Hooch

Americans, I learn, drink 2.5 gallons of alcohol a year in whatever form: beer, wine, spirit etc. This has been true the last decades regardless of the economy - answering a question I often ask at the booze shop: do sales increase or decline in a recession? My local informs me, for instance, that wine sales are up as fewer people at restaurants staying at home and presumably in front of the flat-screen TV - drink to hand, of course. Balancing this trend, consumers purchasing fewer expensive spirits and wine - the most popular bottles I'm told are £5-6 versus twelve months ago when it was £10-15 (this an entirely unscientific survey BTW with sample of ... one). Intuitively this makes sense when considering the end-result, er, getting drunk, the same - who cares how we get there? Scotland recently got its pants in a twist when it announced a minimum charge per shot, which would be the first of its kind in Europe and ahead of the curve similar to the smoking-ban in California from '96. Not surprisingly, the drinks industry aghast and shout: illegal! which, in fact, it is according to European law. Still the aim is true: get young people off the hooch. Britain, sadly, leads Europe for teen-age binge drinking and the fastest growing category is female teen binge drinking. Not surprisingly, teen pregnancies saw an increase in the last year for the first time since 2002 whilst Labour promised to half the number over this period. Hmmm I wonder if there is a correlation? So back to our initial question: do people drink more or less during hard times? All evidence would suggest lower cost but greater volume. I shudder to think seven or eight years from now.

Photo from Absolut. Does anybody else find their never-ending campaign moronic?