Poll Situational wine drinking

I confess!
Generally as a family we eat quite early in the evening as every week night one or all of the children are then racing off to do various activities. I will then often open some wine later, perhaps around 9-9.30 and drink it without food.

 

I also assumed tasting events were excluded.

If not the percentage becomes tricky to calculate. Are we talking about time, volume, number of different wines, or occasions?

 

I think we are a very untypical cross section of society indeed.

 

What if you start the bottle with food and continue afterwards or vice verse?

 

25-50% for me I often enjoy wine before food more than with food . I rarely order wine to go with food but often the reverse .

 

I hardly ever drink wine when not eating, perhaps that means I’m not a proper wine lover? Decent bitter and the occasional Campari cover my non-eating drinking moments. A very occasional Mosel Riesling in the garden as an elevensies treat is probably my only exception.

 

Good points Jim - I can happily drink beer without food (but honestly it's not not that often) or an Aperol Spritz/Campari, even cocktails in some circumstances, but almost never wine. I wonder why that is?

 

I always need something to nibble when I'm drinking beer too, plain crisps, nuts or even the odd packet of pork scratchings are welcome salty foils.

 

Agreed Jim - I do the same, but those snacks don't count as real food I suppose. In Italy, even when you drink an aperitivo you are always given some form of nibble to accompany it. The Italians really do abhor drinking without ingesting something alongside the alcohol - very civilized in my estimation.

 

A meal without wine is called breakfast

 

I think you will see a correlation between wine drunk without food and the number of young children the person has!!! My non-food consumption shot through roof once we had kids.

50% for me - we just barely manage to get the little feckers in bed before slumping on the sofa supping straight from the bottle.

 

I'm an under 25%er for the simple reason that I prefer to drink water with my meals. It goes with everything. I also appreciate wine a great deal more on its own than when paired with food.

 

Matt, I admire the purity of your habits.

Food can certainly compromise my clarity of observation of wine.

To honour un vin de contemplation requires a kind of meditation. Whether that's solitary or not is a matter of preference.

Yet the combined effect of food, wine and company can offer a richly shared human experience.

Perhaps we might distinguish the contemplative from the social, while acknowledging that this may be a venn diagram.

 

I find that the kind of wine I like only reveals half of itself without food and I dislike the physical sensation of its arrival in the digestive system.
Wine is the delivery vehicle of choice for the alcohol dependent middle classes, it seems to me, and I think it's quite dangerous.

 

Thank God we are all different. Life would be so boring otherwise

 

Tom, you would not have approved of a recent member review on the TWS website which described the French red in question as a ‘session wine’.

 

Yes indeed. If the poll would count this as 'with food', then I'd be up around 90%. If wine drunk after the meal is finished counts as 'without food' then I'd be below 25%

 

I’m actually very shocked at the 90% or more with food. I do bridge across the percentages as can start a weekend with a glass or two then some food, maybe cheese or dessert all with wine.
Certain wines will absolutely need food but I drink plenty that don’t.

 

My post-meal drinking is scotch, so effectively outside the brief. Including sherry and vermouth before the meal, often while cooking pushed me to 90% plus.

Edit: I should also say that if dinner is some way off, we snack on things like hummous, baba ghanoush, olives, labneh (thick youghurt), and maybe some smoked fish or tuna from a can. I drink plenty of draft at a bar or pub so again, outside the brief.