The availability of wines in government-owned retail monopolies

Government-owned retail monopolies have a bad reputation, in the sense that they are seen as restricting the availability of alcoholic beverages to the masses, for example. However, this is not necessarily the case; and as I live in a country (Sweden) that has such a thing, I thought that I might set the record straight.

I have looked at this topic before (The availability of older wine vintages in Sweden?). That post has an introduction to the topic, but it looks only at Australian wine (because that is what I am most familiar with). So, in this new post I will now extend my coverage to all vintage-dated wines.

I will start, however, by briefly looking at why Sweden’s alcohol sales are supervised by the national government in the first place. They do this by owning the national retail chain, called Systembolaget (The System Company). It has this name because it replaced the pre-existing local “Systems”, by uniting them all.

Government ownership of retail alcohol sales is common in the Nordic countries, as it currently also exists in Norway (Vinmonopolet), Finland (Alko) and Iceland (Vínbúðin). So, Sweden and Finland are a bit odd, because they are both in the European Union, where alcohol is not otherwise supervised. (Norway and Iceland, and also Switzerland, refuse to join the EU.)

The idea of the government taking some sort of control of alcohol availability stems from the long-standing Nordic tradition of drinking lots of strong spirits, which is widely recognized as not being good for your health. So, it is not really a response to any sort of temperance movement (as was Prohibition in the USA, for example), but is instead an example of the government caring about its citizens. (Seriously: the governments are socialist institutions in the Nordic countries!)

Thus, back 7 decades ago when Systembolaget was founded, the government’s stated reasoning was to sell ​​alcohol without profit interest, which would limit the negative effects of alcohol on society (Systembolaget’s history).

So, the modern Systembolaget was born in 1955 when a large number of regional System companies merged into a single nationwide company. Now, alcohol would be freely available for all Swedes who are over 21 years old, and who are not drunk or suspected of being drunk, to buy alcohol in Systembolaget’s stores (From mountain men to Bratt):

The mission is the same now as then: to sell alcohol in a responsible manner with concern for public health. History has taught us that the Swedes’ relationship to alcohol has not been the best. Systembolaget is to lead the way to get Swedes to learn to drink wine instead of spirits and to develop new alcohol-free alternatives.

So, the old System stores had been located largely in secluded back streets, but alcohol sales now came out into the public (Our stores: from back streets to the city centre). Furthermore, things have continued to change since then; for example:

• In 1966, after almost 10 years of campaigning, wine overtook brandy as the most sold drink at Systembolaget.
• In 1984, a specialist wine shop opened in Marmorhallarna in Stockholm.
• In 1991, Systembolaget opened a test store with self-service in Filipstad; and since then almost all stores are self-service.
• In 1999, the Riksdag (national government) approved that Systembolaget can have extended opening hours on weekdays, and accept debit and credit cards, as well as the possibility of ordering via the internet.
• Sadly, Saturday closing was introduced in 1982; and not until 2001 were the stores open again on Saturdays (The Saturday closed years).
• In connection with Systembolaget’s 50th anniversary in 2005, CEO Anitra Steen sent an open letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (and it was published as an advertisement in the Financial Times) that Swedish alcohol consumption is low thanks to Systembolaget’s retail monopoly.

It is worth finishing with the note that Finland and Sweden move to relax strict alcohol laws. In Sweden’s case, the government is moving to allow what it calls “farm sales”, in which alcohol producers can offer beverages directly to visiting customers.

Anyway, enough of the writing. Let’s look at the data. In the above graph, I have shown a count of all of the vintage-dated non-fortified wines currently available via Systembolaget, both in (at least one of) the stores or via an internet order. I have plotted the data separately for each of the 12 biggest supplying nations (Sweden does not make much wine itself).

You can see that most of the wines come from Italy (29%) and France (28%), followed by Spain (13%). Furthermore, they come from the most recent half-dozen vintages. However, they do go all the way back 45 years, with 33 French wines available from last century, along with 6 from Italy, 2 from Spain, and one each from Portugal and Germany.

If you think that this is a poor selection of wines available to Swedes, then you need your head read! This is at least as good as was available to me back when I lived in Australia; and it is easier to get at it because it comes via a national retail chain. All I do is fill in an internet order form, and a few days later the wine is ready to be picked up at my local store — easy peasy.

We can also look at fortified wines, in a similar manner. The above table lists the ones currently available from the 5 biggest supplying nations. Obviously, most of them are from Portugal (Port and Madeira). Once again, this seems to me to be a pretty impressive selection; and it goes back a very long way. There is also the ample non-vintage stuff, of course, which I have not listed here.

Being in the European Union makes a lot of products readily available in Sweden, and this includes alcoholic beverages. The fact that the government officially owns the sole retail-alcohol chain seems to make no difference whatsoever. Indeed, the fact that it is formally run without profit motive probably works in our favour, as the customers, as this is likely to make a wider selection of products remain in the catalog, once released.

I, for one, am very happy with my retail alcohol selection, and its ease of access. I really do not care who formally owns the shops themselves. So, to those of you who have a negative view of government retail monopolies, I think your are wrong, at least in the case of Swedish alcohol.

Of course, none of this addresses the completely separate issue of trade sales of alcohol. There is plenty of stuff available to restaurants, bars and caterers that is not available retail. For example, in the Italian restaurant I was in the other day, I had two very nice apple ciders from the north of Italy, plus an Italian brandy distilled on 20 Oct 1975. Not bad going!

Wine import taxes in the United Kingdom (are very different from the USA)

 As I noted in a recent week’s list of quotes (Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives): “Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” — André Simon. It also makes it more expensive, due to government taxes.

New U.S. president Donald Trump made a central part of his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign the tenet of imposing a minimum tariff on all imports (Drinks firms brace as Trump elected US president). He has made it one of his first actions to affirm the new taxes on trade, including a 10—20 % tariff on all imports (How will Trump’s universal and China tariffs impact the economy?).

So, as a change from the current U.S. news, let us look at United Kingdom taxes, or duties as they call them (basically, excise duty = import tax; What is the difference between taxes, duties, and tariffs?).

In the U.K., all alcoholic drinks are taxed based on their alcohol by volume (ABV), meaning that beverages with a higher alcoholic percentage are subject to higher rates. This idea came into effect in August 2023 (The new alcohol duty system), as previously there had been four separate taxes, covering beer, cider, spirits, wine and made-wine.

