Le vin est mort. Vive le vin.

Quite a few studies have been published in the last few years showing that the French don't drink wine like they used to.

I'm sure the statisticians know what they're talking about, but on the ground in my neighborhood, they are still drinking it faster than the recycling station can keep up with the empties:


What I've noticed, though, is that there are definite, unwritten rules for what to drink when.

At meals: wine. Absolutely, every time at lunch or dinner (breakfast is generally limited to coffee, though I've seen older guys in my neighborhood knocking back beer at 8:30 in the morning). From bottles, most of the time, at least when there are two or more diners at the table; the days of ordering the house plonk by the carafe seem mostly in the past.

I try to avoid drinking alcohol before nightfall -- it makes me sleepy and tends to rule out enjoying the afternoon -- but when I have lunch without wine in a restaurant I definitely feel I am in the minority.

When the French are not eating, though, they tend to drink beer. Mass-market, draft European beers like Becks, Stella or especially Heineken, for the most part; although the French make one very good beer, called Kronenbourg, it isn't as widely available as I would have expected.

I had drinks tonight at Open Cafe with a couple of friends, and I'd estimate that 80% of the people there were drinking Heineken, though that may have been because of a happy-hour special. The rest were mainly drinking French specialties like kir (white wine and cassis syrup) or pastis (anise-flavored liquor mixed with water). I would have expected to see people drinking wine by the glass, but that doesn't seem to be very popular outside of mealtime. Mixed drinks, of course, are mainly for foreigners.

What the French used to drink years ago, of course, I have no idea. Maybe they used to drink wine by the glass in bars, or maybe they used to just drink more wine with dinner than they do now.

But wine is definitely still alive and well here.