Don’t beat yourself up over a few glasses of wine

There are a few things to come at The Diary of a CEO’s Steven Bartlett for. There’s the peddling of dangerous health misinformation, humanising the Trump family, inviting dudes with weird ideas about women on his podcast to talk about how women’s standards are too high.

Now Bartlett has come for something that I hold dear: three glasses of wine. An amount, I would say, that’s conducive to a celebratory above-average night, or indicative of a good-length dinner and sparkling memories. But he mentioned none of this, and instead talked piously about how this had “ruined three days of [his] life”. He said he podcasted badly. He couldn’t go to the gym. His fitness tracker (#sponcon) told him it had impacted his health. A long dinner became a cautionary tale of a life unoptimised.

While there are many reasons that some of us choose to drink less or abstain entirely, framing having a few drinks and a nice time with friends as a personal failure and wasted calories is indicative of a section of society that’s becoming increasingly wellness-orientated. At worst, it’s a potential avenue into disordered consumption.

It reminded me of a debate that blew up in 2020, ignited by the launch of Avalin, a brand from Cameron Diaz, but marketed as “clean”. Avaline’s main thing was “transparency” in the winemaking process. Diaz claimed to be shocked when she found out how many additives were in wine, so Avaline was launched without “unnecessary” additions. But most vineyards need herbicides and pesticides, and wines need sulphur to make it stable and ready for market. Wines called “natural” – low-intervention winemaking – still use sulphur and plant-derived herbicides.

“Clean” isn’t a legally defined term, so you can’t look at a bottle and be sure of the exact process it’s gone through. Organic, however, is a regulated term, which is probably why the Avaline website now uses this claim. (Organic wines, by the way, can still be treated with pesticides, insecticides and fungicides like copper.)

Having wine suitable for vegans is important, and looking after our vines via responsible farming is an issue that everyone should take seriously, but the way “clean” wine was being positioned here had a different energy to it. Calling one thing clean implies another thing is dirty. Rebranding wine as guilt-free implies that we should be feeling guilt in the first place, and propagating shame around the things we consume, especially post-indulgence, is a slippery slope. Choosing something from a drinks list shouldn’t feel like tracking your macros.

Wine is an indulgence; don’t beat yourself up for enjoying it occasionally. Otherwise, before you know it you’ll be living life not as a human being that dances and laughs, but like a never ending project of optimisation. Drink the glass of wine, acknowledge it as an indulgence, feel OK about it. If you can manage it, feel happy.