That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.
Not just American wine... wines from any region have always been more expensive in the US.
Quick poking around Google... Italy, France, and Germany all have mid-tier bottles of their own domestic wine for far less than we (in the US) get any wine, domestic or import.
I have, and their prices have gone up. Their reserve wines are $20 now. Still a good buy for bottles that are usually very drinkable. Bit similar wine in Italy would still be about half that price.
It is incredibly difficult to sustainably run a winery in California. The margins are often negative without operating at a large scale, which is part of why the industry has consolidated heavily over the past few decades.
Often times, wealthy people buy wineries as a hobby to dabble in, but end up selling and calling it a day before it drains their cash. If you want to buy wine for cheap that is made in California, buy mass-market wine.
Smaller brands are generally expensive because that price is necessary to sustain operations, but most of the time that fails, and the owners end up selling.
I haven't noticed any retail wine prices stabilizing or decreasing, at least in the Bay Area. Napa wines are still exorbitantly priced, and imports are way the fuck more expensive due to tariffs.
On a pure price-performance basis it is difficult to justify buying US domestic wine over French imports. The quality of the latter is consistently higher at reasonable price points. California wines haven’t justified their price tag for a long time on average.
> Third-generation grower Bill Berryhill said it means another year of losing money and wasting hundreds of tons of healthy grapes.
The article fails to mention that Bill Berryhill is a former Republican state rep, from a family of Republican politicians, likely a Trump supporter, and therefore a supporter of Trump's Canadian policies. Now he wants to complain when it impacts him.
Which policy related to Canada is affecting the grape business? I didn't see it referenced, and assumed that since it's being described as a trend over 3 years then it's not just about tariffs.
Us alcohol products unavailable in most of Canada. So there’s a fair bit of export gone missing. And European response is probably reducing demand for us product in favour of their own.
Ah, gotcha. I presume there's then substitution effects on both sides of the pond, but the US loses more on net from the Canadian shift from American to other wines.
Even if that slippery slope logic were true, the vast vast vast majority of farmers in the country are some flavor of conservative. It would be hard to ignore all of them and also care about our food supply.
I think OP was more pointing out a supreme irony with the farmer demographic. They rely heavily on seasonal immigrant labor yet they voted for immigrants to be rounded up and forbidden to enter the US. Their sales rely on exports (e.g. soybeans) and imports (tractor parts, fertilizer) yet they voted for a complete upending of the global trade system that benefitted them. So that they are complaining about the current economic climate while simultaneously politically being fully behind it is schadenfreude for many.
Both political parties are made up of constituent cohorts. All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists. I think you'll find farmers in particular are generally much more pro-trade and pro-immigrant than the rest of the party.
The story is these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest. But the reality is they probably put up with his views on immigration and trade hoping they would be more than offset by his views on land use and tax policy (and have been sorely mistaken).
I know that people really want to make schadenfreude out of this But when the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans make these same kind of ad hominem attacks they equally fall flat. No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
> these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest
There is a good amount of research that suggests people do not vote using reason, or necessarily consider their own best interests. Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality; and then they vote on tribal lines.
I could buy it if we heard about reluctant Trump voters who don’t really like him and disagree with a bunch of his actions but reluctantly voted for him because they thought he was better than the alternative. This seems to be extremely rare, though. Maybe those voters just don’t get air time.
Okay. So all that opposition turnout disappeared in 2024? Where did they go? Were they so disappointed with the alternative that they just decided to just stay home (effectively a vote for Trump)?
It's a little hard to feel bad for these people when they already saw how Trump didn't actually push their interests during his first term, and yet they voted for him again.
Meanwhile, the Project 2025 handbook was there for everyone to read, and Trump's rhetoric was based on cracking down on immigration (bye-bye, seasonal labor), beating up our trade partners (need to import farm tools? pay more!), and slashing federal government spending (haphazard and largely a failure to actually save money or tackle deficits or debt).
The 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was a fine preview for more of the same in 2025, so I'm not sure what these voters were looking for when it comes to tax policy.
Land use is generally a state-level concern, so I'm not sure what they think Trump would be doing for them there.
> All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists
Democrats are not anti-work socialists and never were. They never had rhetoric that would imply so. However, republicans do have anti-immigration, anti-trade rhetoric and politics.
> No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
Of course, because Biden was not hating police and was not a communist. Republican party however is exactly what it is accused of being here. And Trump is its ruler and champion.
Please don't jeer like this on HN. Wine grape growers all over the world are experiencing similar declines in demand. The same thing is happening in Australia (I know people personally affected by it) and it has nothing to do with any flavor of political rule.
How is this jeering? I'm pointing out important facts about one of the subjects in the story that weren't included. I didn't celebrate or express my opinion. Should I have worded it in a different way?
It does suck for everyone else who didn't vote for this and I feel for them.
You didn’t point out a fact; you’ve raised vague associations and extrapolated them in a way that seems damning, but without any evidence. There’s no record I can find that this man or his family members support this administration and its policies. Most of them haven’t been public representatives for over a decade. The last one left office in 2018.
