How Many Drinks Do Drinks Writers Drink?

A section of my booze closet. (Photo by me)

For a few years after I started writing about booze, my mother-in-law was convinced I’d become an alcoholic. I suppose it was easy to come to that conclusion, given the number of bottles strewn all over our apartment. Finally, after yet another of her thinly-veiled allusions to my wife that I’d become a stumbling sot (these accusations were never leveled at me directly), my spouse, bless her heart, replied, “You think we’d have so many bottles here if he was actually drinking as much as you think he is?”

Which leads me to a little confession: I don’t drink nearly as much as my social media feed makes it appear. When I crack open a bottle and taste it for reviewing purposes, a few sips, usually followed by a few sips the next day, will do the trick. When I make cocktails, it’s usually for my wife or our friends — I’ll make one for myself, but I rarely finish it (even though, within my limited range, I’m a damn good bartender). When I go out to dinner, I generally limit myself to a single drink; at home, I’ll go with diet soda. I admit it, I’m a SodaStream fiend and happily down blends of my own creation like sugar-free banana-almond cola on an all-too-frequent basis.

Which is not to say that I don’t put away my fair share of the hard stuff on occasion, usually at events where it can be very easy to imbibe to excess. Heaven knows cocktails are an introvert’s best friend in social settings. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that while I enjoy drinking more, I enjoy being drunk less. I’ve also found that when my body says “Stop,” it’s best to do so. I’ve tried to ignore the pleas of my liver plenty of times. The most memorable was at the Hotel Craigellachie in Scotland, where I was on a press trip with Glenfiddich. They’d had us tasting whisky since just after breakfast, and twelve hours or so later, I was ready to call it a night — my head was already pounding. But when you’re staying in a hotel that has one of the world’s great whisky bars, well, you try to force the issue a little bit. Which led to my spending a bunch of money on a delicious and rare dram of Mortlach that gave me absolutely no enjoyment whatsoever. Moral of the story: when the booze stops, er, sparking joy, it’s time to stop drinking.

I post boozy images on Instagram and elsewhere most days. But that doesn’t mean I’m drinking most days. I try not to imbibe more than two or three days in a row. An ideal week would give my liver a day off for every day I drink. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s what I shoot for. So I’ll save up images — if I have two cocktails one night, I’ll post pics of them on successive days. I’ll often photograph bottles I haven’t opened yet but am looking forward to trying. If I make a cocktail for my wife but don’t partake myself, I’ll post it as if I did. All tricks of the trade.

I wish I could tell you whether I’m an outlier among people in my line of work, or if most of us are behaving similarly. But how much we drink, and how often, seems to be a taboo subject among those of us who drink for a living. I know more than a few folks who seem to hit the bars daily, but I have no idea if they’re employing social media sleight-of-hand the way I am. I once tried to ask the question on a Facebook page for people in the industry — admittedly in an artless and insensitive way — and got yelled at quite a bit without getting my question answered.

I’m not trying to judge either way. If you can drink every day and maintain your health and general well-being, God bless you. If you’re a relative lightweight like me, there’s nothing wrong with that either. But I do wonder how many of us social media lushes are actually more moderate in practice than we are in theory.