Note that the U.K. duty is a fixed cost, based on ABV, irrespective of the cost of the wine itself (cheap or expensive) — this is a very different thing from the U.S. import duties, which are a percentage of the cost of the wine (and are likely to stay that way: Four more years ... of a non-wine drinker in the White House).

The British system for wine looks roughly like this (£1 = US$1.22):
 ABV    Excise duty per 750 ml
    1%    £0
    2%    £0.14
    3%    £0.21
    4%    £0.74
    5%    £0.93
    6%    £1.12
    7%    £1.30
    8%    £1.49
    9%    £1.92
  10%    £2.14
  11%    £2.35
  12%    £2.57
  13%    £2.78
  14%    £2.99
  15%    £3.21

However, this arrangement was too simple, or perhaps too complex, as the government decided that there would be a “temporary arrangement for wine”, up to and including the end of January 2025 (Work out how much Alcohol Duty you need to pay). The idea is that:

If you need to pay duty on wine with an ABV of between 11.5% and 14.5%, there’s a temporary arrangement from 1 August 2023 up to and including 31 January 2025. During these dates you must use an assumed strength of 12.5% when you work out the amount of Alcohol Duty for your wine.

In other words, for 11.5—12.0% alcohol you pay more duty (£2.67) than you might expect, and for 13.0—14.5% you pay less. Go figure!

Anyway, the U.K. government has announced that it will increase tax on wine and spirits in line with inflation from February next year (Autumn budget: British government increases tax on wine and spirits). Wine at <12% may actually decrease in duty, but wine at greater % will increase (anything up to a 20% increase).

It should come as no surprise that taxes increase through time. We can look at the U.K. taxes, as they do not hide the information (Historic alcohol duty rates). I have plotted the data in the above graph, showing the taxes from 1995 through to 2017. It shows that at a minimum the amount of duty paid has pretty much doubled through time (ie. an increase to 200%).

For comparison, based on the Bank of England “Target” (i.e. average) inflation rate of 2% per year (Inflation: UK prices soar at fastest rate for almost ten years), the price of a bottle of wine has gone up to only 150% during the same period of time. So, taxes have increased faster than inflation.

It is therefore no wonder that Nearly half of UK drinkers plan to reduce their alcohol intake over the next year:

New research .... suggests that up to 48% of Britons intend to cut down on alcohol in the coming year. About 9% say they intend to stop drinking altogether. Those who are most likely to cut down are young, with 61% of 18-24 year olds planning to reduce or completely stop. This number increases to 68% for those aged between 25-34. As to why they’re planning to cut down, 34% said they wanted to save money, while an equal number said they wanted to cut down for their health.

My wine life here, as an Australian migrant in Sweden, was much simpler back when the U.K. was part of the European Union (it ended its membership in January 2020), and I thus didn’t have to pay import duty to get Australian wine into Sweden from Britain, which was a good supply source.

Wine consumption throughout the USA

Wine has played an important part in United States history, since the 1500s (with Spanish and French settlers; see: The evolution of wine in America). As but one example, it has been noted (In Vino Veritas):

According to records, in 1801 Thomas Jefferson spent “$6500 for provisions and groceries, $2700 for servants (some of whom were liveried), $500 for Lewis’s salary, and $3,000 for wine”, after taking up residence in the President’s House, upon his inauguration as the third president of the United States.

So, they spent half as much money on wine as on food. Those politicians and their guests did quite well for themselves, didn’t they? *

We might therefore now look at wine in the modern U.S. world.

We could start by simply looking at the amount of wine consumed per person per year, over the past century or so. This is shown in the above graph (from: U.S. wine consumption), based on all wine types including sparkling wine, dessert wine, vermouth, other special natural and table wine. Clearly, there has been a general increase in consumption per person through time, illustrating a growing wine industry.

Note the dip 1943—1947, with the exception of 1946. The reason for this should be obvious, given world events at the time. On the other hand, the dip during the period 1987—2006 seems to be based on a shift in both population (ie. the baby boomers coming of age), along with a decrease in the concentration of the alcohol consumed (eg. less vermouth, more light beer). Also, an increase in alternative alcoholic beverages, such as craft beers, and spirits-based cocktails.

As an aside, the Portuguese apparently consume more wine than any other country worldwide (13.7 gallons per person), followed by the French (12.4 gallons) (from: Average per capita consumption of wine in leading countries worldwide in 2022). Those Americans are way behind!

The dip in U.S. consumption in the past few years has been the subject of extensive commentary in the media, there currently being major wine over-supply relative to demand (What’s driving wine’s structural decline?). This situation shows no signs of changing any time soon (Why 2025 ‘will be a telling year in the wine industry’).

We can now move on to a look at the individual states of the USA. The next graph shows each state as a dot, located based on the state population (horizontally) and the 2022 per person wine consumption (vertically) (data from: Which states consume the most wine? and List of U.S. states and territories by population).

Clearly, most of the states form a blob in the middle of the graph, all therefore being somewhat similar. This is to be expected, culturally.

Note, however, that the most populous states (at the right of the graph) have medium consumption per person. On the other hand, it is some of the smaller states (at the top of the graph) that have the highest consumption per person. From the top, these states are: District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware. Does this surprise you? The lowest consumption is in West Virginia and Kansas (at the bottom of the graph).

Mind you, consumption volume has generally been down recently in most of the states of the USA (Areas of strength amid wine consumption shrinkage in the US). Interestingly, some of the biggest dips (–5% or more) have been in D.C. (at the top of the graph) and Kansas (at the bottom).

Finally, we could look at a few individual cities, in terms of the current average cost of their wines (from: Most expensive cities for wine are all in the US). This table lists the top 11 in the world, this year, with 8 of them being in the USA. Note the presence of San Francisco and Oakland, but not, for example, Los Angeles.

Rank	City	State / Province	Average price of a bottle of wine (US$)
1	New York	NY	$20.00
2	Columbus	OH	$18.00
3a	San Francisco	CA	$17.75
3b	Oakland	CA	$17.75
4	Philadelphia	PA	$17.00
5a	Launceston	Tasmania	$16.45
5b	Hobart	Tasmania	$16.45
6a	Washington	DC	$16.00
6b	Denver	CO	$16.00
7	Tucson	AZ	$15.50
8	Victoria	British Columbia	$15.30

So, there you have it. Wine consumption is decreasing, but this matters more in some states than in others; and there are definitely some cities not to drink wine in!

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* For a recent discussion of the United Kingdom government’s wine cellar (£3.8 million = $5 million), see: UK government spends over £97,000 restocking its wine cellar.

Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives

In a previous post on Interesting wine quotes from famous people, I collated three dozen quotations from over the past three millennia. It was apparently quite a popular post, as I tried to pick ones that are cheering. So, here I add another three dozen. This time I also include quotes from people born after 1900, and also a few from less famous people.

• “Good company, good wine, good welcome can make good people.” ― William Shakespeare (1564—1616) [Henry VIII, Act I, Scene iv]
  
• “My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.” ― Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
• “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” ― Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
• “In life, as with wines, you have to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.” ― Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
• “One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.” ― Samuel Johnson
• “Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.” ― Samuel Johnson
• “I love everything that is old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.” — Oliver Goldsmith (1728—1774)
• “Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, and makes weariness forget his toil.” ― George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) (1788—1824)
• “Wine is life. It's the union of the earth with the sun; it’s the essence of time captured in a bottle.” ― Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
• “Wine is the intellectual part of a meal while meat is the material.” ― Alexandre Dumas (1802―1870)
• “Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.” ― Charles Kingsley (1819—1875)
• “One not only drinks wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and — one talks about it.” — Albert Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (King Edward VII) (1841—1910)
• “A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
• “Just as the best wines undergo fermentation, life’s challenges refine us into our best selves.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson
• “Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” ― George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
• “Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye; that’s all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die.” ― William Butler Yeats (1865—1939)
• “Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.” ― Paul Claudel (1868—1955)
• “Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” ― André Simon (1877—1970)
• “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” ― Charles De Gaulle, President of France (1890—1970) *
• “I shall drink no wine before it’s time! OK, it’s time.” ― Groucho Marx (1890—1977)
• “Wine is the most civilized thing in the world, and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes of its secrets.” ― Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
• “If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.” ― Clifton Fadiman (1904—1999)
• “A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.” ― Clifton Fadiman
• “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.” ― Bette Davis (1908—1989)
• “Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends. It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit.” ― Robert Mondavi (1913—2008)
• “Making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art.” ― Robert Mondavi
• “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.” ― Frank Sinatra (1915—1998)
• “The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.” — Marty Rubin (1930—1994)
• “Being a wine enthusiast means you care more about quality than quantity.” ― Jean-Claude Carrière (1931—2021)
• Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” ― Joan Collins (1933— )
• “We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.” ― Eduardo Galeano (1940—2015)
• “More important than the food pairing is the person with whom you drink the wine.” ― Christian Moueix (1946— )
• “Compromises are for relationships, not wine.” ― Robert Scott Caywood (1961—)
• “Wine is, perhaps, the closest thing the planet has to an elixir of life.” ― Thom Elkjer (1980— )
• “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” ― Robert Fripp (1946— )

* Okay, so it is not exactly wine, although there the sentiment would be the same. Besides, de Gaulle’s estimate, made in 1962, was a lowball ― France boasts 1,000―1,600 varieties of cheese.

The world’s most expensive wines!

The world is full of expensive wines, which are often treated as being more for investment than for consumption. Each year, Wine-Searcher publishes lists of the most expensive from certain regions and of particular alcohol types. As foretold in a previous blog post (The world’s most expensive Australian wines?), I thought that I might now look at the area lists for 2024. This is important, in the sense that the upper price bracket determines the top of the pile.

Each list of 10 wines covers “The Most Expensive Wines on Wine-Searcher” for each of the named regions. The criteria for inclusion over the years have generally been: “a wine must have been produced over five consecutive vintages and have a minimum of 20 different offers in our search engine.” The prices quoted in the lists are their Global Average Retail Price (see: Average wine prices).

There are 2024 lists available for these areas: Argentina, Australia, Bordeaux, Burgundy red and Burgundy white, Champagne, Italy, Napa, New Zealand, Spain, and Uruguay. There were 13 (not 10) wines available from Uruguay, due to equal prices.

These wines are listed in the figure at the bottom of this post, with one row per wine and one column showing the Wine-Searcher GARP price, along with its area (click to enlarge). The wines are sorted from most to least expensive, and their rank order is shown.

These data are summarized in the next figure, which shows the average rank order and the average bottle price for each region. There are clearly massive differences in price between the areas, with a 200-fold stretch from Uruguay up to Red Burgundy. The most expensive wine is: Leroy Musigny Grand Cru (red Burgundy) at $38,267 per bottle. [As an aside, the average US salary in 2024 is $60K.]

The presence of Burgundy at the top of the list is no great surprise, remembering that this only represents the 10 most expensive wines; and the reds being more expensive than the whites is also no great surprise. I doubt that Pinot noir and Chardonnay are intrinsically better grapes than, say, Cabernet sauvignon. However, apparently Vivino users did once rate Pinot noir as being better than Cabernet sauvignon, overall (Cabernet sauvignon versus Pinot noir: which is better?).

Nor is it any surprise that Champagne comes next in the list, with its expensive vintage cuvées, and especially as the grapes are again Pinot noir and Chardonnay. These two grape varieties comprised the top 20 wines based on price, before the first Cabernet (see below).

It may, however, surprise a few people that Napa ranks next, ahead of Bordeaux. Napa's 10 most expensive wines certainly do compete globally on price (the wineries have made sure of that). For example, the top Ghost Horse Vineyard Premonition Cabernet Sauvignon ($6,001 per bottle) handsomely out-does both the Petrus (Pomerol, $4,250) and the Le Pin (Pomerol, $3,719).

Italy is slightly ahead of Spain, on average, which out-does Australia. Note that Argentina ranks ahead of New Zealand based on average price, but not on average rank. This is due mainly to one wine: Catena Zapata Estiba Reservada Agrelo, which costs twice as much as the next most expensive Argentinian wine (and thus greatly affects the average price).

It remains to now compare the bottle prices to the assessed wine quality scores (out of 100), as listed by Wine-Searcher. The data are shown in the figure above, with one dot per wine. There are 10 wines that do not have any score provided on Wine-Searcher (and are thus not shown).

There generally is a pattern in the figure, in the sense that the most expensive wines do tend to have the best scores. However, not all of the high-scoring wines necessarily cost the most money. For example, the 97-point wines vary in price from $243 to $20,690, and the 96-point wines vary from $252 to $17,884. Clearly, value for money varies wildly. Interestingly, the only 100-point wine in the list costs an average of just $1,635 — Chateau Angelus Homage to Elisabeth Bouchet (Saint-Émilion). Go for it!

We have been told that these days, wine price is related to increasing score (Weighing wine scores against price), but the data here make it clear that where the wine comes from has a far greater effect on price than its assessed quality.

