The French have stopped drinking – we should all be very afraid

Dry January is spluttering to an end and, frankly, I’m mystified. Mystified, I mean, by the French, among whom I live. Abstinence may be all well and good in Anglo-Saxon climes, where we’re rarely more than six feet from a newspaper article about the benefits of sobriety.

But the French? Surely not. But yes. They seem to be losing their grip. Some 4.5m of them practised Dry January in 2024 and, apparently, more were at it this year. They have submitted, alarmingly, to what Claude Avril, mayor of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, has called “the soft totalitarianism” of the hygienist lobby.

He’s right. I never thought it would happen to the clear-thinking, clean-drinking heirs of Rabelais. But it has. There’s even a website – dryjanuary.fr – which has been going at the thing with sect-like doggedness. (“Dry January” in French is, incidentally, “le dry January”, which itself betokens a lack of intellectual effort.)

These are worrying times – not so much for you and me as for the French nation. In January and, frankly, throughout the year, the entry-level puritans are spectacularly shooting their country in the foot. French alcohol consumption has been plummeting since the 1960s, most of the plunge due a dramatic drop-off in wine drinking.

In 1960, your average French adult (ie, over 15) drank 127 litres a year: slightly more than three bottles a week. Old fellows I knew who, back then, polished off three bottles a day easily compensated for nuns and other amateurs. In 2023, the annual per capita figure was down to 40 litres, or one bottle a week. Despite all that, wines and spirits together remain one of France’s biggest exports, with wine alone generating £9.4 billion in 2023. France vies with Italy as the planet’s top wine producer. Some 500,000 jobs are linked, directly and indirectly, to the sector.

Worrying trends

But all that is for the time being. As mentioned, the trends over the last decades are not promising. And they’ve scarcely been helped by a poor 2024 grape harvest. So the very last thing the wine and spirits industry needs is a squad of yahoos drumming up fear that all alcohol is poison, that the only positive thing about it is that it may be renounced.

The sabotage of economic prosperity is, though, only part of the problem. The latter-day abstainers are also wrestling with a key element of French culture. Wine is woven into the fabric of the nation and its history. It’s probably too much to say that, in taking a sip, you’re connecting with a part of what has always made France French – but I’ll say it anyway.

The Greeks were planting vines around Marseilles by 600BC. After the Romans, vineyards spread quickly, encouraged mainly by monasteries and similar. They needed wine for Mass and money. Charlemagne allegedly had vines in Burgundy. Henry IV, the first Bourbon king, was baptised in Jurançon wine. No feast or festivity lacked wine. And it was being shipped all over the place, not least to England, then Britain.

Thus wine helped shape France’s landscape and economy, the history, mythology and tradition. It inspired art – there are few more genial works than Renoir’s 1881 Luncheon Of The Boating Party (“Déjeuner des canotiers”), the artist’s chums replete around a bottle-laden table – and medicine. Yes, medicine. In 1915, the National Academy of Medicine decreed that 50-75cls of wine per meal was “a tolerable norm”. Plonk was banned in school canteens only in 1956, and then solely for under 14s.

By this time, wine – pre 19th century, mainly the preserve of the moneyed – had been democratised. Everyone could have a crack at it. First World War rations of, first, a quarter of a litre, then a half, then – by 1918 – a full litre per soldier per day undoubtedly helped. From 1830 to 1939, wine drinking doubled.

It was considered part of a healthy diet. At the onset of the Second World War, the nation had 470,000 bars – one for 85 people. And, though bars close by the truckload every week, alcohol in general and wine in particular remain central to French identity, culture and conviviality. The apéritif hour unites right-thinking folk from all stations in life.

Infinite diversity

No proper event – retirement, election to the council, naming of a newly-discovered planet, Thursday evening – is conceivable sans wine. It’s a gladsome link between people, and between people and their French past. And it’s not just one thing. French wine is infinitely diverse, depending on grape varieties, land types, traditions and the men and women making the stuff.

Health lobbyists routinely reduce this diverse three-dimensionality to one, assuming that wine drinking is a source only of danger, not of cultural richness. Drinkers, they imply, all need bringing back from the brink of alcoholism. It is as if we considered cars solely through the prism of car crashes, ignoring attractiveness of design, utility and pleasure. No surprise, then, that Dry January specialists – often what the French call addictologues – bemoan the fact that the French government has not supported the month-long temperance.