You shouldn’t have worded it a different way; you shouldn’t have raised it at all. It’s a weak point, almost completely substance-free, is in clear breach of the guidelines. HN is only a place where people want to participate because most people try to make strong points, and avoid posting junk like this.
While I enjoy a glass of wine every now and then, I'm not going to lament the decline of an industry producing alcoholic products; it's inarguably good that younger generations are drinking less. Sorry to the farmers, but profiting off of increasing public health risk maybe should be a precarious business. I'm not gonna get upset about tobacco farms shutting down or having to switch crops, and alcohol is just another addictive and harmful substance (I've known more people who died due to alcohol than any other substance, one in a drunk driving accident, one due to liver failure, two were alcoholics who died by suicide...can't be certain it was the alcohol, but addiction certainly didn't help their situation).
But, also, the income of younger generations has been crushed so much, the ones that do still drink can't afford expensive luxury booze. Decent wine is an expensive way to drink alcohol.
If you sell the land the rip up the vines, you've destroyed the winegrowing capacity.
That's fine if you believe this is a long-term trend and creative destruction needs to replace it with something. Maybe it will even be more economically productive than a strip mall or a subdivision. (Maybe...)
That's less fine if you think this is due to temporary fluctuations in demands, such as say decreased demand of american goods due to either economic status or perception of american goods in global markets. That framing is one where some stupid national-level moves may have destroyed or consolidated american economic might. And whether consolidation is the same thing as destruction, it at least decreases competition and increases mediocrity, which reading between the lines on your tone is something I suspect you in theory might support.
The decrease in consumption predates the current trade issues. Peak domestic wine consumption was in 2021 and has been falling rapidly ever since. There hasn't been a decrease in demand of this magnitude or duration since the 80s. Despite several years of declining consumption, per capita consumption remains over 50 percent above historical baseline. Combined with demographic changes that will decrease avid wine consumers as a fraction of the population, it's quite clear that the 2010s bubble was the short term abnormality.
Not sure how the extra supply for grapes affect retail prices of grapes for regular consumption. But at Costco in Southern CA, the price of grapes have been fairly stable (~$5.99 - $7.99) over the last year or a little more.
My parents live in a massive fruit growing region of the country. Just this year, 2 of the major packing firms in the county both declared bankruptcy. It's not just the trade war, but years of shrinking seasonal workers that fell off to a trickle.
The knock on effect is massive. The seasonal workers supported a large permanent workforce - and more importantly tax revenues in the county are collapsing.
But the really important thing to understand is that once the industry is gone, it's gone for a long time. The other markets competing with the US are already expanding their industries to fill the void. Once those trees are planted, they produce fruit for several decades to come.
While technically incorrect, tree is informally used to describe grape vines in some regions. Similar to “tomato plants” which is a more common example.
Grand-post doesn't specify what kind of fruit the region their parents live in specializes in, and plenty of fruit grows on trees (citrus, stone fruit and apples leap immediately to mind).
And I know that some Washington apple packing and Florida citrus packing companies have declared bankruptcy in the past year, so those would be my guesses.
From a layman perspective, American fruit growers refused to change with the times. How long are they still trying to make the “Red Delicious” apple work? Another ex-major packer I know of made the peach fruit cups, which people have been catching on are just filled with corn syrup. But these have been long term purchasing trends, yet the growers seemed blindsided by the packers ceasing operations.
There has been massive innovation and development in apples in the past 20 years. Every apple farm with a clue is growing trees for the past decade that look nothing like the trees of old. They’re growing varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If you’re still seeing Red Delicious anywhere, it’s on the buyers at your local markets that missed the boat.
I mean it also takes a long to build an orchard and get the apples to fruit. So older orchards are happily still producing old varietals instead of ripping and replacing the trees. Not everything old must be replaced with new - so wasteful.
Idiot consumers forcing us to take forever for market innovations to come to market is not even close to new, and the consumers 100% deserve the blame, contempt, and policies designed to frustrate them.
I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
"Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
i don't think one necessarily needs the best of the best... probably cheap is enough for a bunch of people
i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
Blood stains are easy. Wash cold, and they come right out.
I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though, well as cold as it would ever get - 80F was typical.
Ok so I have a soy sauce, or so I think it is, stain that I can't remove on a shirt. Is it still possible to clean it? Nothing I've tried seems to get rid of it.
A lot depends on what clothes you're washing. Modern enzymes are most useful with modern synthetic material blends, especially underwear. If you've ever had that type of thing stay stinky after washing, that's what's missing.
If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
I don't know that central vacs were the height of vac technology, but I cannot understand how weak cordless/battery vacuums have such marketshare compared to a vacuum unit that gets 110/240v of power direct from the wall.
The enzyme stuff is funny to me. DNAse, no purpose there. Why not RNAse too? People can't articulate why they even want a DNA degrading enzyme. Lipase to degrade lipids seems good, but then again, that is already the function of soap.
