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Middle-aged wine drinkers attacked in UK press
October 16, 2007
Oliver Styles
Middle class wine drinkers have been vilified in the UK press as the chief culprits behind alcohol abuse in the country.
Articles in today's newspapers including the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Evening Standard singled out the fact that those living in middle-class areas are more likely to consume 'hazardous' levels of alcohol.
According to the statistics, Runnymede (Surrey), Harrogate (Yorkshire) and mid-Sussex are among the regions with the highest percentage of people consuming 22 to 50 units per week for men or 15-35 units per week for women – levels deemed 'hazardous' by research commissioned by the department of health.
'The heaviest drinkers in the country are in the wealthy enclaves of middle-class Surrey,' said the Evening Standard this evening.
Health minister Dawn Primarolo said that 'everyday drinkers' were to blame.
'[They] have drunk too much for too long,' she said. 'This has to change.'
However, the regions with the highest levels of 'harmful' drinking include Manchester, Liverpool and Salford. According to the study, 'harmful' drinking is one step up from 'hazardous' and is defined as those consuming over 50 units per week (men) or over 35 units per week (women). According to the BBC, one large (250ml) glass of 12% wine contains three units of alcohol.
Decanter magazine editor Guy Woodward said that the story had been 'blown out of all proportion' and that the articles were 'irresponsible' and 'misleading'.
'The way the press – and the government – is talking you'd be forgiven for thinking Surrey was turning into Sodom and Gomorrah,' he said. 'The reason southern, middle-class wine drinkers are more common in the “hazardous drinking” category is that the “harmful drinking” category, which is the more dangerous one, is taken up with binge drinkers from the working class, north-west of the country.'
'Of course the suburban middle classes are going to be more common in the next category down,' he added, saying the press had 'pounced' on the middle classes for the sake of a better story.
Jeremy Beadles of industry body the Wine and Spirit Trade Association questioned the study's parameters.
'I'm not sure it's helpful to anyone to describe someone who drinks one glass more than the government's sensible drinking guidelines as a hazardous drinker,' he said.
Have your say...
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 These figures are, literally. made up. The DoH has taken the percentages of particular social types nationally who "drink to a hazardous level" and mapped those social classes to their percentages in individual local authority areas, multiplies one by the other, and claimed this as the percentage of "hazard level" drinkers in those areas. They don't actually have figures down to that degree of veographical accuracy at all.
Martyn Cornell
I have but one question – is it 'middle-aged' or 'middle-class'? If it is both, or either, I feel doubly 'attacked' as I am both middle aged and middle class. But I don't really care what the UK press says because I don't live in the UK, and I don't drink copious amounts of wine – I taste it, and drink it parsimoniously. How can you 'binge-drink wine??
Sally Webster, Brussels, Belgium
I calculate a 750 ml bottle of wine (12%) to hold 18 units. So 1/2 bottle of wine at dinner is 9 units. 1/2 bottle of wine with dinner, then, each night for a week is 56 units. Even at 12%, this qualifies as 'harmful' drinking???
Most wine is now a bit stronger than 12%, so 'harmful drinking' happens even more quickly than 50 units. Who is kidding whom? I wonder if Ms. Primarolo has wine with dinner every night. One should ask in an interview.
Had you thought to quantify this nonsense to your readers? We could all fall about laughing.
PG Waddilove, Donhead St Mary, Shaftesbury, UK
I have to be in agreement with Guy Woodward. Someone needs to explain to me how on earth a male person who consumes 22 to 50 units per week which, after calculations, comes out to 1.04 to 2.3 glasses of wine per day, can be remotely described as "hazardous" when the medical community RECOMMENDS one to two glasses of wine per day as providing a health BENEFIT over people who do NOT consume wine/alcohol at all! It makes no sense!
Anthony Taylor, Gigondas, France
The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William Blake, London
Toby Bensimon, UK
You say “Decanter magazine editor Guy Woodward said that the story had been 'blown out of all proportion' and that the articles were 'irresponsible' and 'misleading'.”
“One glass of 12% wine contains three units of alcohol.”
How misleading and sensationalist is that?
Graham Coverdale
It is about time that this government spoke out against the evil, subversive middle classes. Not only do they contribute vast sums of tax money, un-burden state schools & the NHS through daring to select private options but now this. Ms Primarolo, in her new role as Head of the Fun Police, is right 'everyday drinkers' are to blame, '[They] have drunk too much for too long…This has to change.' Long live the humble binge drinker!
Seb Hill
You have published a very misleading article. If 10 ml of pure alcohol is one unit as the Govt website says, just over 70 ml of 14% wine is a unit, and a glass with 3 units would have to hold over 200 ml of wine. This is the kind of measure you get in large glasses in pubs, but no way what a serious wine drinker takes at home - there's no room to smell the wine or taste it properly. I have just checked and my usual 'glass of wine' at home is around 100 ml. If you start with the wrong figures you can prove anything. As for Ms Primarolo, no doubt she has been fed statistics by civil servants, and it would be better if she got them right rather than being alarmist.
