EDITOR’S LETTER
FANCY A PINT? INCREASINGLY, THE ANSWER TO THAT most companionable question is a polite but definitive, “no”. And even when it’s, “Go on, then”, the pint might have a crucial difference from all previous pints you’ve ever sunk. There’s a missing ingredient, a significant one: alcohol.
While booze sales drain away, pubs are shuttered, and the liquid lunch goes the way of the office romance (they still happen, but management no longer approves), a cottage industry is thriving, serving drinkers of beer and wine and spirits who are interested in the taste and the ritual, but the buzz, apparently, not so much. “Sober-curious” is the mildly infuriating buzz-phrase. “Mindful drinking” is the other.
And while zero-alcohol beer, previously soapy and unconvincing, alcohol-free wine and the dreaded mocktail have long been available, alongside water and juice and tea and Diet Coke, for those who abstain for reasons of religious observance, or because they are recovering addicts, or pregnant, or designated drivers, the new low- and no-alcohol drinks are aimed not so much at them, but the rest of us: drinkers who wish to moderate, or temporarily suspend, or even end entirely, our alcohol intake, just because.
Just because what? Well, I’m sorry to tell you and your renegade uncle, but the consumption of alcohol is not especially good for your health. And being drunk, in 2023, is nothing to shout about, if it ever was. It’s not considered cool, or clever, or sexy. It might even be a bit sad.
Senior readers will wonder if, like a pub-bore’s joke, they haven’t heard all this before. And they’d be right. Assuming the unlikely role of an impatient publican at the end of a long night, the British press — not famous for its ascetism — has called time on alcohol on more than one previous occasion.
Your correspondent’s memory flashes back to the autumn of 1991 when, a callow stripling in inadvisable trousers and a please-notice-me jacket, he joined a queue of his peers, fake IDs at the ready, in a sketchy south-London side street. This was the opening night of the Ministry of Sound, the first venue purpose-built for the rave generation. Acid house was going legit. Later, the Ministry would become synonymous with corporate clubbing, the merchandising of rebellion. But right then, it felt necessary to be there.
The big news for us revellers was the line-up of imported DJs and the much-vaunted sound system. The story that drew attention from the mainstream media had nothing to do with music: the Ministry of Sound didn’t have a liquor licence. Not an oversight on the part of the owners. There was no bar because it was thought one wouldn’t be required. The Ministry clientel