I knew a number of people whose home had central vacs but funny enough, none of them worked anymore. It was a sort of "what's that weird plug thing" conversation that lead to that somewhat underwhelming finding. I get the sense it is one of those things where if you want it fixed, you'd have to call a technician who will probably give you a quote you don't want to hear. Then you just forget about ever getting it fixed.
> CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s
Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.
But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse about any other subject.
In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.
It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.
I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious. Never liked the more acidic varieties. Actually like the "mealy" texture - (it feels grainy to me)
My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.
One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.
Nobody in any major apple growing region (Washington) is growing Red Delicious as their main apple variety for consumers, not even close. They're all growing various club apples (e.g. Envy, Cosmic Crisp), and there's massive competition to be the next honeycrisp (btw, honeycrisp quality is seasonal due to packaging, out of season they're significantly worse because they've been in storage for a long time, Apples are harvested only once a year)
Was one of them Del Monte? They made a bad bet about consumption patterns from COVID persisting, but canned fruit demand didn't stay high, if I understand correctly.
Higher wages means higher prices. At a certain point your price is uncompetitive with imports. You can use tariffs to protect a local product against an imported one, but that would require a competent leader who doesn't get emotional and declare a war (bomb-based or trade-based) when his feelings are hurt
Technically yes, but it still isn't a quick fix. Seasonal and temporary workers still need other seasonal work or jobs that let them leave for seasonal work and need the capital investment to be able to travel for work and live at different farms. A single seasonal job paying good won't by itself get someone to invest into van-life, its maybe 2 months out of 12 and not entirely predictable work/profit just from yield variability. And most modern jobs don't let someone leave for weeks at a time to work elsewhere, atleast not any that are near the price range of basic physical labor.
You also lose a significant amount of productivity from first-timers in any process, and other full-time jobs taking away your expe
I was told if we kill people in the streets and create concentration camps to put everyone suspected of being an immigrant in (even if they have legal papers, bc hey those can be fake who knows when your Prez thinks voting is fake) and send every immigrant back then Americans would be wealthy and prosperous and you're saying that's not the case in a country that's had extremely low unemployment for almost 15 straight years (excepting COVID)?
I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)
Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.
You're confusing SoCal and the Central Valley here. Southern California (LA, San Diego, the Mojave Desert) doesn't have enough water. The Central Valley, fed by the Sacramento River from the Sierras and Cascades, and then extended south with canals, has plenty of water for agriculture. In fact, it was quite prone to flooding before we engineered the water shed.
All of which is irrelevant to the wine conversation, because the relatively dry climate is exactly what makes the Napa and Livermore valleys some of the best in the world to grow grapes. You've got good soil, dry summers allowing for control over how much water the grapes get that make them grow more flavorful, and very few frosts. The fact that the region gets almost all of their rainfall during the winter also helps avoid the grapes going to mold.
There are farms near Sacramento airport in a “reversed irrigation district.
They have to pump water OUT of their fields and pay for the privilege of doing so as opposed to pumping it in from an irrigation canal.
Nothern California has no shortage of water whatsoever, and indeed it’s a regular news item whether or not to divert a few million extra gallows into the ocean to sustain some variety of fish that likes to swim around in the delta.
It’s good to remember that California is one of the biggest states, with land area similar to Japan or Sweden. This area covers a wide variety of climates, from towering frozen mountains to one of the lowest and hottest places on the planet. It’s not a place that admits much generalization.
Just for some context, a million gallons of water is about three feet covering one acre. Almonds use four per year. There are individual farms in the California delta using three orders of magnitude more per year.
I'd worry about farming in Utah or Arizona deserts long before sonoma and central valley.. They're draining rivers and aquifers to grow grass in the desert to sell to even drier deserts in China and the middle east.
You do realize that California is a huge state, spanning nearly 10 degrees of latitude, and not all of it is a dry desert like much of inland southern California is, right?
Some of the best and most versatile farmland in the US is in California, and the northern half of the state is flush with water. Before the current system of watersheds was built, there was regular flooding. Some of us in NorCal get to experience some of the tastiest, cleanest drinking water in the country.
There are taste difference, brand prestige and story differences, and scarcity. The most extreme examples of this would be in burgundy where laws from a few hundred years ago ranked the value of very small and fractured plots of land and it’s been memed into the best wine in the world so you have the prestige of this ancient law, the scarcity of these small plots built in, and a region that is good but not my favorite selling the most expensive wine in the world.
OMG, it's interesting to see how the average person reasons about the world.
You have your pet theory, you, without evidence, decide that every fact you see is confirmation for that theory, so now you believe your theory even more.
I want to say something to make you feel bad about this, but you think I'm telling you that you were right all along.
The fact that US wine declines more than other wine isn't a theory it's a fact. The reason could have several theories. One is that people are simply boycotting. This is supported by polls etc. But another would be if prices drift apart and a strong dollar makes US wine less attractive relative to (say) French and Italian wines.
As usual the reason overall wine sales would be down e.g. 10% and US wine sales down 20% in a country will be a combination of multiple factors. My pet theory though is that at least for some countries, the boycott factor is the big one.
Since all the us wine sold in canada is a tiny fraction of the dip in sales it literally can't have any real consequence. But enjoy your little theory.
