Wine: Tackling 'dry January'

There has been a lot of publicity about the new UK alcohol guidelines and much discussion about the benefits of a “dry January” these past few weeks. I’m not convinced.

Certainly alcohol has calories so reducing intake might lose you a couple of pounds, but the liver is perfectly well adapted to absorb moderate amounts of alcohol (eg, two glasses of wine with a meal) so cutting it out entirely in January is not necessary or even beneficial in the long run.

Drinking moderately is the key to all of this and I firmly believe that wine is the one drink best suited to cutting down our overall alcohol intake. All wine tastes better with food and there is no non-alcoholic drink that interacts with food in the same way.