(Claude Auguste)
I remember it well: there was a time when wine was almost inevitably a social occasion. I didn’t drink it alone, but in a group, around a table, in a pub, whilst chatting. Wine was a unifying force, a social glue, the catalyst for many a curious incident, and sometimes even a pretext for escaping the daily grind. Anyone who drank alone was regarded as suspicious, or at the very least as someone with something to make up for. This cultural certainty is beginning to crumble quietly.
For the contemporary wine drinker (that is, me) is increasingly often found sitting alone. Not for lack of company, but as a result of a new kind of choice. Evenings have grown shorter, distractions more frequent, days more fragmented. When I have a glass this evening, I often no longer do so to prolong the evening, but to make sense of the day and the morning ahead. Wine is no longer a social enhancer for me, but a tool for concentration. Is this the age that lies ahead? I mean, the even older age, because I already feel old.
The glass stands there; the room is quiet; the phone lies well out of reach, along with the MacBook. No conversation, no laughter, no one opposite me who wants to be served or persuaded. Instead, a different kind of dialogue: brief with the wine, longer with my own attention, with the day that is slowly drawing to a close and a tomorrow that will soon begin. This is not an escape. It is a form of discipline.
This solitude is not sad. It is precise. It allows for a perception that is scarcely possible in a group. One listens more closely to one’s inner self. When tasting wine, one focuses less on the obvious and more on what reveals itself gradually: bitterness, length, temperature, the finish. The wine is not commented on, but observed. It need not please anyone but the person drinking it. Me.
Of course, this is not an argument against socialising. Great wines unfold in conversation, in debate, in shared wonder. But something has shifted. The world has become louder, faster, in a constant state of communication. Wine responds to this not with more noise, but with withdrawal. It becomes a medium for a quiet presence.
Perhaps this also explains why many people drink differently today than they used to. Less, more selectively, more mindfully. The focus is not on intoxication, but on the moment. Not on validation from others, but on one’s own resonance. Wine is no longer needed to create closeness – closeness is simulated everywhere anyway – but to enable distance. A distance that allows for thought once more.
This new solitude of the wine drinker is not a loss, but a shift in role. Wine is no longer automatically synonymous with conviviality, but one option amongst many. You can share it – or enjoy it alone. Both are legitimate. But drinking alone has ceased to be a social stigma. It has become a way of life.
Perhaps this is even a mature form of drinking. One that no longer needs to prove anything. No knowledge, no taste, no sense of belonging. Just mindfulness. And time. Two things that have become scarcer than any great vintage.