What does Canada have to do with what I wrote? I described one country and it wasn't Canada.
But ok, Re: US wine exports to Canada (I have no idea about what this looks like, but a quick googling found several articles).
> "In 2025 the U.S. wine exports plummeted 33.5 percent compared to 2024, driven largely by a 76.8 percent drop to its largest market, Canada, according to new data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau. In total, American wine exports fell from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $850 million this past year, a $428 million loss." [1]
So the largest export market dropped by 3/4 which led the total exports to fall by 1/3.
I don't know how that is anything but a "real consequence"?
Do we really need evidence to draw a line between the US's biggest trading partners boycotting the US alcohol industry and a drop in sales in the US alcohol industry? I feel like the only way you don't make that connection is if you're either severely uninformed or so lost down the MAGA rabbit hole you've forgotten the taste of food, the sound of water, the touch of grass...
Where I live in Canada, it's not even a case of the consumers boycotting the products... they've been ordered to be removed from the shelves by the government. They're not even an _option_ to purchase. I think it's fair to say there's a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there when it comes to the impact on American alcohol producers. And when/if they do return to shelves, the general sentiment seems to suggest they still won't sell very well.
The same thing is happening in Marlborough, NZ - the center of the wine industry in New Zealand. (And probably elsewhere in NZ, but Marlborough is where I grew up). All my life, every year has seen more and more vineyards throughout the valley, until a few years ago it began to slow and recently they've actually pulled some out, which is totally unheard of.
Even if it ends up back on the shelves the damage is done. Many will avoid American products until the day they die, and endeavour to teach their children to do the same.
America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.
If so its been going on for a long time. I remember seeing UK TV ads in the 70's/80's for Paul Mason's Californian Carafes - cheap/mainstream wine. Now I'd say most American wines for sale in Europe are higher end and more expensive.
If you want a cheap bottle of wine it would be New Zealand, Chilean or Spanish
The article mentions this - Canada was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
I suspect wine is extremely susceptible to this effect too. It’s basically always stocked alongside produce from many other countries, the origin is most of the marketing, and there aren’t really any stand out brands. I’ve probably had a Californian wine before but couldn’t name a single one.
> while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
looking from the tail end of the generation, many of my friends ( and also I ) were led to believe somehow that things like marijuana, psychedelics, non-Alcohol have such low consequences that are entirely a rounding error compared to alcohol. which is ...
Indeed. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and damaging to peoples lives and the lives of those around them that it doesn't even compare. Alcohol would never be legal if discovered today. Compared to alcohol the risks of cannabis are a rounding error.
But that's only because alcohol is so incredibly dangerous. There is real risk with inhaling particulates and burning gases into your lungs. And it should not be ignored. It's just that compared to the lives ended by alcohol it is a rounding error and that makes it seem safe. Neither are.
Alcohol is deeply deeply ingrained in society. (Almost) universally. It has been for thousands of years. I just don't think you can extricate history and culture from how we set policy and views on alcohol.
While it may be rational to try to lump it with other newer dangerous substances, removing alcohol from humanity would be full on cultural erasure for many places. Not to mention to total destruction of entire industries that people's livelihoods depend on.
I guess a way to think of it is - if it was part of culture for 1000s of years it'll probably take at least 100s of years to phase out.
Alcohol is engrained because it was safe to drink because of the process of fermentation. However, it had much lower alcohol content and certaknly the hard liquors we know now were almost never at all drunk.
Your comparing 1-2% alcohol consumed because the regular drinking water was not accessible and unsafe to 7%+ alcohol consumed for recreation. Disengenuous.
Extract a sugary liquid from fruit or malted grain, expose it to the pervasive and random yeast in the air around us and if it doesn't mold over first you'll probably get something in the 8% ABV range before the alcohol waste product inhibits the yeasts' metabolism. With some deliberate cultivation, which humans thousands of years ago figured out, you can selectively breed the yeast slurry in your vessels up to a 11-14% alcohol tolerance. They didn't know the science but they knew the process.
Leave it exposed and you'll eventually get a random acetobacter infection and ta-da, now you have a vat of vinegar. Which would still have utility, but is much less fun.
The 1-2% alcohol drinks were called "small beers" and were the second runnings off the grain that was used to make full-strength beers or barleywines. Humans liked variety.
And people drank water, not just alcoholic small beers, there are depictions of water filters dating back at least 3500 years, and a long history of water purification techniques, and a ton of ancient wells which were dug.
there was some commentary on the amazing regenerative power of the liver on a post here a few days ago to this end. i did a little more homework and the way in which agricultural civlization and the ability of the liver to process ethanol evolved in parallel is profound. some settlement had a bumper crop of wheat enough to ferment over the winter and they were like, sheeeeeit and then the liver was like sheeeeeeeit
we've been collectively alcoholic for 15000 years, turning the body's chemical filtration plant into the body's largest organ that is literally called the liver, and we're supposed to give it up in 20 years? bosh. flimshaw
Alcohol is indeed dangerous, but I think it is misleading to compare the number of lives ended by alcohol to the number of lives ended by other recreational drugs just because there is a much larger number of people consuming alcohol. Almost everybody who consumes alcohol is not an alcoholic.