In terms of the future, there are obvious omissions from the data. For example, Germany, and even the Loire and Alsace, are missing from the regions, which means that Riesling is missing from the grapes. I think that I would have picked these ahead of, say, Uruguay.

There are NO scientific experiments saying: don’t drink alcohol

I do not need to tell most of you about the current problems being faced by the wine industry, and the future sales of wine, particularly in the USA. Back in 1924 the issues facing the newly formed International Wine Office were said to be fraud and Prohibition (The OIV “at a crossroads” in its history). Now 100 years later, with the organization now renamed the International Organisation of Vine & Wine, Prohibition may be returning in the USA, and wine sales are declining worldwide (Is wine facing Prohibition 2.0?).

There are an awful lot of people reacting to this situation, with many of them saying very interesting and valuable things. I will be linking some of these below; but at the same time I am hoping that I can say something of value myself. You see, my professional expertise is in scientific experiments, as I am a (recently retired) university biological scientist. And I mean what I have said in the title above, professionally.

Scientists conduct experiments, which are intended to provide the evidence upon which societal decisions are made. (I used to teach a course on Introduction to Experimental Design, for university biology students.) We use these experiments to study cause-and-effect in a rigorous manner (e.g. the effect of alcohol on people). Most importantly, we know the benefits and limits of experiments; and when it comes to studying the effects of alcohol on people, the latter out-weigh the former. This is what I will be writing about here.

Tom Wark has recently listed 10 of the important recent articles speaking against alcohol, covering all parts of the media: Can the wine industry muster the will to push back on propaganda? I will not be pushing back, but I will instead be pointing out that there shouldn’t be anything to be pushing back against.

I have pointed out in a recent post: Why alcohol experiments are problematic. I will discuss part of this below. Furthermore, I have also asked: Has the WHO lost its way regarding alcohol? Yes, I answered. In particular, I also asked: Has WHO got it wrong with its new zero-alcohol policy? Probably, I said. So, I have not been silent on the issue; and I will continue here.

Let me start by also saying that I do not know what level of alcohol consumption starts to cause medical problems, or whether there is some level below which alcohol actually has benefits (the so-called French Paradox). The purpose of this blog post is to point out that no-one knows, experimentally. This is because it would be impossible / illegal / unethical to do such an experiment, at least in a free society. So, we will probably never know.

The basic issue is relatively straightforward. The next picture shows you how to do a simple scientific experiment — a single group of people is randomly split into two, one of which gets the “Treatment” (in our case they drink alcohol) and the other is the “Control” (they do not drink any alcohol). If we have done this manipulation properly, then any difference we observe afterwards between the two groups of people must be due to the treatment (Alcohol).

There are also a host of technical requirements, of course, for such a “Manipulative” study. For example, the Control group of people should drink a substitute for alcohol, called a “Placebo”, to make the actions of the two groups of people as similar as possible. Also, the experimenters themselves should be “Blinded”, so that those looking after the experimental people do not know whether any given person is in the Treatment or Control group. We could also have several different groups of Treatment people, of course,  with each group drinking a different amount of alcohol. These are all important points, and there are others.

As I noted above, you cannot do this sort of manipulation on real human beings. All you can realistically do is what we call an “Observational” (or “Descriptive”) study, in which we observe a large (see my post: Why do people get hung up about sample size?) group of people, who drink a whole range of different amounts of alcohol. We then try to relate their differences in behaviour to the amount of alcohol they have consumed. We call this an Observational study because all we do is observe the people, rather than manipulate them. I have compared the two types of studies in the next table below (and you can also read about them elsewhere online; e.g. Experiment vs Observational study: similarities & differences).

These Observation studies are not as good as a proper Treatment/Control experiment, but when it is all you have, then needs must. Observational studies cannot reveal cause-and-effect in a rigorous manner, but can merely give us hints. In particular, as I noted in a previous post, we need to be careful about: Misinterpreting statistical averages — we all do it.

As far as the effects of alcohol are concerned, there is at least one well-balanced summary of the current situation regarding the sorts of experiments we have been able to do, by Louis Maximilian Buja (2022): The history, science, and art of wine and the case for health benefits: perspectives of an oenophilic cardiovascular pathologist. *

One of the important points that this author makes is that risk from alcohol does not start at any particular exposure. It is how much alcohol a person chooses to consume continuously that can cause a problem. This makes the World Health Organization current position so problematic: WHO demonizing of alcohol, are their alarms real? The WHO does a disservice to the problem by staking out a radical position.

In addition, we do need to concern ourselves about: How quickly does the alcohol disappear from the body and can you sober up faster? Notably, there are individual differences between people, so any one generalization is hard to make.

This brings us to Dr. Tim Stockwell, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria. He has been described as “the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for convincing the public there is no safe level of drinking.” He has been at it for a couple of decades (e.g. A global phenomenon), and he has made a lot of noise recently; for example: Professor Tim Stockwell versus the J-curve. A good introduction and evaluation is: Moderate drinking and its enemies.

Well, being a university professor does not make you an expert outside the field of your own expertise. Being concerned, as a social psychologist might, about the cultural and personal effects of alcoholism is very laudable; but determining whether alcohol is the cause or the symptom of any perceived social problem is another thing altogether. [His Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire, for example, is descriptive rather than experimental.]

In particular, given his background, Stockwell’s writing about the elucidation of cause and effect is not written from the perspective of experiments, rather than being written by an observer. Now, this may provide a broader perspective — an outsider can sometimes contribute to conceptual clarity. However, experimenters have an understanding of experiments, how to conduct them, and how to interpret them — these are things that non-experimentalist writers about experiments surprisingly often fail to comprehend.

The main point that I wish to make here is that none of the research publications that Stockwell cites in support of his radical position on alcohol are of the Treatment/Control type, for the reason explained above. They are all of the Observational type, as described above. So, the evidence for his claims is much more limited than he seems to give credit for, as he has no cause-and-effect data.

One publication that I found particularly distressing, as a scientist, was this one: How several hundred lancet co-authors lost a million global alcohol-caused deaths. In it, Tim Stockwell tries to convince us that there has been scientific hanky-panky, in which the data from a first study was manipulated unfairly in a second study. However, what Stockwell does instead is demonstrate his own lack of understanding of science.

You see, the authors of the second study sub-divided the dataset from the first study into coherent sub-groups, and looked at each sub-group separately. This is the sort of thing that you have to do in Observational studies, to deal with the limitations that I discussed above — it is not a Treatment/Control experiment, and so we have to be very careful about interpreting our data. So, the data interpretation in the second study was likely to be much more justified than the data interpretation in the first study, which lumped all of the people into one group.

If you want to read more about these sorts of issues, then these two professional publications are a good place to start:

• Causal inference about the effects of interventions from observational studies in medical journals
• Observational studies, bad science, and the media.

Conclusion

The bottom line is simple: there never has been, and probably never will be, a proper Manipulative scientific experiment studying the effect of alcohol on humans. It would be unethical and probably illegal to ever conduct such an experiment. All we will ever have is Descriptive studies; and these are hard to set up validly, and they require very careful interpretation.

So, any pronouncement that all effects of alcohol are bad is pure poppy-cock. There are observed benefits and drawbacks, depending on the amount consumed and the circumstances under which it is consumed. That is likely to be as far as we can ever go, as scientists. As Tom Wark recently noted: On alcohol and cancer — be happy, you're gonna be just fine; or as Paracelsus (1493–1541) famously stated: “Whether wine is a nourishment, medicine or poison is a matter of dosage.”

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* Here is the author’s Conclusion:

Epidemiological and biological evidence continues to accumulate showing that alcoholic beverages in moderation have a positive effect on cardiovascular health. Some studies give the edge to wine, especially red wine, whereas other studies show favorable benefits for beer and spirits. Despite a lack of consensus on a specific type of beverage, mounting evidence suggests that ethanol and polyphenols within wine can synergistically confer benefits against chronic cardiovascular diseases, mostly ischemic heart disease (IHD). This is particularly true for red wine when consumed as a component of the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle.

The current state of world wine consumption, and our responses to it

We continue to be presented with (quite depressing) news articles and web posts about the current state of the world wine industry, with an observed slump in wine consumption (for example: The post-Covid decline of wines and spirits sales is accelerating). So, it seems to be worthwhile to summarize some of it here, as it is not all bad, at least not globally.

In the USA, of course, there is currently a sea of grapes that exists throughout California for the current vintage, but even that may be only short term, as has been recently suggested (Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The glut); and as was discussed 25 years ago by Lewis Perdue (as presented in the Footnote below). Anyway, here I will look outside of that situation.

There is an observed decrease in wine consumption, as I have covered before (Is the global wine slump almost solely due to China?). Well, The International Wine and Spirits Record has presented us with a list of reasons for this decline (Four reasons for the decline in consumption):

• Consumers are increasingly interested in a healthy lifestyle, and are more inclined to socialize without alcohol
• A shift between product categories, and a desire to experiment, especially among Millenials and Gen-Z drinkers (considered to be key demographic groups these days)
• Younger adults generally participate less frequently in wine consumption
• When consumers do drink alcohol, they seek out higher-quality wines (more sophisticated brands and categories), with the emphasis on good value not premiumization (or luxury positioning).

If we take a look at Europe as a specific example (In data: Europe’s wine consumption wanes), then, last year, European Union member states represented 48% of global wine consumption — drinking 107 million hectoliters. This is a decrease of 1.8% compared to 2022, although it is 5% below the 10-year average.

The above graph tells the story. The top three consuming countries are all showing continual declines in recent years (much of it pre-dating the Covid pandemic, which is often cited as a key event). However, the next six countries are all fairly stable. This distinction between the top three and the others is important — the biggest markets dominate the industry, of course, but it is not all gloom and doom.

Sadly, though, this decline is not just in Europe, as last year global wine consumption dropped 2.6% to 221 million hectolitres — the lowest volume recorded since 1996 (see the IWSR reference above). In the USA, wine sales from wholesalers to retail stores, restaurants and bars dropped 8% in the 12 months that ended in August (Wine and spirits struggling in US retail).

The obvious thing to think about, then, is what sorts of responses are possible. One person who has recently offered some suggestions is Lulie Halstead, who founded the research firm Wine Intelligence back in 2002 (Lulie Halstead identifies the opportunities in the beverage alcohol market). Five of her important points include (along with my added comments and links):

• Volume is dropping but value is increasing — a 1% decline in total beverage alcohol consumption in 2023 but a value increase of 3%, with the emphasis on good value, as above (The US wine market faces an unwelcome new normal)
• There is an increase in moderation rather than an increase in abstention; so, people are still drinking wine but just not as much per person (see, for example: Alcohol-free brands urge health minister to update outdated drink labels), and sales of strong wines (ie. fortified wines) have been decreasing for many years (Is there a future for fortified wine?)
  
• Distinctiveness is the key driver of brand growth, not differentiation — the former concerns making the brand easy to identify, while the latter concerns the different features of a product (one example: Alsace wines stripped back to just ’Gewurz’)
  
• Diversity is critical for success — there is a growing desire for refreshing styles, rather than focusing on one product, so that adaptability is the name of the game (as one example: A new dawn beckons for the Médoc’s white wines), including alternative packaging (bag-in-box, cans, tetrapaks, etc) for superior wines (Premium bag-in-box wine — has its time finally come?)
  
• Watch what consumers do in real life — this leads to the conclusion that, for example, there are big opportunities for spritz-style wines, at least in the short term, as well as for cocktails-in-a-can (Maturing RTD category poised for sustained growth).

To finish off, we might look briefly at wine production, since there is no point in this increasing while consumption is decreasing. The above graph tells the story for the European Union. Production in France and Italy is certainly heading in the same direction as their consumption trends.

Obviously, these top three countries are the largest producers in the world. If we look further, then the top 10 wine-producing countries outside of Europe, as a percent of total production in 2023 were (Top 10 wine-producing countries outside of Europe revealed by Audley Travel):

• United States – 9.2%
• Chile – 4.6%
• South Africa – 4.2%
• Australia – 4.1%
• Argentina – 3.7%
• Brazil – 1.50%
• China – 1.30%
• New Zealand – 1.00%
• Georgia – 0.80%
• Mongolia – 0.50%

There really aren't that many large wine producers, globally; so that the perceived problems are actually concentrated in only a few places.

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Footnote: A quarter of a century ago, Lewis Perdue published The Wrath of Grapes: The Coming Wine Industry Shakeout and How to Take Advantage of It (Spike Books / Avon, 1999). He discusses exactly the same sorts of problems that the wine industry is discussing (again) right now. We were reminded of this recently by Mike Veseth (Wine books revisited: Lewis Perdue’s “The Wrath of Grapes”):

The Wrath of Grapes was one of the first books I read when I started studying the wine business. Going back to it now I am impressed with how relevant it remains today and how much it has obviously shaped my thinking about the wine industry.

Although some parts of The Wrath Grapes have naturally aged better than others, the book’s overall argument remains timely and relevant. Most of the big problems that Perdue wanted us to take seriously 25 years ago remain at the top of the agenda. No wonder the book is still in print.

So, what comes around once, comes around again. The book is available on Amazon (here and here).

The world’s most expensive Australian wines?

The world is full of expensive wines, which are often treated as more for investment than for consumption. Each year, Wine Searcher publishes lists of them from certain regions and of certain alcohol types. In this post I thought that I might look at some of the lists over the past decade, from one particular wine-producing region: Australia.

Obviously, these wines do not come anywhere near close to the prices of the top Burgundies or Bordeaux wines, but they do represent top wines of a more affordable class for the rest of us.

Each yearly list of 10 wines covers “The World’s Most Expensive Australian Wines on Wine-Searcher”. [Note: only 9 wines were listed for 2014.] The criteria for inclusion over the years have generally been: “a wine must have been produced over five consecutive vintages and have a minimum of 20 different offers in our search engine.”

The lists available to date are for the years: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Obviously, the prices have varied greatly over that decade (as discussed below), but this does not obviate a study of which wines made it into the list for each year. These wines are shown in this next figure, with one row per wine and one column per year (click to enlarge).

There are 25 wines in this list, which indicates a fair turnover between years. Indeed, 10 of the wines appeared in only one year each. Furthermore, only one wine made it into all of the lists: Penfold’s Grange Bin 95 (label above). This is no great surprise, as Penfolds deliberately created this wine, in 1951, to be Australia’s best, and it is usually treated as its most collectable wine (see the history in Wikipedia).

You will also note that all 25 of the wines are red, mostly based on the Shiraz grape (18 of them). Australia does make some very nice white wines, as I can personally attest; but apparently the buyers of expensive wines are not prepared to put their money on them. ** Australia also makes some very nice red wines based on grapes other than Shiraz; but this particular grape certainly makes wines unlike those elsewhere in the world — and this is presumably what the investors in expensive wines are looking for.

Similarly, 16 of the wines are specifically from grapes grown in the Barossa Valley, north-east of Adelaide in South Australia. This was originally Australia’s best-known wine-making region, and so this success is perhaps no great surprise — it is a warm region that makes very powerful wines. However, there are many other regions that make equally good wines, but of a completely different style, notably with more elegance than power. McLaren Vale and Eden Valley are both somewhat near Adelaide, and both appear twice in the list of wines. The Clare Valley, Gippsland, and Heathcote are much further away, and each appears once — the latter two are from the state of Victoria, not South Australia. No wines from the state of New South Wales appear on the lists, which state also has some well-known wine-making regions (eg. the Hunter Valley, with Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Sémillon), nor does Western Australia appear.

As far as the wine prices are concerned, obviously they have increased in each yearly list. The average prices of the 10 [or 9] wines in each year are:

    2014    $397
    2016    $474
    2018    $581*
    2021    $561
    2022    $624
    2023    $644
    2024    $713

That is, Australia's most expensive wine prices increased by an average of 80% over the decade. Not bad for a financial investment.

It remains only to compare the bottle prices to the assessed wine quality scores (out of 100). We do not expect much of a correlation, and we do indeed not find one. The data are shown in the figure above. ***

The three lowest scores do have the lowest prices, but the highest price has a middling score. Otherwise the data form a blob, with a statistical correlation only = 0.216. As we all suspect, the price of investment-grade wine has little to do with the quality as assessed by ordinary wine drinkers.

As a follow-up to this post, I might do a future post comparing all of the Wine Searcher 2024 lists for different regions and wine styles.

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* Minus the Para “port”.

** The label below is from the wine my wife and I had last night with dinner. The 26-year-old wine from the Clare Valley, with its screw cap, has a label that notes: “Red loamy soils over limestone or schist produce wines of great flavour, crisp acid and longevity ... This riesling displays an intense floral bouquet with limey, citrus fruit flavours on the palate and clean crisp finish. It has the pedigree to age gracefully for many years, yet retain its youthful freshness.” All of this was emphatically true. I am so glad that I bought this wine! (It is currently still available in my local liquor store.) The dessert wine to follow was Gramp's 2013 Botrytis Semillon, which was also excellent.

*** The price data have been standardized to allow for the increasing average price across the years.

What’s all this business about lying wine bottles on their side?

There are lots of guidelines regarding the purchase, storage and consumption of wine. Some people see these protocols as rules produced by wine snobs, because most of them don’t apply to beers, spirits or RTDs; and it has been suggested that this is part of the reason why younger people are not interested in wine. Indeed, only some of these guidelines may be so useful, as I will discuss today.

For example, opening an old wine bottle quite some time before you intend drinking its contents really can get the wine to start releasing its inherent aromas — so-called “opening up” (for an example: Wine decanting: give wines some air, or Give that old wine a chance before you tip it down the drain). Similarly, being careful about the sediment in an old bottle of red wine can make your guests be more polite — decanting the wine works, but so does pouring carefully when serving (in both cases, after standing the bottle upright for a while).

However, there is one guideline that may be more questionable. This is the suggestion that wine bottles should be stored lying on their side. Now, obviously this does not apply to the vast majority of the wine produced in the world today, because that wine is drunk not very long after it is purchased (or even stolen, I guess). We are talking here about wine that is being stored for some lengthy time. Also, it does not apply to wines being stored in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. *

The MasterClass list of the storage guidelines for wine looks like this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

• Store wine at the proper temperature
• Store wine bottles horizontally
• Protect wine from light and vibration
• Store wine at the proper humidity
• Store wine in a wine fridge, not a regular fridge
• Serve wine at the proper temperature
• Store open bottles of wine properly

You don’t see this sort of list for beers, spirits or RTDs! Anyway, we are looking in this blog post at item number two.

Let’s get one thing clear at the start, storing wines for any length of time does definitely have an affect on the wine. A formal review (Bottle aging and storage of wines: a review) notes:

Summarizing collected data, bottle aging and storage of wine is an important albeit complex and sensible process that greatly influences the features of the final product. During storage, deep changes in aroma, color stability, appearance, and mouthfeel take place and define the quality of wine, which, in turn, impacts consumer preference and appreciation.

The question, though, is: which of these things matter the most?

There appears to be only one formal research publication on the topic, from 2008 in Australia (The impact of closure type and storage conditions on the composition, colour and flavour properties of a Riesling and a wooded Chardonnay wine during five years’ storage), and it covers only two wines, both white. It concluded: “The bottle orientation during storage under the conditions of this study had little effect on the composition and sensory properties of the wines examined.”

So, 5 years of data on two wines was not supportive. Similarly, a researcher at a cork manufacturer has claimed: “The cork will never dry out with almost 100% humidity in the headspace, so it is a myth that you need to store a bottle on its side” (Storing wine on its side is nonsense, says scientist). Sadly, many of the commenters on that article disagreed with the author, some citing their experiences with storing wines upright over extensive periods of time — the corks did shrink.

So, one of the most common reasons suggested for lying a wine bottle down is keeping the cork wet. However, not everyone agrees with this, as discussed by Chris Shanahan concerning screwcaps (Cork vs screwcap Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Hunter Semillon 1998):

We drew a decent cork, and as a result enjoyed two amazing but notably different old whites. Most of the group preferred the dazzling, fresh-but-aged screwcap version. But a few favoured the deeper colour and mellow flavours of the cork-sealed wine.

One tasting of two bottles reveals little about the relevant merits of cork and screwcap. A good cork works. But earlier formal trials, and my own experience, show you might need to open several bottles to find a good cork, where every screwcap does the job reliably.

Well, all of this means that most commentary on bottle storage is based on personal anecdotes; but you may like to play it safe and lie the bottles down (Some wine pros say bottles don't need to be stored on their sides. Is that true?). However, most people do not store their wine long enough for the orientation to make the slightest difference (especially if the wine is in a can: In praise of canned wine).

On the other hand, there seems to be little argument that the temperature of storage makes a big difference, as suggested by several formal experiments:

• Wine storage at cellar vs. room conditions: changes in the aroma composition of Riesling wine
• Evidence for damaging effects of heat exposure on wine during transport and storage and recommendations for protection

To me, however, the bottom line is that the average wine lover is not someone with encyclopaedic knowledge. Instead, it is this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

Drinking wine is about people not about wine. Sure, we have lots of information and guidelines about what to do, but without my wife, relatives and friends beside me when I open the bottle, I don't give a hoot about those details. I store my wine in the “correct” manner (lying down in a cool dark place) for the expert-suggested period of time; and I therefore expect the wine to be in good condition when I open the bottle. But I am not thinking about technical details when I open it — I am anticipating how much I am going to enjoy the contents, along with my meal.

All of the details are rightly seen as esoteric, even snobbish, by 99% of wine drinkers.

This important point is all too often missing, as formally suggested by linguist Dariusz Galasinski (A better way to communicate wine):

Talking about wine can mean different things. All too often I kept hearing about residual sugar, tanks, oak, and so on. All could have been done via email. Yes, the technicalities were sometimes accompanied by the producer’s ‘wine philosophy’, but, more often than not, it sounded much better than it was.

But sometimes I heard stories of people engaged in the production. What is it like to collect grapes on the steep slopes of the Mosel? What is it like to see mildew eating up the grapes in Chablis? Or about how the producer’s neighbours helped in the winery and eventually drank the wine. At such tastings, we drank wine made by a real person, from grapes collected by real people, whose cousins, aunts and grandparents were also involved in the hard work. Wine became social and dialogic. Well, wine became ours.

The biggest benefit of wine is that it makes us happy. It was on this basis that I produced last week’s post: Interesting wine quotes from famous people.

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* Remember, in the modern world we are supposed to be minimizing our use of plastics!

Interesting wine quotes from famous people

The most famous quote about wine is probably this Latin one: “In vino veritas.” It is apparently referenced several times in antiquity. Pliny the Elder (23—79 AD) has an early allusion, usually translated as: “In wine, there is truth, and in friendship, there is joy”. Plato (427—348 BC) has an even earlier reference, usually translated as: “There is truth in wine and children.”

As a break from my usual type of blog post, it seems worthwhile to collate here other invaluable wine quotations from over the millennia, ones that are attributed to a specific person, rather than simply to the ubiquitous “Anonymous”. So, here are three dozen of them, with their acknowledged (usually well-known) authors, in time order.

• “Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.” ― Homer (8th century BC)
• “Whenever a man is tired, wine is a great restorer of strength.” ― Homer
• “Where there is no wine there is no love.” ― Euripides (480—406 BC)
  
• “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man.” ― Plato (427—348 BC)
• “When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.” ― Plato
• “Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” ― Aristophanes (446—386 BC)
• “What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.” — Diogenes (4th century BC)
• “Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes.” ― Horace (65—8 BC)
• “No poem was ever written by a drinker of water.” ― Horace
• “Wine is life.” ― Gaius Petronius Arbiter (27—66 AD)
• “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine.” — Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274)
• “The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.” ― Leonardo Da Vinci (1452—1519)
• “Beer is made by men, wine by God.” ― Martin Luther (1483—1546)
• “Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” ― Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
• “Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” ― Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)
• “The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.” ― Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
• “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “Wine brightens the life and thinking of anyone.” ― Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
• “In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines.” — Thomas Jefferson
• “Wine rejoices the heart of man, and joy is the mother of all virtues.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
• “Life is too short to drink bad wine.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “A meal without wine is like a day without sun[shine].” ― Jean Anthelme Brillat−Savarin (1755—1826)
• “In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat you need it.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821)
• “Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
• “God made water, but man made wine.” ― Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
• “Wine is life. It's the union of the earth with the sun; it’s the essence of time captured in a bottle.” ― Victor Hugo
• “Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
• “I rather like bad wine; one gets so bored with good wine.” ― Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
• “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.” ― Karl Marx (1818—1883)
• “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” ― Louis Pasteur (1822—1895)
• “Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and hygienic of all beverages.” ― Louis Pasteur
• “Wine is bottled poetry.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
• “I will drink milk when cows eat grape.” ― Henri de Toulouse−Lautrec (1864—1901)
• “Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” ― Alexander Fleming (1881—1955)
• “Men are like wine — some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” ― Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) (1881—1963)
• “My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “I drink to make other people more interesting.” ― Ernest Hemingway
• “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” ― usually attributed to either W.C. Fields (1880—1946) or Julia Child (1912—2004), neither of whom seems to have actually said it.

There is no single optimum for the amount of alcohol to be consumed by people

I received a (free) book in the mail the other day, which reminded me of my scientific past. I have mentioned in recent posts that I used to teach university students (studying biological science) about experimental design; and in the blog posts I have recently applied this knowledge to experiments concerning alcohol and health (eg. Why alcohol experiments are problematic).

