(Claude Auguste)
Dry January is just around the corner. Another year, another attempt, another effort to declare an entire month a zone of moral purification. What began in 2024 as a pop-cultural crusade – against alcohol in general and wine in particular – could start to lose its impact noticeably this January for the first time. The first wave of the campaign was loud, shrill, evangelical: a perfect alliance between two groups that otherwise have nothing in common. On the one hand, religiously charged advocates of abstinence who define alcohol as a moral danger. On the other, the hyper-conscious ‘wellness’ faction of the urban middle classes, who declare asceticism a virtue. Both have found in wine an adversary well-suited to symbolic politics: too old, too free, too sensual, too uncontrollable.
Yet this January, something could shift. There are signs that many people no longer wholeheartedly subscribe to the narrative of wine as a social problem. The monopoly on interpretation is crumbling. Weariness is growing. The exaggerated rhetoric of recent years – wine as a bogeyman, indulgence viewed with suspicion – is beginning to wear thin. After all, people can only tolerate campaign zeal for so long. And no one finds in abstinence an identity that lasts longer than the calendar month within which it is confined.
Of course, in 2026 too, many will cut down on their consumption. That, too, is a good and sensible thing. But there is a world of difference between a sensible break and a moral mission. And that is precisely where the distance arises. The question arises as to whether the war on wine can still be declared without descending into shrillness. Without exaggeration. Without threatening posturing. Without attempting to culturally devalue enjoyment.
The upcoming debate will probably become heated once again. But whether it will still have the same force as in previous years remains to be seen. For people have long since realised what lies behind the messages: not a genuine discussion about health, but a power struggle over the right to interpret reality. Not risk awareness, but control. Not education, but indoctrination.
Wine will prevail this January not because of a heroic defence, but because of normality. Because enjoyment does not disappear. Because culture endures. And because, for all their willingness to change, there is one thing people find hard to bear: moralising without taste.