Smoking kills several times more people per year than alcohol use. The CDC attributes 480k to smoking vs 178k from alcohol. People smoking cannibis likely smoke less than those smoking tobacco but it’s not safe. Maybe try edibles instead?
I have a couple friends in their 60s who drank a single glass of wine every day, for decades. Then, they decided to stop. They were amazed at how much better they felt.
Cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s.
Potency is an interesting subject because in theory one should have consume less amounts over the same time period for the same effect. In other words, smoking one potent joint, while carrying its own risks, is probably healthier than smoking n > 1 joints to get a similar effect.
Cannabis, the literal plant, is strong than the 70s, but it's not like humans haven't been making concentrates (hash, resins, etc.) for 1000s of years.
In places in the US where it’s now been decriminalized, it’s a completely different beast from what it was in the 70s. So much so that the potency of the plants kind of isn’t even relevant anymore for typical users. It’s a far cry from when I was a kid and there was peer pressure to keep taking hits from a joint of unknown potency at too quick a pace to do any sort of dose control.
The people I know who are using it are buying it as tablets and gummies that come in 1mg increment doses, and taking exactly as much as they want to have, which typically isn’t much.
Vape pens are presumably also more consistent and predictable, and seem to be taking over. I can’t even remember the last time I smelled actual weed smoke.
It actually strikes me as much more healthy than alcohol culture, where dose control can still be a problem because it’s hard to tell how many units of alcohol the bartender put in your cocktail, and driving home afterward is still quite normalized.
I think their argument is that while it's stronger (and it is), it's also more predictable and has safer and more predictable delivery mechanisms.
Also, there are high grade derived products that do exactly what's on the label.
For an example of reasonable use: if you want to lower anxiety a bit, which is a primary driver of alcohol use, you can now reliably get a high CBT strain, or CBT gummies, or CBT values, and they are generally less dangerous and less addictive than other chemical solutions.
This would also hold for decriminalising party drugs. Most of the fentanyl deaths for instance are in people that didn't even know they're having fentanyl.
Yeah, more or less. From what I can tell few people really want to just smoke the plant anymore. That makes the THC concentration in the plant itself less relevant to a discussion of potential harm of cannabis consumption. Because there’s some amount of remove between the production yield of the raw material and the potency of the finished consumer product.
You can make an argument in the other for alcohol. Yeast can only ferment up to a certain alcohol concentration and then they die. But that doesn’t tell us much about the potency of consumer alcohol products because we have a variety of manufacturing processes for controlling alcohol concentration. These it’s less common, outside of home production, to just accept whatever unpredictable thing the yeast are doing and call it good.
It's still inconsistent as fuck. There's no real industry standards and analysis. The same gummies from the same pack bought at a dispensary can vary wildly in my experience. Pens are a bit more consistent. But yeah not as variable as the bathtub gravity bong rips of random weed that people got from who knows where.
Yes I find this a big difference in modern weed culture and alcohol culture. At my age most of my friends know their tolerance for weed quite well and we usually keep low dosage edibles around just to offer for friends who consume weed a couple times a year.
While I don't drink that much anymore, when I do I just kinda have a murky mental binder of how strong a drink is at a given venue I've visited before but even then it's very unsophisticated.
Idk, when I was young I was drinking heavily, today I drink some beers and smoke weed and I feel I’m much better for it. It doesn’t ruin the next day and I can do more things. But you can definitely overdo it. Psychedelics definitely can mess with your head, though, if not careful.
Alcohol is a mind-altering drug! And I expect it has worse long-term consequences than quite a few of the other drugs that have become more mainstream recently.
This is an argument I have had on both sides. One side demonized it, the other said it could do no wrong.
No, weed is not a one way path to a death sentence as you become a raving Satanist! But it also isn't harmless and there are things to keep an eye on, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean it gets the all clear.
If you want to do it, go for it, but please be aware of the potential issues.
They are significant but so are those of alcohol. Most data indicates weed is safer. (This study puts it at about half in terms of harm to the user: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harm... . Alcohol ranks the highest in terms of harms to others but that is also a function of how widely it is used)
Ketamine is also normally given to humans. It is used in hospitals as a sedative/anesthetic, and also in depression treatment.
Used responsibly it's perfectly safe. Much less harmful than alcohol. I don't know why people assume that something is unsafe just because we give it to horses. Do you think people want to harm their horses?
Alcohol is responsible for more deaths and addiction that any other drug in the world.
Not only that, alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood, which in essence means the feeling you get from drinking is brain damage.
Notice how like 90-95% of the tkme when skmeone does something uncharecteristically horrible such as rape, murder of passion, or assault, they are drunk. Is that a coincidence?
That's not even talking about drunk driving, one of the leadings cause for all major traffic accidents in the US.
