Turning wine into water

I well remember our first ever fiesta in Culebrón. After the Saturday evening meal, under the pines, outside the social centre, the activity shifted to the paved square where there was a stage for the "orquesta," the showband so typical of Spanish small-town fiestas. As soon as we arrived at the square, I headed for the bar to beat the rush. There never was a rush; people went to the bar, but getting some booze down their necks didn't have the same urgency as it seems to have for us Britons. It's the same when a drink is finished; I, or we, go for another, but Spaniards don't worry too much about getting the next one in. They'll get around to it in a while.

I presume we Britons still say that Spaniards don't get drunk, or at least that it's very unusual to see them falling-down drunk. Point Britons at free or cheap booze and we will—at least I will—and I've always thought of myself as the person on the Clapham Omnibus, take advantage.

I used to comment to my Spanish learners of English, that the Spanish, on the whole, seemed to be more sober than we Britons and they would guffaw. They believed that the Spanish, as a nation, got drunk too. True, they had us down as a nation of beer swillers; multiple pints before falling-down drunk style, but they didn't see themselves as lightweights in the alcohol consumption stakes. To be honest I have no idea what it's like out there currently. Young people are the ones who tend to party, and as young Spaniards don't think of going out until late, by which time I'll be well tucked up in my bed, I'm not going to be there to see. Nonetheless, I've heard or read many recent articles that talk about the binge drinking habit of younger Spanish people.

On the roads the DGT, the Traffic Directorate, reckons that booze is present in more than 30% of road deaths and something like 25% are of those breath-tested after an accident are over the limit. Presumably that's one of the reasons that the government is considering dropping the limit from 0.5g/litre in blood levels to 0.2g/litre. That sort of limit means that if you drank a bottle of beer—a tercio (330 ml)—and you were an older man weighing between 75 and 90 kg, you'd probably fail the test unless you gave yourself an hour or more to digest the drink.

I've also noticed a lot of publicity around low-alcohol variants of booze and I've seen or heard several articles about how younger people are rejecting the alcohol culture around them—the culture that drinks beer or wine with a meal and starts a winter's day with a shot of brandy in or alongside your first coffee of the day.

If you live in Spain, you'll be aware of how common low-alcohol beers are. Non-alcoholic variants have about 13% of the Spanish beer market, whereas in the UK it's still well below 1%. There are actually two types of "non-alcohol" beers: 0,0 (zero-zero) and sin alcohol (without alcohol). The sin alcohol actually has a very small percentage of alcohol in it. If you get stopped by the Guardia for a breath test, you may well show as having alcohol on your breath even though you've been on sin alcohol all night. The zero zeros have no alcohol at all. Very few bars bother about the difference, but I've noticed that more and more often I get 0,0 when I ask for sin alcohol. One of the things I've always appreciated about low-alcohol beer is that it looks like beer. Once it's in the glass, those pains in the neck, who always want you to drink more, stop barking and shut up because they think you're on beer. It seems to me that this general principle is one reason for choosing newer non or low-alcohol drinks. Nowadays you can do something similar with a whole range of drinks, be that a 0º gin with tonic or a range of mocktails that are always there on menu lists alongside alcoholic ones. People who are temporary teetotallers (pregnant women, people under doctor's orders, drivers) have it much easier when they don't have to argue that "one won't harm you."

Low-alcohol beers have been around for years, but there seems to be a bit of a boom at present in other low and non-alcohol drinks which are typically alcohol-rich. Cruzcampo has been pushing a beer recently—Cruzcampo Tremenda—as "the perfect choice to enjoy a fresh and tasty beer without having to worry about the consequences." It has 2.4% alcohol, which is half the strength of their standard product. The other day Maggie bought some fizzy wine and it had a big 5% on the label; it was low-alcohol sparkling wine. In Villena, we asked for a tinto de verano in a bar, to demonstrate it to a couple of pals from the UK, and the version brought to our table was a low-alcohol one. True, it was a Colombian server and she seemed to have considerable trouble with my Spanish, but it helped persuade me that low-alcohol drinks are popping up everywhere.

So my general thesis is that for most of we older Britons the continuous, all day alcoholic happy hour, continues to be a part of our lives in Spain but the trend around us seems to be going for lower-alcohol versions. Maybe it's the start of a crusade against booze and very soon beer bottles will be carrying warnings just like packets of ciggies.