‘That’s you sorted for the weekend then,’ the man behind us at a Morrisons’ checkout commented about the alcohol contents of our weekly shop. It is not the first time someone has remarked on the amount of wine sharing the conveyer belt with food products. It’s a funny thing, this attitude to seeing more than one or two bottles of wine on a supermarket conveyor belt. In eighteen years of living abroad, it never happened once. There’s a good reason for that.
Evidence for the prosecution
Let’s start with the actual amount of booze on the belt – six bottles of red wine and six bottles of craft beer. Hardly enough for a party, as the woman working the checkout suggested. But it must be an unusual amount otherwise why comment on it? It is also for consumption at home. Something which surely identifies us as alkies. I’d forgotten there can be this weird approach to drinking at home in some corners of British society. I remember, many years ago, someone remarking that a couple had a drink problem because they drank at home whereas those folk who got rat-arsed in the pub every night of the week didn’t because they were socialising. That always seemed like weird logic to me, but hey ho.
When in France…
Evidence for the defence
I can’t remember drinking wine until September 1990. I can be that specific because I vividly remember where and why I finally agreed to share a carafe of wine with Andy, who had grown up enjoying the occasional glass of wine with meals because her father (working-class Irish) liked to do so. We were in a restaurant overlooking a nice little harbour in Puerto del Carmen on Lanzarote. The old harbour was the only appealing thing about the resort by a long shot. Typically, it is no longer there. Anyway, two chic-looking Spanish men sat on the old stone wall with a ceramic jug of wine and two glasses between then, the waters sparkling and dancing in the background. They looked so cool that I wanted to replicate it (Andy says I’m a marketer’s dream). The wine was warm and not particularly good, but there was something about the ritual which appealed.
When in Spain…
Anyway, jump ahead two decades and a bit to us living in Tenerife. Our intention when we moved was to embrace a local approach to life, some of which happened organically over time – ironically drinking less, going out at 11pm, eating later (although, we already ate quite late in Britain because of our jobs), and drinking wine with dinner.
When in wine country…
We also only watched Spanish TV, which was mostly an ordeal. However, there were a handful of decent programmes. One was a soap about the life of a family in Madrid during the reign of Franco. The husband, a civil servant, usually had wine with his lunch. When he finished work, he stopped off at the local bar for another glass or two, and when he got home, there would be yet another glass waiting for him on the dinner table. Wine is simply an integral part of life. It’s inconceivable to eat dinner without it. The same applies to bread. The first time our Basque neighbour, Jesús, came to our house for dinner, we didn’t have any bread on the table. He was so shocked, he trotted off back to his own casita to get some. We did, at least, have wine.
When in Italy…
There are some great sayings around Europe illustrating an approach to wine with food which doesn’t exist quite the same in Britain:
Un repas sans vin, c’est comme une journée sans soleil – A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Although this is French, there’s similar in other countries.
Il vino che si pasteggia non imbriaca – Wine at mealtimes doesn’t make you drunk.
Comer sin vino, o es miseria o es desatino – Eating without wine is either misery or folly.
One I particularly like is, a meal without wine is called breakfast.
Obviously, these are all from wine-producing countries where drinking wine is a way of life across the societal board. When you live among these lifestyle attitudes, you absorb them. Now, and this might sound pretentious but it’s true, a meal feels as though there’s an integral component missing if there’s no wine. Plus, wine does enhance flavours, especially with Italian dishes for some reason.
And when at home in Somerset…
However, I wasn’t going to explain all this to the disapproving man at the checkout, who was also a bit of a nosey bugger. He spotted a packet of aspirin (there’s a good reason for the aspirin, but that’s another story).
‘Ha! You’ll need those with all that alcohol,’ he smirked.
‘It’s important to have a balanced diet,’ I replied with a smile, while thinking, ‘Ignoramus, nobody ever remarked about the wine when we shopped at Waitrose.’