Prohibition literally started because drunkards were beating their wives, wasting their entire paycheck at the saloon (free lunch), and other savagry so much the women, who couldn't even vote at the time, were so pissed off they created the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Let's be clear here too, most temperance groups were the biggest supporters of abolition. Only reason abolition didn't work is the government was too lax on enforcement and allowed written doctors notes for alcohol use the basis for evil organizations like CVS and Walgeens that have devestated this country with access to highly addictive prescription medication.
But that is also because it has been used much more often than other drugs. Don't get me wrong, I agree that alcohol has some very bad effects. But if you ban (or decrease consumption of) alcohol, but that gets compensated by an increase in the usage of other drugs (which I am not saying is inevitable), you might be trading a bad situation for something far worse.
A personal anecdote. My extended family has a long history of substance abuse and addiction. Of course, historically the substance so abused has mostly been alcohol (and tobacco, but that is less harmful in this kind of sense), and I saw [both first-hand and second-hand] a lot of direct and indirect effects of it that were very harmful and destructive. But recently, with another family member, I also saw first-hand the effects of addiction to another drug, methamphetamine, with induced psychosis, and I would choose dealing with an alcohol addict over this a thousand times. At least an alcohol addict is unlikely to suddenly decide to murder you, or to jump out of window, or any such mad move, just because some demons tell them or they suddenly realize that you have been an alien or a reptilian all along, or any similar crazy thing [which is actually pretty horrific when you face it in a real life from a close person]. A drunk person is also much more easily defeated physically than somebody who is high on meth and has some psychotic episode. [Though I am aware that alcohol caused or catalyzed many violent attack and murders too, I am not trying to trivialize that.]
>alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood
Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
Yup. That original post had several factual errors.
I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
Don't drink alcohol if you don't want to, you can just say no. It doesn't cause permanent brain damage by decreasing oxygen to the brain though. The damage to the brain by alcohol from frequent repeated exposure to high doses which causes measurable brain damage comes from chemical effects. An occasional beer really isn't going to destroy your brain.
Okay, but you missed my larger point which was the deaths and violence and rape and crime caused by alcohol. If you alchys want to drink it should be far away from good law respecting citizens and you cant call the police if you get hurt while drinking or utilize the hralth care system.
I'm not sure why you're making it personal and calling me an "alchy". Who are you really arguing with here? I'm not whoever wronged you, I'm just pointing out that it's not oxygen deprivation that causes brain damage from alcohol.
Or it's just bang-for-buck. If a bottle of vodka can be had for anywhere even vaguely in the ballpark of a bottle of wine (and at the grocery store scale, they often are: say, $15-20 for the wine and $20-30 for the vodka), then vodka (and maybe mixers) is gonna deliver a whole lot more intoxication per dollar.
I guess I just wrote a much longer variation of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker", eh?
(this is not drinking advice, folks: you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too)
> ...you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too
I'm skeptical. I don't see how there can be a meaningful difference between a regular-strength sixteen ounce beer and one shot of regular-strength vodka mixed in with slightly less than sixteen ounces of water. [0]
I do agree that -because you're drinking far less fluid- it's far easier for those who aren't monitoring how much they drink to get massively intoxicated when drinking liquor rather than beer or wine.
[0] ...other than taste, that is. Sixteen ounces of dilute vodka-water wouldn't be a joy to drink.
I don't see people carefully mix their liquor in the exact same proportions as beer and then drinking at exactly the same rate, so your argument is about as relevant to real world drinking as "if you mix 5% strength beer with four parts water it's basically not going to get you drunk". With or without normal amounts of (typically sweet) mixer, spirits tend to lend themselves to faster consumption and the carbonation in beer also has the property of giving you that buzzy feeling (and that vomity feeling) earlier so you don't feel quite so much inclination to top up.
Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. Like IDK how different things were in the past but back when I was in university (right up until covid) the drink of choice was straight liquor plus a chaser. Many a party were had around handles of whiskey, vodka, or rum with limited "mixing in".
It was just outright more cost effective and as college students we just didn't have money for the alternative so most of the time it was hard liquor and maybe once a week we'd go out to drink and then it was mostly rail liquor mixed drinks or outright shots and shooters.
> Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. ...
Exactly. If you want to get fucked up, you drink it straight, or with minimal flavoring. If you want to drink on the cheap, you prep it in one of many "sane drinking" preparations, like a Screwdriver.
One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice, typically served at between two and four times the alcohol concentration of beer and typically consumed at equivalent speed. What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
Sure, I read your second paragraph, but as I pointed out in my own post, you might as well express skepticism that people harm themselves faster with beer than with shandy whilst treating not mixing beer with four parts water as edge case irresponsibility rather than how people actually drink it. Every drink is equally safe, diluted down enough...
> One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice...
I used to be a serious drinker and remain an abstinent alcoholic, but your description obligates me to ask "What the fuck is wrong with kids these days?".
> What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
> Sure, I read your second paragraph...
I -uh- think that whomever you tend to drink with is way more hardcore than I was... and that's frightening.
> One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
So about 1.5 fluid ounces of 40% strength vodka mixed with about 4 of orange juice; a little more alcohol than a regular beer at more than twice the strength.
