HOW AMERICA DRINKS

IN the bibulous as distinguished from the meteorological sense, December in the U.S. is the wettest month of the year. The weather is usually dismal enough to call for the cup that cheers; but it is Christmas and New Year's Eve, those nationally permissive drinking occasions, that pop the cork and the bung and inspire a steady round of wassails. In a single month, the nation's drinkers buy an eighth part of their annual supply, some of it to give but a good share of it to consume. This year, December's national bill, for spirits alone, will tot up to a staggering $1.1 billion.

In per-capita consumption of alcoholic beverages, the U.S. ranks 17th among the world's nations, behind such countries as Luxembourg, France and New Zealand. The Social Research Group of George Washington University reports that two of three adult Americans (21 and over) drink at least occasionally, one in eight drinks to excess and one in 16--or about 6,800,000--drinks enough to be classified as a problem drinker. The estimated 1967 consumption of some 4 billion gallons represents a record alcoholic tide, suggesting a land of serious, two-fisted drinkers.

In the Home

That statistical evidence can be quite deceiving. After a pioneer era of hard drinking and a ridiculous interlude of prohibition, the U.S. is neither wet nor dry but just moist. In 1860, it consumed 3.25 gallons of distilled spirits per capita; today that figure is only slightly more than 1.5 gallons. What has happened is that per-capita wine consumption has risen from one-third gallon to nearly one gallon a year; the consumption of malt liquors (beer and ale) from about three gallons to more than 16. Indeed, beer, which contains only 4% alcohol, as against 12% for table wines, 20% for fortified wines and 40% to 50% for distilled spirits, accounted for all but a small fraction--13% last year--of the volume of alcoholic beverages consumed in the U.S.

The liquor store has displaced the tavern as the principal purveyor of wine and spirits; grocery stores now vend 80% of the nation's beer. Another way of saying this is that most U.S. drinking--about seven-tenths of it--now takes place in the home. Male drinkers still predominate, 77% to 60%, but the ladies' preference for lighter drinks and their sheer presence, has put a governor on the drinking capacities and intentions of the surrounding males.

The profile of the average U.S. drinker is largely reassuring. He has his first taste at age twelve to 14--commonly by receiving a sip of the family stock. Before graduation from high school, he is drinking at least episodically--along with more than three-fourths of the student body. Like the hippie minority, most youthful drinkers stick to wine and beer, possibly because liquor is regarded as the old folks' hang-up but more probably because the lighter drinks are easier on the pocket and the throat.

There are more drinkers in the city (87%), where bars stud every downtown block, than in the country (43%); more of them along the Northeastern seaboard (83%), which takes a certain pride in sophistication, than in any other section of the country. The South has the oddest regional attitude about drinking. Kentucky is practically the capital of the bourbon country, but it also forbids the sale of alcohol in four counties out of five. Widely blanketed by local prohibition laws, the South teems not only with "brown bag" joints, to which the patron brings his own bottle in a paper bag, but also with moonshine distilleries. Yet legal drinking is on the rise throughout the South; the last holdout state, Mississippi, repealed its prohibition law last year.

College-graduate drinkers in the U.S. vastly outnumber those whose formal education has stopped at the grade-school level (80% to 53%), and there are more well-to-do drinkers than poor: it takes money to drink. The average drinker is more likely to be a Roman Catholic than a Protestant. One reason is that many Protestant faiths, notably the Baptists and the Methodists, traditionally forbade drinking. The George Washington University survey classified 56% of all drinkers as moderate, only 12% as immoderate.

All the evidence, in fact, sustains the conviction that the average American knows how to handle his liquor. Strong whiskeys continue to lose popularity; bourbon is slipping even in the South. Light Scotches are In; vodka, which is odorless and tasteless and mixes with everything, now rivals gin in popularity--though the traditional martini seems to be holding its own. The drink taken on the rocks--which tastes weaker and lasts longer--is gaining. And so is the drink thoroughly diluted with such mixes as orange and tomato juice and beef broth. Most bartenders will even make a spirit-free Bloody Mary called the Bloody Shame.

Fad drinks generally provide a clue to the changing public palate, and today's In concoctions indicate a trend toward blandness: the Dirty Mother (brandy and Kahlua, a liqueur that tastes like sweetened coffee), the Half-and-Half (half Scotch and half milk or cream), the My Diane (gin and cordials with orange juice and coconut milk) and such relatively innocuous favorites as Dubonnet on the rocks and Campari and soda. Today a bar must carry 50% more brands and be prepared to make a 100% greater assortment of drinks than ten years ago.

The growing preference for wine can be taken as further evidence of commonsensical drinking. Light wine with meals is a familiar European custom that is taking hold in the U.S. Since 1955, consumption of table wines has nearly doubled, to 78.6 million gallons a year. Five years ago, restaurant customers in Chicago seldom bought wine. Now it is common, and they are specifying color, brand, region, year--even ordering Grands Echezeaux and pronouncing it right.

Inappropriate Abstinence

The history of U.S. drinking has been marked by two revolutions. The first dates from the 1840s, when the national temperance movement began its crusade to dry up the country. In the process, which led to the Prohibition Amendment of 1919, the U.S. developed a guilt complex about drink that it has not yet fully overcome. But there is increasing evidence of the second revolution in the public attitude toward alcohol: the country is learning to accept its drinking habit as a social custom that is as ineradicable as it is harmless when practiced in moderation. The alcoholic is a product of any drinking culture, but America is beginning to realize that he is a sick man rather than a sinner. Since 1956, the American Medical Association has recognized the alcoholic as a medical problem. The National Crime Commission appointed by President Johnson two years ago has recommended the repeal of all public drunkenness laws, which generate one-third of criminal arrests.

Even the churches, which once stood resolutely with the drys, are gradually reversing their position. The National Council of the Churches of Christ has joined sociologists and doctors in urging that the legal drinking age--21 in most states--be dropped to 18, on the grounds that it is unrealistic and in any event unenforceable. Publications of the Methodists, who long practiced or avowed total abstinence, now freely discuss such subjects as appropriate and inappropriate drinking--and appropriate and inappropriate abstinence. Welcoming 1968 with more drinking but less drunkenness, the U.S. stands established as a moderate drinking society, in which social custom is beginning to serve as a far better control over the drinking habit than either statutes or disapproval.

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