Trying to dampen spirits with a glass of wine

WHAT WITH various invasions, sieges, despots and the psychopathic Uncle Joe, they’ve had it pretty rough in Russia over the centuries. Throw in the extremes of weather and an almost genetic predisposition to dysphoria and you’re hardly surprised to learn that Russians are among the heaviest drinkers in the world.

Although the following joke is properly located in Finland, it’s also told in Russia (and what’s a bit of geographical hair-splitting when you’re talking about alcoholism?): Andrei and Viktor sit in a park drinking vodka. They sit in complete silence for hours getting implacably sloshed. Four hours in, Andrei turns to Viktor and says: “So how are things with you?” Annoyed, Viktor replies: “Look, did we come here to talk or to drink?”

You kind of know a country has a major drink problem when it took it until just last month to classify beer as an “alcoholic beverage”. It used to be known as a “foodstuff” – part of a balanced diet and all of that. As such, you could buy it most anywhere and any time. Even the most delicate of Russians regards beer as a “soft drink”.

There’s been shock and outrage over the Russian parliament’s modern, liberal, touch-feely decision to call beer “alcohol”. Carlsberg have issued a profit warning that sent their shares tumbling by 17 per cent (Russia accounts for 40 per cent of all Carlsberg beer sales). This draconian measure of classifying beer as alcohol doesn’t come into effect until 2013, but I’d book a ringside TV seat now for the rioting that will ensue.

Irony spoiler alert: labelling beer as “alcohol” is part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on alcoholism. This is a country which, under communism, used to take in more in indirect taxes from the sale of alcohol than it earned in income taxes. This is a country that used to sneeringly refer to then president Mikhail Gorbachev as the “mineral’nyi sekretar” (mineral water secretary) instead of his official title of “general’nyi sekretar” (general secretary). Gorbachev, lest we forget, was lionised in the West but hated at home, and had the temerity to take on Russia’s alcohol problem. At one stage he even sent in tanks to destroy vineyards in the wine-producing republics of Moldova, Armenia and Georgia.

It’s good to see current president, Dmitry Medvedev, leading from the front in the war against alcoholism. Just last week in Krasnodar (the home of Russian wine-making), he said: “Wine-making is one of the sectors that should be developed to help contribute to the eradication of alcoholism.” Alcohol abuse, he added helpfully, stemmed from “other drinks” – a reference to the country’s passionate love affair with vodka.

It’s an interesting initiative: tackling alcoholism by weaning the populace off top-shelf drinks in favour of a fruity Cabernet. Granted, wine is the last refuge of the pretentious scoundrel in the Irish pub, and you’d reach for the meths before something as prissy as wine – but isn’t all this quite insane coming from the leader of a G8 nation?

Demented Dmitry is not the first politician to regard wine as “not a real drink”. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the principal authors of the declaration of independence, was also a wine-is-actually-alcohol denier. As a connoisseur and enthusiastic consumer of the product, he saw social and health benefits in knocking back the vino. He believed wine-drinking satisfied people’s desire to drink, but didn’t have the same adverse effects as “real drink”: vodka, whiskey etc. As such, he promoted wine-drinking as a “sobriety” measure. “No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey,” he wrote.

I used to subscribe to the same sort of fallacious thinking as Jefferson and Medvedev – but then I was only 16, and I thought substituting Silk Cut for Major meant I didn’t really smoke any more (what with Silk Cut not being “real” cigarettes), but I like to think I grew out of that delusory mindset by the time I was 16½.

Apparently the thinking behind Medvedev’s flawed policy of eradicating alcoholism by getting everyone to drink wine instead of vodka was prompted by tales he heard from Russia’s billionaire diaspora. They would come home and regale him with tales of how people in Knightsbridge, Monte Carlo and Manhattan’s Upper West Side would not merely go into a bar and slam dunk vodkas till they passed out, but rather laugh gaily and exchange bon mots as they got sophisticatedly drunk on expensive wines.

My thoughts here are with Zhora the chimpanzee. Because of his circus training he was one of the most popular attractions at a Russian zoo due to his performance skills. Last year though he had to be carted off to a rehab centre after becoming an alcoholic because of all the vodka visitors would give him to reward him for his displays.

I hope he likes Merlot.

Vincent Browne is on leave