Wine and the Pleasure Calculation

Making the case for wine as the white coats come for it

Why do we drink wine?

It’s a legitimate question. And it probably has a number of good answers. But folks like me who help sell and promote wine aren’t the only ones who ask this question. Consider the question asked, and the answer given, by Juan E. Tello – Alcohol Unit Head – World Health Organization:

We have traditionally focused on people who drink, who have a problem. We treat them. We try to prevent them from beginning to drink. We also support their families. But now we ask, “Why are they drinking? What is driving the drinking in general?” Several drivers are behind the phenomenon. One is the price of alcohol…Another factor is availability. When you go to supermarkets, drugstores, outlets along the highways, you can buy alcohol. That didn’t used to be the case.  Marketing campaigns are also aggressive. The alcohol industry learned from tobacco and uses similar marketing strategies to get younger people, women, to drink more.  Finally, alcohol is normalized in Western society.

“What is driving the drinking in general,” Mr. Tello asked.

What I want to draw attention to here is Mr. Tello’s response to his question and what it lacks: There is zero attention paid to “Pleasure”. In fact, his response fails to account for any benefits of drinking in general, let alone drinking wine. This is, in my view, analytical malpractice and a failure to take into account the basic motivations behind nearly any and all human action.

If you sit on a porch or in your backyard or perch yourself on a balcony overlooking a busy city center and lazily watch the world go by, that already pleasurable experience can be made better and more pleasurable with a glass of wine in hand. But how much better? And what risk do you take making that experience better with wine if, as Mr. Tello and others would suggest, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption?

As we consider the risk calculation, how much weight should we give to the additional pleasure that comes with the satisfying experience of feeling the soothing and quenching touch of wine on the palate along with the hint of buzziness that is contributed by the alcohol? Based on Mr. Tello’s response to this question of why we drink, this real kind of pleasure appears not to enter into the calculation,

As I carefully uncork the 25-year-old Burgundy on the occasion of my 25th wedding anniversary, pour the wine for my friends and family celebrating with me around the dining room table, and relate the tale of how my wife and I stole a fleeting moment hidden behind the barrels of the very winery where this wine was made to make out, is the pleasure in this interlude and the memory it will produce to be considered in the risk calculation that will answer the question: should I drink alcohol?

Mr. Tello will tell me that whatever pleasure is derived is likely a result of an “aggressive marketing campaign” carried out by alcohol companies not dissimilar to the efforts made by cigarette companies. I’ve been bamboozled and conned into thinking this moment is anything other than the result of a manipulative effort to get me to drink a carcinogen.

Mr. Tello and his compatriots at the WHO, as well as others who work constantly to convince us that there is no benefit to alcohol, are themselves attempting to manipulate us into believing any pleasure we take from having alcohol in our life—let alone embracing it in a moderate fashion—is a mirage that, if it doesn’t kill us, is an act of deception.

He is wrong.

I’m not a talented enough writer to properly express the case for wine and for incorporating its consumption into one’s life. Just the same, let’s see if I can offer even a half-hearted attempt to express the case for wine.

Wine is the most tangible and pleasurable product of man’s ancient quest to express his command over the natural world, taking as he does the raw materials provided by nature, bending them to his will, and transforming them into a reflection of his desire to make life not just comfortable, but enjoyable. The success of this project to pursue joy through wine has been so successful that 7,000 years into it wine is firmly established as a symbol of life, light, and abundance everywhere the grape is actively cultivated. No agricultural product is so vividly symbolic of life.

Such a thing cannot be allowed to be dismissed as a mere cancer risk, let alone a cancer-causing agent. More importantly, anyone or any group that schemes to place wine in this kind of category ought to be required to publicly wrestle with The Pleasure Calculation: How much risk to health is required to dismiss the pleasure and joy a product adds to one’s life?

Dr. Tolle has yet to provide this formula.

Yet we are not children waiting for the doctors and researchers to answer this question. We have always known the formula for finding joy through wine. We don’t need a new instruction manual from Righteous White Coats.

1. Do not drink to excess
2. Be temperate in the use of wine
3. Serve wine with food
4. Learn and know when the buzz is sufficient

Mr. Tolle is correct about one thing. Wine is indeed “normalized” in Western society. And not just normalized, but essential; a product of Western society. While Western society can legitimately be criticized for its failures and excesses, wine is among the things for which Western society should be celebrated.

Tolle and others are coming for your wine. They are well-funded and determined to turn one tool of a life well lived with joy and meaning into a mere problem to be avoided by fearful people. We should not let them.