged. Other popular media have followed in much the same fashion, and this reinforcement of social norms has been accepted, largely because of alcohol’s black reputation. But can this be changed? Perhaps it is time to start drawing inspiration from the realm of cookery, in order to bring back the respectability of drinking.
In the last decade, British awareness of what they are eating, whether at home or out at a restaurant has been radically altered, thanks in no small part to the efforts of celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Heston Blumenthal who have made food ‘cool’ again. In any of Britain’s cities there are restaurants which offer interesting and well-prepared food to an ever-increasingly savvy clientele. Customers are more informed, and less afraid of experimentation, at least when it comes to eating. Attitudes towards what accompanies this food have however stagnated, so much so that whilst most would baulk at the notion of ordering a Chicken Kiev, the once famed but now much maligned Ukrainian dish, many of these would see no problem in ordering a Long Island Iced Tea, its equivalent both in era and complexity. Similarly, having scoured the food menu from tip to toe, the call for a glass of house wine or a bottle of lager is often uttered as quickly and off-handedly as possible, with little thought of how or whether it will affect their dining experience. That something so engrained in many people’s everyday existence should be considered with such nonchalance can only attributed to a lack of information, and a public only partially engaged with the possibilities that drink can offer.
Returning to television, with its power to shape opinions and tastes, it is hard to imagine serious programming educating and entertaining its viewers on the subject of mixing drinks. Yet there is very little that separates the enigmatic flamboyance of Heston Blumenthal and the aforementioned cocktail wizard Tony Conigliaro. Both have approached their field from quite disparate backgrounds, and both can be said to have reinvented their discipline, even borrowing from a similar ‘molecular’ approach. Their subject matter borrows strongly from history, cultural and social, and they are engaging characters. At the opposite end of the scale, self-proclaimed local boys The Hairy Bikers are renowned for their appreciation of local food, and creation of well-made but unpretentious dishes. Could their success not be replicated by similarly down-to-earth characters touring Britain’s breweries, micro-breweries and distilleries in search of their unique histories and flavours?
Sadly the snobbery that comes with a higher-end drinking culture has not been eroded sufficiently for people to feel relaxed and confident in their choices. Alcohol, perhaps more so than food, has very stringent class connotations that many still abide by and which need to be assessed in greater depth to appreciate their implications. Yet there is no reason why drinking culture cannot be changed, at least to make it a conscious choice that people make. Whether it be wine, beer, cocktails or spirits, a more educative and engaging collaboration with the subject in television and newspaper coverage would result in more people experimenting with their choices, and savouring their decisions. In this suggestion lies one of the keys to changing Britain’s drinking culture, perhaps not massively, but enough to get people talking about what they sip, glug and imbibe.