An idea so crazy it just might work?

Here is the idea: I drink less. But wait, let me elaborate...

So I drink pretty regularly. This is not a news flash. It's just true. I like booze, especially wine. 

Early last year my love of wine induced me to buy Leith a position in a beginner's wine appreciation course, and to go along with him myself (super generous of me, huh). I found the course incredibly stimulating, and not just because I was drinking six wines a night, although that was an obvious perk. I found I not only liked wine, but was interested in it too, and the more I was understood it, the better it tasted. Older wine is gooder wine and so on. Partly I think the intrigue I have developed is due to the fact that wine, and particularly the range of factors that deliver the attributes of a given wine, is complex. So knowing why a certain wine tastes the way it does feels a bit like solving a puzzle. Only more delicious. Yes, I am basically one of those wankers from Sideways. Sorry folks.


So anyway, wouldn't you just know it, this course gave me a taste for a lot of relatively expensive wines. I'm not talking Grange Hermitage or anything. But $30 bottles, and including styles that are only ever imported. I can get more pleasure from 'browsing' in a decent wine cellar (at this point I would like to give a shoutout to Rathdowne Cellars, which is bloody brilliant) than I do in a shoe store. Just this afternoon I impulse bought a Petit Chablis with no intention of drinking it today or at any anticipated occassion, simply because it was good value and I like Chablis. I buy wine. As I bought it, I considered what else I might have bought if I'd splurged that money on some other thing, and the wine seemed like a pretty sound purchase.


And yet at the same time as this, I still participate in my typical weekly shindigs involving events (dinners, bands, theatre, comedy, birthdays, movies etc etc) most nights of the week, when I'm not working like a demon. This week was just such a routine, with me having slightly more festive (read: late (read: midnight *gasp*)) nights out than usual, and having them daily. And drinking at all of them. Not guzzling it down then walking into a lamp-post drinking. Just festive, social drinking with dinner and maybe one or two after, and then failing to get up for a run AGAIN the following morning and devouring cheesymite scrolls at my desk the next day a little more than I should.


And so, by Saturday morning, following yet another night that didn't go later than midnight but still involved beer and wine and tequila and beer, I felt a little crappy. Not blistering hangover crappy. More a feeling that all my internal organs were a bit grey and shrivelled, and the spot on my back where I imagine my liver to be was actually a bit tender. A bit gross you say? Agreed.

So this weekend I had one of those bleary-eyed couple of days where I didn't do much at all. I didn't sleep in, but I did read the papers whilst in bed, I drank tea, read books, watched movies. Went for a long walk, cooked quite a bit of food, drank craploads of water and exercised rather vigorously both days. Not out of piousness, just because it was genuinely what I felt like doing. And, I had my idea.


Now before I tell you what it is, let me just say that I'm not signing up to it right now or anything. I'm not a convert. I'm just twirling it around in my brain, letting the 'light' (ie sluggish mental reflection) catch it from various angles, seeing how it looks. Right now it doesn't look stupid, but then I've been sober for two days.


Ok. So. I'm thinking that I should conserve the value of my overall investment in alcohol, let's say on a weekly basis, BUT convert quantity for quality. So no drinking pots from unclean taps in shitty pubs. No drinking the house red (unless I'm in a genuinely decent bar). And in fact, to help with all this, limited weekday drinking in general (I'd settle for 3 AFDs a week). And the other times, crack open a really nice Cotes du Rhone with dinner. Just because. Buy aged reisling and drink it in the sun on Sunday afternoon whilst reading my book. On my own if necessary. And so on. 


At the moment, after a dry weekend, and still feeling more run down than I should, I think it sounds alright. I plan to road test it this weekend, and will report back on the state of my wallet, my sanity and my liver in due course.