Will I limit myself to 100 wine bottles next year?

Back in January, I wrote about my New Year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total abstinence was too bleak, so my plan was to limit myself to 100 bottles of wine in 2024. Not quite the recommended limit of fourteen units of alcohol a week — roughly one-and-a-half bottles — but not a million miles away. I envisaged taking Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays off and then confining myself to half a bottle a day for the remainder of the week. Although I also intended to do Dry January, thereby building up an eight-bottle credit. So 100 bottles in eleven months was my aim. Surely that was achievable?

We have a few bottles of plonk lying around — I call it ‘children’s wine,’ since it’s all they’re allowed to drink — but I’m not mean enough to fob this off on my hosts

First, the good news. I managed not to drink for most of January. (I know that’s a feeble boast, but I have to clutch at straws here, as will become clear.) Looking at my NHS “Drink free days” app, where I faithfully recorded every alcohol-free day for the first few months of the year, I can see that I only drank on eight days in that “dry” month. However, I can also see from my “drinking log” that I consumed eight-and-a-half bottles across those days — a foretaste of where things would go wrong in the remaining “wet” months.

The long and the short of it is I got through my 100-bottle quota in the first three months of the year. The problem wasn’t that I over-consumed at home. I did go above my half-bottle limit sometimes, but I also managed to confine myself to one cup on occasion. No, the issue was drinking on nights out. My work as a journalist and campaigner means I’m usually attending parties or meeting people for dinner three or four times a week and I rarely drink less than a bottle on those evenings. It should be possible to go out and stick to fizzy water, but breaking the habit of a lifetime would take willpower I don’t possess.

On the plus side, the wine I’ve drunk this year has been better than in previous years. When I decided to limit my annual consumption to 100 bottles, I immediately splurged on good wine — claret and white Burgundy for the most part — and then guzzled it all by springtime. Some of it was around $90, such as 2009 Domaine de Chevalier, but most of it was in the $35-45 range, such as 2015 Segla, which worked out at $42 a bottle. And I immediately replenished my stock at this new, higher price point when I got through the first ton. The best white Burgundy I’ve had all year was a 2019 Puligny-Montrachet from Olivier Leflaive, which the Wine Society was selling at $62 a pop — a bargain, believe it or not. I looked at getting some more for Christmas, but the best price I can find on wine-searcher.com is $120.

As all good oenophiles know, the older the wine, the lower the alcohol content, so even though I’ve bankrupted myself, the hangovers haven’t been too bad. At least not when drinking at home. Good wine at restaurants is ruinously expensive, obviously, but one of the benefits of getting older is that more and more work dinners are at members’ clubs, where the mark-up on a bottle is usually no more than about 50 percent. That means you can cast your eyes further down the list.

Acquiring a taste for good wine can lead to some embarrassing situations. For instance, when Caroline and I are invited to dinner with friends, I usually take something respectable. We have a few bottles of plonk lying around — I call it “children’s wine,” since it’s all they’re allowed to drink — but I’m not mean enough to fob this off on my hosts. Of course, most of them wouldn’t know a good bottle of wine if you hit them over the head with it, but it’s a question of conscience. That, and not wanting to drink the wretched muck the other guests have brought.

Not that you can insist on immediately uncorking the good stuff. There’s usually a bottle already open, so the trick is to nurse a glass of that for as long as you can while keeping a beady eye on your $60 bottle of Château Gloria that the host has put down next to the Casillero del Diablo. Then you pounce when the opportunity arises. The alternative is to ask if the bottle can be decanted when you hand it over, pointing out that it will be a lot nicer after it’s had “a chance to breathe.” In that way, you signal not only that it’s a decent drop, but you also stake a claim to at least a glass. But on the one occasion I did this Caroline told me I looked like a “complete dick.”

The most painful of these moments all year was when a friend invited me shooting. I realize I can’t expect such invitations to keep coming indefinitely, given that I never reciprocate, so I have decided that whenever I’m asked to a nice country estate I’m going to turn up with a good amount of excellent claret. My offering on this occasion was two magnums of 2010 Grand-Puy-Lacoste, but by the time I arrived my host was entertaining his guests in another room and I had to put it on the table in the hall, along with all the other house gifts, including several bottles of lesser wines. How would he know the good stuff was from me?

As it happens, we had to pass back through the hall on our way to dinner and I made sure I accompanied the lord of the manor as he led the way. My plan was to casually gesture in the direction of the two magnums and say “I hope you like GPL,” or something equally graceless. But to my horror, all the gifts had been cleared away. Was this so the magnums could be decanted in time for dinner? With a bit of luck the host would say “This is rather good. Who brought this?” — at which point I could make some demurring noises and pretend to be embarrassed. But my wine never materialized. He’s a Spectator reader, so my last hope is he will finally discover what a generous gift I turned up with by reading this column.

All of which raises the question of what I’m going to do to control my drinking next year. My only plan so far is a scheme to stay on the wagon in January. I’ve invested in a teeth whitening gizmo that I have to insert in my mouth for six hours every evening for a month. While my jaws are clamping down on this apparatus, I cannot let a drop of claret pass my lips or my teeth will turn red instead of white. Admittedly, I could still drink white Burgundy, but I daresay it doesn’t mix well with the acidic gel that has to be squirted into the plastic trays.

If I look like Nosferatu next time you see me, you’ll know what’s gone wrong. It will mean I couldn’t even summon up enough willpower to stay off the sauce for a month.