They put this down to President Macron – who apparently drinks wine with both lunch and dinner – being in hock to “the wine lobby”. The word “lobby” makes wine people sound underhanded and pernicious when, in reality, they’re simply interested in survival – their own and that of historic habits of conviviality. That’s what opponents of Dry January are about. That, I’m pretty sure, is what Mr Macron is about – well, that and avoiding the collapse of one of France’s major industries.

Naturally, no reasonable person would criticise anyone attempting Dry January. Go ahead, as I said to my French neighbour when he astonished me with his January intentions on New Year’s morning. But, I specified, no further mention of this, no moral crusading, no newspaper articles on how fantastic you’re feeling (I’ve already read a million) and come back to normal on Feb 1. To be fair, that’s exactly what he’s done.

We’re meeting for drinks tomorrow evening. Overall, though, as former agricultural minister Marc Fesneau said: “The French don’t need to be given lessons by anyone. People are fed up of being told what to eat and drink and how to travel.” Or, as Aristotle put it a little earlier: “Art and wine are the superior joys of free men.” Though Greek, that sounds like France to me.

The five greatest places in France for drinkers

Given the threat to French wine and spirits, it behoves us to react. We need to get across to France ASAP. Naturally, it’s possible to access wine without going abroad. You go to Morrisons, like everyone else. But wine and spirit visiting isn’t just about the drink. It’s about (especially) wine as a passport to landscapes and culture, good cheer and people who are usually happy to see you, especially right now in winter, when they’re not seeing anyone else. Consider the following possibilities:

Wine

Stick a pin anywhere in a map of the wine regions of France and the trip will be good. So where then? Bordeaux and Burgundy, the Loire and Rhône valleys are a bit obvious. Anyone can find them. I’m suggesting Montpellier – a winter sunshine city – and, 20km away, Saint-Christol, an absolutely typical Languedoc wine village hosting a collection of unusually creditable producers.

Head for Coste-Moynier, Guinand or the Côteaux de Saint-Christol co-operative and you’ll not be disappointed. Say I sent you. They’ll have no idea what you’re talking about, but it will make me feel important. Stay at nearby Castries at the Disini Hotel (doubles from £71).

Cognac

The summum of French epicurean refinement was created by 17th-century Dutch traders, developed by blokes from the British isles (Hennessy, Martell, Hine, Otard) and is now sold overwhelmingly – 97 per cent of production – overseas. Not least to the US, where the NYAK brand is a rappers’ delight. So not all that French, then. Never mind.

White-stone Cognac on the Charente river is a fine town, where the best visit is to the lumbering château. The 1494 birthplace of Renaissance king François I is now base to Cognac Otard, the visit combining history (the Otards were Scots) and spirits to winning effect. Stay at the pretty swish L’Yeuse just out of town (doubles from £70).

Cider and calvados

I’d say cider is the foreplay one must undergo before getting to the real thing – calvados. But lots of people like it, and so I’ll direct them first to the Normandy countryside of pastures, woods, cows, horses and some three million apple trees. At Coudray-Rabut, near Pont-l’Evêque, the Christian Drouin people are premier division leaders for both cider and calvados.

Meanwhile, at Sulniac near Vannes down in southern Brittany, Nicolas Poirier has a small outfit with a big reputation for both cider and what-he-can’t-call-calvados (because he’s in the wrong region) and so calls “Fine Bretagne”. Stay in Vannes at Le Maury (doubles from £80).

Cointreau

My favourite of what I think are referred to as “the French stickies”. Or maybe not. I take it over ice in homage to the Frainch lounge lizard from the 1980s TV ad. Having been perfected in 1885 in Angers by Édouard Cointreau, Cointreau now apparently features in some 350 cocktail recipes. Get the story at the distillery-museum at St Barthélemy-d’Anjou, just outside Angers. Stay in Angers at the Hotel 21 Foch (doubles from £71).

Champagne

Vast subject. We’ll be brief. The best big name champagne house visit is to Taittinger in Reims (taittinger.com). Just as interesting, though, are the smaller, independent family champagne producers, whose wines are often as good as the headliners but significantly cheaper.

For the proof, head for Champagne Barnaut in the well-named village of Bouzy, Voirin-Jumel in Cramant or Vilmart in Rilly-la-Montagne – whose Coeur-de-Cuvée is probably the best champagne I’ve ever tasted. Ok, it’s £100 a bottle, but the house’s Grande Réserve comes at £43, and would be approaching double from a name brand. Push the boat out – this is Champagne, for heaven’s sake – and stay in Reims at the Hôtel de la Paix (doubles from £128).