Adventures in Wine (or, Charlsie's First Drink)

Before coming to Denmark, the only alcohol I’d ever consumed was a sip of my dad’s cabernet sauvignon at Christmas. It was disgusting.

I didn’t drink at college because, when you’re at an American college, there is only one way to drink: at night, in large groups, in excess. The only thing I wanted to be drinking at night was La Croix and water, or maybe tea, and certainly not in a large group. I said I didn’t want to drink, but what I really meant was that I didn’t want to binge drink cheap alcohol. I didn’t want to learn what it was like to be so utterly and completely black-out drunk, partially because I knew I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself were that to happen, and partially because I was afraid that I’d like it too much.

The only other way to drink—or so I thought—was to be a high (or low) functioning adult alcoholic. I also had no interest in that.

But in Denmark—in Europe, really—the different drinking culture became very obvious. And here, drinking isn’t threatening, or excessive, or violent. People drink one or two glasses of their chosen beverage, with friends, outside in the sun, at cafés, on picnic blankets, with good food. Drinking is a pastime the way coffee is a pastime: finding the best drink and enjoying it. And when Danes do get drunk, they are happy drunks, not aggressive drunks. Mindfulness and cultivating a real experience around the drink is far more important here than the alcohol itself. In America, especially at college, the drink is simply a delivery system for the alcohol. Here, it feels like the alcohol is almost an afterthought to the drink.

So, when I got the opportunity to taste some beer at a brewery tour, and then participate in a wine tasting on a grassy hillside, I did it. Why not? I didn’t drink enough to feel different—I just tasted then dumped the rest out or gave it away. I thought the beer was good, but then I tasted the wine the next day and realized that beer is actually gross comparing to wine.

Since then, I’ve enjoyed a glass of wine a few times a week, sometimes with a meal (in which case I literally feel nothing) or by itself (in which case I feel happy and the tiniest bit dizzy, but that goes away after about 15 minutes of walking). I buy the wine by the glass at nice restaurants or cafés and sit and read while I’m drinking it. And while my anxious brain has suggested to me several times that Charlsie, maybe you’re becoming an alcoholic because you like the taste of wine, I know that’s not true. My brain also once suggested to me, after I got into a fight with my dad, that I should run away from home and live in my car. Which I obviously did not do.

I’m pretty sure I’ll stop drinking when I go back to the U.S. First of all, it will be illegal. Here, it’s legal to buy/consume all alcohol at eighteen, and legal to buy alcohol that is below 12% ABV at age fifteen (or sixteen?). I don’t get carded here, because I’m obviously eighteen. Second, wine is literally sold everywhere here. Anywhere I can get food, I can probably get a glass of wine. That’s not the case in the U.S. Third, I still don’t want to participate in American drinking culture. When I turn twenty-one, I might start practicing my own version of European drinking culture—buying a glass of wine now and then. But no boxed wine for me.