I have no idea whether the Surrey middle class drinks too much, but the real dangers of over-indulgence apart from liver and heart disease (good figures available) are public and domestic violence and drink driving, neither of which are most likely to be perpetrated by middle class wine drinkers at home.
Jon North, Lunel, France
The News headlines on I.T.V at 6.30 pm on the 16th October, focused on WINE & reported that a glass or more consumed each day was harmful to ones health. As a result, it was not the young binge drinker who should be targeted, but the middle-classes, particularly those living in Surrey!
Millions of people living in this country, drink wine responsibly. Our wine drinking culture, can mirror that of mainland Europe, where wine is consumed on a regular basis, often with food. We only have to look at the French paradox for instance, to see the benefits of drinking wine with a meal.
As a wine educator, I have tutored hundreds of tasting, where spittoons are provided & people attend to enhance their knowledge & appreciation of this most amazing subject - WINE. They are not irresponsible, or deserve to be targeted in this way.
Neil Courtier, UK
Oliver Styles writes 'The three units per glass equation originates from the BBC article on the same subject which says that one large glass of wine (250ml at 12%) is three units. At one third of a bottle, this is a very large glass indeed.'
Interesting to see Harrogate mentioned in this article. The 2 years I lived there provided me with more 'run-ins' with angry drunks, than the entire rest of my life (43-2). The two years I lived in Cambridge, I really only encountered scant harmless sots.
Being a Yank, I assume I see less drunkards in person, since being car-centric, the drunks just get behind the wheel, rather than resorting to fisticuffs. I think it is less a question of the amount that defines dangerous levels of consumption, rather, what is it about Yorkshire and Surrey that drives one to drink?
C Wells
The day they close all the bars in the Houses of Parliament is the day I consider modifying my drinking habits!
David Lester, Manchester, UK
So Dawn Primarolo now wants to bring the Nanny State even further into people's lives; not to the hoodies and hooligans out binge drinking in town centres, creating complete no go areas for the respectable majority of the population, but by regulating the middle class, those much put upon, hard working, down trodden soles who find solace from the occasional bottle wine in the safety and security of their own homes. Something which the present Government is actually perpetuating by the need for us all to drown our sorrows at each and every occasion.
The smoking ban has caused me to give serious consideration to change a lifelong aversion to tobacco and take up smoking the evil weed, I am not a fan of hunting nor a great lover of horse riding, having ridden twice and fallen off twice, but perhaps I could take up that pastime as well in order to attempt to perpetuate the rights of the individual in this country to try and do what they like and have always been allowed to do, so long as it doesn't impinge upon others.
However the Thought Police are well and truly with us, we have allowed them to impinge on every aspect of our lives, and by continuing to allow these intrusions we have signed our own arrest warrants for any amusement and previously enjoyed freedoms. We have been denied the opportunity to have an election so now we can only use the alternative, a revolution. Please form an orderly queue behind me.
Peter Bowyer, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
I enjoyed reading this story which mirrors what we are being told in Australia.
In recent years, we were told that men could drink up to 4 standard glasses of wine per day, and reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by up to 50%. The figure given for women was 2 glasses.
However, in the past week, the National Health and Medical Research Council has halved these recommendations to no more than 2 standard glasses of wine per day, otherwise, drinkers would put themselves in some kind of high risk category, seemingly linking moderate drinking with hard drug taking as a high risk activity.
Given that the previous guidelines, issued in 2001 by the NHMRC, were based on extensive, long term research, one can only conclude that these new recommendations are not research-based, but are the product of the usual idiotic bureaucratic decision-making for which Australia is becoming notorious.
I have canvassed my “middle class” friends, and no one believes this rubbish, and we will continue to enjoy our 3 to 4 glasses per day, at the very least.
The notion that half a bottle of wine per day would reach the “dangerous” level of 50 units of alcohol per week is clearly ludicrous, yet another reminder of why most governments, and the bureaucracies they spawn, cannot be trusted to speak the truth.
Ivan Watt, Australia
By a funny co incidence, I was preparing a contribution for a forum on the crisis that European wines are facing to be held, here in Malta next week.
Ms Primarolo's comments are not in isolation of what seems like a concerted effort by certain European authorities to damage the healthy and good properties of wine that recent research and long standing traditions have proven. Even in France, such attacks are common. The recent National advertising campaign against binge and the dangers of heavy drinking illustrated with a bottle of wine is just one incidence. On a recent flight between Lyon and Bordeaux, Air France, would not serve me wine as it was not meal time but instead offered any other alcohol I could possibly wish for. There was also a time when at Bordeaux airport no bar/cafe actually served Bordeaux wines.
This and many of the statements that your readers have mentioned above are contradictory to the efforts and the many millions of Euros of our money that the EU is going to spend to market our wines.
As to your Minister's comments! I wonder who came up with the idea to research such a topic in the first place?! and what is she proposing to do? Have wine drinking inspectors checking the bins of middle class homes for empty wine bottles. Ah! there is a thought. Increase tax on wine.
One of the proposals being put forward as a must for the strengthening of the European wine market is to emphasis the fact that wine is a drink grown, made, and drunk by all classes. Your health department's bureauocrats clearly have a different view.
Michael Tabone, Malta
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