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Yes, it’s a Dry January special - don’t all unsubscribe at once!

This is the follow-up to yesterday’s article on my middle-aged man woes.

Are there any two more depressing words in the English language than ‘Dry January’? Hear that phrase and all the jollity and good will to all men of Christmas falls away and suddenly it’s the wagging finger and articles in the Daily Mail entitled ‘New Year, New You’.

I do understand the urge to fast after the excesses of Christmas. All religions have their periods of abstinence but Dry January has a distinct purpose to push an agenda that alcohol is a problem to be tackled by stricter and stricter regulation. It was launched in 2013 by Alcohol Change UK, a campaign a group that is currently pushing for a minimum price for alcohol across Britain despite the Scottish experiment with this policy being totally ineffective. Dry January is not some fuzzy push for ‘wellness’ - there’s an anti-alcohol agenda behind it.

The drinks industry has responded somewhat half-heartedly with various counter attacks like Tryanuary, which seems to have petered out as its Twitter account hasn’t posted this year. In the US veteran wine writer Karen McNeil and others came-up with an antidote to Sober October with Come Over October - for obvious reasons this didn’t quite take off on this side of the Atlantic.

Nonsuch and Botivo - two of the best zero alcohol drinks on the market

Alcohol-free vodka??

Largely though, in the spirit of if you can’t beat them join them, the alcohol industry is moving seriously into alcohol free or ‘no and low’ in the trade jargon. The leader here was Seedlip which is now supported by the might of Diageo. I remember trying it when it was first launched in 2015 and being amazed at its lack of flavour - vaguely floral pea water would be a good way of describing it. But don’t take my word on it. How about David Gluckman who worked for IDV (International Distillers and Vintners - a forerunner of Diageo) on products like Baileys and Le Piat D’Or? In a trenchant 2018 article entitled ‘Why Seedlip is the emperor’s new clothes” for The Buyer he wrote: