Has anybody else lost their taste for alcohol?

When we lived in Cornwall I used to work behind the bar at the Truro Real Ale festival. Everyone who came in was given a souvenir glass to go round and get their real ales. You wouldn't believe the numbers who used to creep over to us with their glass and ask for a lager or a pint of Coke. Not the most hardened drinkers I've ever come across!

I am very pleased to see that all my grandchildren don't tolerate drink driving. They have a designated driver , or share a taxi. I shudder when I remember how I drove after drinking heavily, of course believing that I was somehow a better driver.

I was teetotal until I was into my forties and was always having to justify this to people. Eventually when drink driving became a no-no people stopped hassling me and just assumed I was the designated driver. The Wonderful Man at this time was also teetotal and on several occasions he was told to his face that because he didn't drink he wasn't a 'real' man!
Now we have apparently become 'real' as we occasionally drink alcohol these days. I like a glass of white wine, especially if it sparkles and the WM has the odd glass of whisky. I am developing a taste for the liqueurs I've been making at home during the last few years, but I have enough unopened bottles to reassure me that I'm not yet out of control.
We still don't actually drink very much and I have managed to keep a couple of 'normal' sized wine glasses so that I know exactly how many units I'm consuming. Most wine glasses nowadays hold far more than standard measures.

Next time, When...............

Hardys Crest Sparkling Chardonnay Pinot Noir makes a very good substitute for champagne. I buy it when it's on offer for about £7, and keep a couple in te fridge.

Nice with caviar! if you can afford it!

Champagne is wonderful but I can happily make do with a good Prosecco!

Don't forget that the Tesco champagne won over far more expensive brands in a blind tasting with 'experts'. So go and treat yourselves!

Champagne is special. I like the way the bubbles tickle my nose [and make me giggle].

Now champagne - nice champagne - is something I can drink more of. Delicious, get lightly jolly and no hangover.

My employer was strange - he would buy expensive champagne, then use his gold swizzle stick to get rid of the bubbles! I like mine in a flute.

But they are terrible for drinking any sparkling wine from!

Years ago I had a rich friend who would pour me glasses of vintage ('69 I think) champagne... the difference between that and the non-vintage Brut you normally get was extraordinary! I'd prefer a claret any day.

I love the old-style saucer champagne glasses - they look so decadent!

I LOVE champagne - probably my favourite drink! Never get a hangover with it.

Sorry, my remember was for the Babysham glasses.

Oh, I remember them. Never liked Babysham though - too sweet. I'm afraid I haven't lost my taste for alcohol although I can't drink 'neat' wine anymore unless it's under 12% - so I have spritzers instead. I don't like getting tiddly though as I'm a control freak so don't have more than one - sometimes two - most nights.

Now off to buy Vodka for Aka's Blackcurrant Crème de Cassis

Our neighbour makes his own cider from apple trees that have been in the village for hundreds of years. There is a plan to build on the field where they grow and the older villagers are up in arms. Having tasted the cider over the weekend, I'm with the builders.

When we moved to Suffolk in the early seventies we were eager to make friends with the young farmers who gathered every Sunday lunchtime at the local pub. One of them was buying a round so I asked for a G&T..... Dead silence and hostile stares . Somebody quietly pointed out to me that the men drank pints of beer and the women drank halves. I nursed my first half of bitter for the whole session, sipping it very slowly and wishing I'd asked for an orange juice.

When we went home I noticed DH had a couple of bottles of light ale sticking out of his pocket.

"Better get you used to this stuff if you want to fit in."

I wasn't being snobby but where I came from women just didn't drink beer. I often drink a half of bitter now because I'm always the driver and I can make it last forever.

Does anyone remember the saucer shaped glasses that had a minute hole near the base that made a line of the bubbles rise up to the surface? Were these the proper Babycham glasses?

I think Cherry B was the first (and not the last) drink that made me ill. I loved Babycham. Someone bought me a set of those glasses with the little yellow deer on them - I still have one left. To this day my sister and myself always have a Babycham on Christmas morning. I used to love port and lemon too !

KatyK - I have to confess to drinking Babycham - in those silly saucer-shaped glasses that let the bubbles escape!
I don't think anybody likes the taste of alcoholic drinks at first - you have to persevere.
The first time I went into a pub I was 17 and had a date with a lad doing his National Service. He asked what I wanted to drink, and the only drink I could think of was what my auntie's drank at Christmas - port and lemon. 'Not on a squaddie's pay', he said, and ordered me half of beer. I hated it.

KatyK you can still get Cherry B. I had some last year at a cocktail party (exactly! what sort of cocktail party was that?) Anyway, it was quite nice - tasted like a fortified wine and there were sweet canapés that made it taste better.

My macho young male relatives make me laugh - they're all into fruit ciders, and declare themselves aficionados about the different brands and tastes. Kopperburg pear cider is just like Babycham! Just that you drink it out of the bottle, instead of a cocktail glass.

Greatnan - I used to love Blue Nun, I thought I was so sophisticated drinking that.. We also drank Mateus Rose in the '70s, we used to make lamps out of the bottles! I also drank Cherry B which I couldn't face now at any price.

I never really took to alcohol. I didn't like the taste, the effect it has when you drank it and even less the effects if you have a bit too much.

So I never really drank very much and while I have had the occasional morning when I have regretted the night before it has usually been after a group round the dining table evening when conversation has been so animated I have failed to notice my hostess, and one hostess in particular, constantly refilling glasses.

Now with the wide range of alternative non-alcoholic drinks available I rarely drink, occasionally I have a glass of red wine with a meal, the odd sloe gin (home made) on a cold evening in front of the fire and a pint of shandy in the summer, but rarely more than that.

More importantly nowadays nobody comments if you go the non-alcoholic route. In my university and early working days when the only alternative was squash or mixers, unmixed, I got really fed up with having to defend myself for not consuming alcohol. Even in a predominantly male work environment I never felt a need to be 'one of the boys' and I do not think not my abstemiousness did me any harm.

I think you are being disingenuous, absent, when people talk about alcohol, they don't usually mean the pure poison, they mean alcoholic drinks.

Without the smell, most alcoholic drinks would seem identical, and not worth distinguishing between. The taste is in the smell. The aficionados can tell one grape from another, or one distillery from another, even one vintage from another, by their smell. The rest of us have to gulp a mouthful or two before we know whether we like it or not.