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Illustration: Jonny Glover/Jonny Glover and Getty images
Illustration: Jonny Glover/Jonny Glover and Getty images

Real ale bore or member of team fizz? What your festive drink says about you

This article is more than 5 years old

What you choose at the bar could reveal more than you think

Not everyone can be the life and soul of the Christmas party, the crowd hanging on their every word, the Insta-paparazzi desperate for a selfie with them. Some of us are just plain old chromosomes in a cardigan, trying to make it from one half-hour of excruciating small talk to the next. Historically, alcohol has gone some way to helping wallflowers peel themselves away from the anaglypta, but in recent years booze has evolved from confidence accelerant to an entire way of life. Forget being defined by your job, sexuality or Brexit vote; while having a drinking problem used to be cause for concern, in some quarters overdoing your tipple of choice is seen as a valid personality substitute.

For proof, you need only take a cursory glance at someone’s social media or dating profile. Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my gin, they tell you. How long until wine o’clock, they ask. And as Christmas looms large, alcohol-related merchandise is clogging up the gift aisles and seasonal home pages of every retailer. Tote bags, T-shirts and mugs are emblazoned with whimsical drinking slogans, each more painful than the last (“Prosecco made me do it!” “Is vodka a carb?”). It’s remarkable that these card-carrying booze-lovers are able to function; if you believe their fridge magnets, they must be permanently wasted. As the season of perma-intoxication gets into full swing, here is my choice of the festive drink tribes.

The wine o’clock club

The vin rouge brigade imagine themselves connoisseurs – “I drink too much, but it’s fine because it’s vintage” – or lovable eccentrics (ie, they wear the same shirt three days running). Whether young execs spending their days welded to Excel or new parents who find caffeine and vitamin shots amateurish, white wine is a getaway, the emotional petrol to take them from nought (mild-mannered subordinate) to 60 (aggro superhero with hammers for hands) in three large glasses.

As for rosé lovers, stay away from those people at all costs. They are demons and will get you arrested for sport. Thank heavens they hibernate over winter.

Tequila slammers

Former hedonists or over-sharers at house parties try to set aside their worries – huge credit-card repayments, a toddler who insists on calling them by their first name – by slugging shots of this Mexican mind-wipe. Tequila misery loves company, especially after 3am, so devotees are often found brandishing a tray of shots lined up for any takers, reminding you that “closing time is a state of mind”. Tequila lovers “get the party started”, no matter how low-key it may be. Christenings, funerals, informal drinks and nibbles at the local library – the tequila drinker will zhoosh them all up, asking your grieving great-aunt if she’d like something “a little stronger” before producing a huge bottle complete with hallucinogenic worm. You only live once, they tell you. Thank goodness.

Team fizz

Unless you’re unlucky enough to find yourself at the mercy of a coupe-bore, the slender, fragile flute lends an air of elegance to even the rankest of prosecco, and there’s a lot to be said at the end of a hard day for swaddling yourself in a thick dressing gown, feet up, pouring out some “bubbles” and living what’s colloquially known as your best life, even if you’re only watching Countryfile on iPlayer.

Fizz is an expressway to glamour for those in dire need of it, the drink of the wild optimist who knows they’re not interesting, but just loves how pretty the glass looks in their hand. Plus, the popping of the cork and the satisfying sparkle and froth as you pour lend you an air of superiority over those who prefer dismal pints, spirits or plonk. You are the apex of Hollywood glamour, you are a dashing heir or heiress, you are the Roaring Twenties. But you’re still drunk.

Illustration: Jonny Glover and Getty Images/The Guardian

Negronistas

Fans of nature’s headache-in-a-glass imagine themselves suave and sleek, the type of person who “knows a little place”, and is not afraid to put themselves on the guest list for a pop-up. Negroni drinkers – and their country-mouse relatives, the Aperol spritz lovers – don’t like to mix with anything but the sour ingredients of their favourite drink, and will pout if anyone refuses to join in. Calculated, organised fun is the name of their game, the socialising equivalent of tidying your sock drawer against the clock.

Rum chums

They spent their gap year drinking out of coconuts, intimidating the locals and jumping off rocks into crystalline seas before giving up the tiki bars and trust fund-siphoning to settle into corporate mediocrity. Now they kick back in front of their cinema-sized television, watching wildlife documentaries and American drug-smuggling dramas, carefully imbibing memories of their youth and, after a few too many, affecting a terrible patois that mortifies their teenage children. Either they or their partner has expressed an interest in divorce in the last 12 months, but decided it would be too much effort to dismantle the sleigh bed.

Ale realists

Women like real ale, too, of course, but it’s the male drinkers who hide behind pints of the stuff to show you they’re a man’s man. Not every man, though; not the buffed-up refrigerators in tight T-shirts who terrorise high-street nightspots, say. Real ale is a club, a movement, complete with facial hair and a vinyl collection. Trainspotting, sudoku and gaming are now too mainstream for Mr Real Ale; he longs for the good old days, when geeks were geeks, not pretty boys in thick-rimmed glasses on Mastermind answering questions about Danger Mouse.

Ginthusiasts

The transformation from mother’s ruin to aspirational postcode’s chosen mouthwash is one of the most impressive alcoholic glow-ups in recent memory. Gin drinkers are the false introverts – borderline shy/wild – who can identify with a drink that used to be served in tiny wine glasses with neither ice nor slice, but now comes in huge balloons, garnished like a Christmas tree. You’re sophisticated, because you cry before the hangover, not after.

The vod squad

Vodka drinkers are always on, always up, never stop. A relentless car alarm of a person, jackhammering your social media and messaging apps with pleas for your company in bars, clubs and weekends in Ibiza, so they can spend as much time as possible in proximity to their true love: the odourless Russian ice maiden. Vodka and its number one fan have evolved together, from fun-loving flavours and Technicolor vomit-inducer to the dead-eyed, middle-aged opulence of the luxury brands best sipped neat. “Yes, I’m delusional,” the vodka lover says, “but at least I’m better than you.”

Martini shakers

There’s no getting away from it, martini-drinkers are show-offs. The glass, the mixing, the weird ingredient you need a tiny amount of, the garnish – the point is, it’s difficult but photogenic. Martini drinkers want you to know they’re in town, that they don’t wait for taxis and that, after sluicing down a few Gibsons, they’re going up to their hotel room – even though they live three miles away – to order another, bigger, even more complicated martini. Having someone make them a drink from scratch before their eyes and knowing they’re holding up the entire bar queue while doing it is a heady cocktail of power and entitlement and, like the third martini, it goes right to their heads.

Justin Myers writes at theguyliner.com

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