Well, for my scientific research, one of the things I worked on was biological networks. You have all heard about Charles Darwin and the “Tree of Life”, the idea that all organisms are descended from ancestors, with modification. That is, a family tree (of people) becomes a bigger, and older, tree of all organisms, if we go back far enough in time. Well, this is only partly true, because there are all sorts of genetic inter-connections among those branches, so that it is actually a “Network of Life”.

I was one of the early people championing this idea, back 20 years ago. The book that I received is called: The Network of Life: a New View of Evolution, by David P. Mindell (June 2024. Princeton University Press). So, let’s look at this book here, and some ideas it covers related to the effects of alcohol on people. I need to present some background first, and then move on to the alcohol effects.

The network idea is that species share genetic material, via a process called horizontal evolution, so that evolution is actually a web of shared genealogy, instead of just from ancestor to descendant. Species are thus more interconnected than previously thought. Life is not a tree but a network (see the next figure). The complex example of our own history (Homo sapiens) is shown in the network diagram below (taken from Mindell’s book).

To establish my bona fides, at the end of this post I have listed a few of my professional publications related to this topic of evolutionary networks, including the introductory book that I wrote (Introduction to Phylogenetic Networks). My previous blog (2012—2020) was also on this topic: The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks. *

My connection to this new book (and why I got a free copy) is indicated in the Preface: “I am enormously grateful to colleagues who read sections of the full draft of the book. Their insights, patience, and thoughtful commentary improved the book a great deal. This includes Ford Doolittle, Axel Meyer, David Morrison, Greg Gibson, James McInerney, Maureen Kearney, Mary Ellen Hannibal, Peter Alpert, Matt Kane, Jack Sites, Ed Braun, and Dan Graur.” That’s quite a list, but I made it to third! [I read the draft way back in 2022.]

For our main purpose here, in looking at alcohol and people, the author notes that:

“The Network of Life describes the drivers of horizontal evolution — inter–breeding and genetic recombination, the merger of species, horizontal gene transfer, and co–evolution. The network view of evolution that emerges supports a new symbiotic theory of health, which holds that the future health of humans, other species, and our shared environments depends on evolution and adaptations across life’s network.”

As the author points out, the old “Germ Theory of Disease” focuses on human disease itself, whereas the new “Symbiotic Theory of Disease” focuses on human and environmental health. That is, human diseases stem from infection with certain organisms, whereas human health actually stems from the capacity to recover from disease and injury, and to adapt to change over time. So, in the latter the focus is on both short-term and longer-term relationships of other organisms in human and environmental health.

Now, the author mainly restricts himself to the complex network that exists between any given species and the disease–causing organisms that surround and inhabit it. However, I wish to look here at the medical status of humans and their interaction with their environment. Obviously, in this blog, the aspect of the environment under discussion will be the alcohol that the people transfer from their environment into their own bodies.

The basic idea is that there is no static optimum for the nature of the interaction (alcohol in this case) under discussion, because the relationships are evolving in both time and space. The World Health Organization’s declaration (January 2023) that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption (that does not affect health) makes little biological sense.

The book’s author notes:

“What do we mean by health? Human health is often taken to be the the mere absence of illness. That view may work on a short time scale. But over longer time frames, health and sickness are not mutually exclusive conditions. Reacting to a flu virus with a fever, aching joints, nausea, and swollen lymph glands, the classic signs of sickness, is a sign of good health, as manifest by a healthy immune system. Sickness and health co–exist, and a long life includes many periods of injury and sickness, followed by recoveries ... Because health and sickness vary over time, there is no narrow or statistically defined normal or abnormal state of these conditions. Environmental health is similarly dynamic. At all levels, health is more about resilience, adaptability to trauma, and persistence over time than it is about absence of sickness.”

So, the idea that there could be a pre-specified amount of alcohol that humans can safely consume, medically, is naive. The amount that we could safely consume at one time in our life will not be the same as at another time. We adapt through time, based on what has already happened to us during our life — we meet our own medical needs over time by being resilient, and adjusting to change. There is no such thing as “normal” — it changes through time for each of us.

Furthermore, our body is a system of interactions among many components (organs, chemicals, micro–organisms). There is much evidence that the microorganisms in our body impact our behaviour. Their chemical compounds can and do stimulate our nervous system and brain, influencing our mood and actions. So, the host behaviour is not controlled by the host’s genes alone. There is no such thing as “normal” — it changes in space, as well.

Just as importantly, the amount of alcohol that we could safely consume thousands of years ago was not the same as now, nor will the amount we consume now be the same as a thousand years in the future. The human species has a long past (there is evidence of Neolithic wine, 8,000 years ago, at the site shown above**), and we will presumably have a long future (although we may change a lot during that time). There is the intriguing idea that our species has evolved while consuming alcohol, and interfering with that consumption might actually have negative effects on us.

For example, we know that reducing some of our previous environmental exposures has correlated with the increasing prevalence of allergies (Why our allergies are getting worse), and reducing exposure to some of our previous microbes may be correlated with the increasing prevalence of auto–immune diseases (The increasing prevalence of autoimmunity and autoimmune diseases). Thus, reducing our exposure to alcohol may actually have negative effects! [So might increasing it, of course.]

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Publications

Morrison, D.A. (2011) Introduction to Phylogenetic Networks. RJR Productions, Sweden. vi+216 pp. ISBN 978-91-980099-0-3. [Formally reviewed here.]

Morrison, D.A. (2005) Networks in phylogenetic analysis: new tools for population biology. International Journal for Parasitology 35: 567-582.

Morrison, D.A. (2010) Using data-display networks for exploratory data analysis in phylogenetic studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27: 1044-1057.

Morrison, D.A. (2013) Phylogenetic networks are fundamentally different from other kinds of biological networks. In W.J. Zhang (ed.) Network Biology: Theories, Methods and Applications (Nova Science Publishers, New York) pp. 23-68.

Bapteste, E., van Iersel, L., Janke, A., Kelchner, S., Kelk, S., McInerney, J.O., Morrison, D.A., Nakhleh, L., Steel, M., Stougie, L. and Whitfield J. (2013) Networks: expanding evolutionary thinking. Trends in Genetics 29: 439-441.

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* My networks blog went for 3,187 days (or 8 years 8 months 22 days). So far, this wine blog has gone for 3,036 days (8 years 3 months 22 days). So, I’m getting there. [Tom Wark suggests that the technology for wine blog publishing became “very accessible” around 2009 — his Fermentation blog actually started in November 2004, and moved on to a new platform in January 2022.]

** The Agricultural Revolution started 12,000 years ago, and the Wheel was developed 5,500 years ago.