I think your evident belief you weren't drinking something twice the strength of beer proves my point entirely. And you may well have made the sensible decision to have stopped all that, but I assume at the time the notion of doubles, shots, "on the rocks" or with "just a dash" of cola or lemonade weren't alien to you or more moderate drinkers either. The one thing I can safely say I haven't done with spirits is carefully mix them down to 4-5%
In all my years, I've never known anyone who serves up breakfast OJ in four-ounce glasses. Twelve to sixteen is normal. I mean, shit, bro... you've seen a red Solo cup? The standard size for those is eighteen ounces.
> ...I assume at the time the notion of doubles, shots... [was] alien to you...
gestures back at this thread fork [0] you've probably not seen
I stand by my claim that diluted drinks like Screwdrivers are what you drink if you want to get drunk on the cheap [1] and straight liquor is what you drink if you want to get fucked up. Your continued reference to careful measurement does make sense if the only drinking glasses you've ever had around you were four ounces and smaller.
Probably, yeah. N=1 and Europe, but that's what I remember from my university years. Wines were for dating; cheap beers and vodka with cola or juices was for general socializing. Cost was a factor for everyone; cheaper means more people could participate more often.
This generation doesn't know about how to be a proper wino. Go and take a look at the $7.99 1.5L jug bottles of carlo rossi next time you are in the grocery store. You will notice they are covered in dust. The charles shaw at trader joes still moves though. It's up to 4 buck chuck now.
US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.
With US legal drinking age being 21, this eats into drinking at university/drinking after work, which is very much where bulk of socializing for young adults happens. Can't imagine it's not hugely affecting adulthood habits.
When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.
It’s the tech wet dream. Come back from work (where you are doing some manual labor the LLMs cannot automate yet), consume content while the rented rob car takes you to your apartment, get some weed and immerse yourself in your consumption device (phone, tv whatever).
Effectively every non sleeping minute of your life monetized by tech.
I suspect this is temporary. I think eventually we'll see a wave of laws outlawing weed and psychedelics (again), and then alcohol will make a strong comeback. Booze has been part of civilization since the beginning. There’s even a theory that grains were domesticated so people could brew beer first, as opposed to making bread first. Also, there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
> there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
I never understood this logic. It can absolutely change. Tastes and habits do change in society sometimes forever. Just because people did a thing a long time ago and a tradition has lasted for thousands of years doesn't mean it will continue.
Generally speaking, the longer something has been common the more time it will continue to be common. A fad vs a trend vs a tradition. Of course alcohol use can change. We see several cohorts with very low alcohol consumption. It's just that if we've been doing something for thousands of years, we're likely to continue to do it for thousands of years.
This is far from the first fluctuation of alcohol consumption rates we have data for. This is a major trend that will last decades but not a march to long term 0.
Yes, it happens. It's even happened with alcohol in certain population cohorts. I would just want to see stronger data before predicting alcohol consumption going to zero. Alcohol is a tradition lasting millenniums.
I've read several threads about how cigarettes are making a comeback because it's perceived as more natural or less chemical than vapes. If you care about facts at all you will find it completely wrong and intensely stupid, of course, but you just never know how people will react and then counter-react.
I doubt weed will be made illegal again. It also has a history dating back thousands of years and even in places where weed is still treated as dangerous as things like heroin, has failed to really control its usage. It grows in pretty much any climate and can be consumed in "raw" form, so supply control is impossible.
It's still illegal federally in the US! It's illegal in many European countries and the UK. The places which have legalized it exist in a fragile state that could very easily be washed away with a moral panic again.
I would be more willing to bet on someone trying Prohibition 2.0 again.
This is a shoot from the hip idea. Speaking to younger folks, it seems to be much more cultural/social change rather than anything to do with health.
This might be an odd fluctuation to do with the first primarily social media generation? Don't know but that is just how I have seen it.
You are probably right about banning weed/vapes. They don't have anywhere near the same indoctrination into the structures of commerce and power that alcohol has.
You're right, but the idea that "Oh I'm not drinking it's just not healthy" is more common among younger people I've noticed than it was around people who were older when I was very young. I meet many young people whose main two activities are overworking and overly gymming/fitness activities. Such people drink a lot less than normal.
Also fitness. The Covid "sheltered" population is also the Instagram generation, it's easier to get inspired, feel pressure from social media, or find information about how to become muscular. It's at odds with drinking.
Ubiquitous cameras and social media surely play a role. Each and all of your drunk stupidities can and will get recorded and posted to your social group for eternal humiliation.
This I think is the key here. The traits I would associate with Millennials and Gen Z are all related to reacting to being watched all the time. And while alcohol can help a bit with anxiety, zero tolerance for just being a kid breeds a culture where doing anything that can be clipped is a bad idea. Basically, they are boring kids because anything at all that can be used against them is. I really feel sorry for them. If time machines existed and they could see how kids behaved in the past, I think they would destroy all their phones and computers immediately.
Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy. Part of the Gen Z crowd that doesn't give a shit about wine is correctly disillusioned with flawed culture. We don't live in a world where you can get by growing grapes and making wine at your small vineyard. It's industrial. There is no bottle of wine actually worth $1000 to anyone with a sense of pragmatism and the fact such expensive wine exists just turns people off from caring about wine. A lot of societal ills come from the fact that we have old people unwilling to change running the world. Gen Z is doing okay considering the rent-laden prison they grew up in.
Scrunching up my face trying to figure out how to respond to this...
I think you are right that a lot of the wine which people consume, the mega industrial mass volume stuff sold in supermarkets, is a bit sweet, although often not by a lot--Josh and Bota Box, two of the biggest brands, have like 5-10 g/L of sugar. Stuff like La Marca Prosecco and Barefoot Pink Moscato is noticeably sweeter.
However, in general, I don't think it's fair to say "wine is sweet". Wine in general is not sweet outside of certain styles that are intended to be so. If you grow grapes, crush them, and ferment them, the fermentation will generally run until the yeast run out of sugar, leaving only trace amounts behind.
I've noticed that a lot of people who don't have that much experience with wine will tend to mis-identify things as sweetness when they're really noticing some other aspect of the wine.
Sorry, but you're wrong that wine isn't overwhelmingly sweet. The standard is about 15% alcohol and lots of sugar that has not been turned into alcohol, because it was added after fermentation. There are dry versions, but they are rare, just like dry hard ciders are rare. Sugary shit is what sells to the fat gluttons who prop up the industry.
A big part of the increases in door costs are from two sources. Lower bar sales and a dramatic increase in the fees for DJs over the last 15 years. Also, taxes from city counsels, higher energy costs (speakers use lots of power), and the youth having less disposable income are also part of it. Basically, its a case of "its not one thing, its everything".
My take is that people “these days” just don’t want to put in the time, money or effort in socializing, especially with new groups of people. Be it dating, meetups or other social gatherings with strangers, it’s about giving as little as you can, in case the event turns out to be a dud. Why risk paying for 2 beers when you could buy one tea for less?
Now, how can I be so sure? Because I’ve been starving at some of these events, whereas others can seemingly call a single slice of pizza dinner.
There’s most definitely a health aspect in there too, but I don’t think it paints the whole story.
I dunno. I don't drink, but I do put time and effort to socialize.
It's just not related to drug consuming acts and more about sports, poker, board games, etc.
I believe that drug-related communications are flawed and closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones. It's better to have a maturity and social skills to communicate, joke and maintain a conversation with interesting people without stimulators.
I'm not from the US though so it's not about the US social scene which is mainly discussed here.
> closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones
That's exactly the point. To experience animalistic joy, rather than the socially-conditioned one.
> It's better to have a maturity and social skills
That's a very silly argument because it doesn't take into account the fact that a day has 24 hours and also people have different natural abilities. Imagine telling a kid with Down Syndrome "come on, you can do it, PhD in physics ain't that difficult".
Communication is a skill like everything else. Having a constant workaround just reduces your ability to be good at it. Why would a healthy young adult make his own skills worse?
You can either get short-term gains with long-term worsening of your daily life by being incapable of new connections and genuine communications or cut the short-term low-level improvements, suffer for a year or two, learn a bit and have a better life for years to come.
It's like going to gym or do other sports. It's often hard and unpleasant at the start, but the more you're doing it, the fitter you are and the more benefits you bring to yourself in the long-term.
You don't understand my core premise that given finite lifespan and finite attention, one can learn only a finite amount of things. People have shit to do and they cannot fit one more responsibility into their calendars. Not to mention that it takes two to tango so if you want to be fun and interesting while sober, you also need to convince your friends to also be sober so it's not all awkward.
It's really difficult to square the circle that being sober improves your communication skills long-term yet somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends that previous generations of alcohlics.
> somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends
I have a feeling that many young people sit behind the screen all the time.
My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize. Still have to make an effort and go through the uncomfortable awkward stage when you are shy or lost for words in most interactions.
I know enough no-drinkers who are just fine even with drinking people, that's the matter of empathy and being able to relax and being open without stimulators which is something not a given to people without a practice.
I and virtually everyone in my generation have been constantly lectured throughout almost entire education about the dangers of smoking and drinking. As a result, while we smoke and drink heavily, it's not even close to our parents. So it makes perfect sense that the next generation, who were not only lectured their whole life but also didn't grow up surrounded by people smoking everywhere and drinking all the time, overwhelmingly avoided picking up these habits at all.
Alcohol is one of the worst recreational drugs. Internet natives grew up with more access to information and less draconian drug laws than their predecessors.
In the 90s, MDMA got senators’ panties in a twist. Now, there are multiple 100k+ MDMA-focused events in the western USA annually.
I could see it being a mix of both factors. Cash-strapped antisocial members staying at home, and the more outgoing career-focused gen-z members going out but trying to protect their sleep quality. feel like i know a decent amount of people in both of these buckets
I mean, i am about to marry in about 2 months and have no one to invite as i never was able to socialize with anyone outside of school (and since then 5 years passed) and if they mostly have a unhealty relation to alcohol so i don't want to do something with them.
I have like 1-2 friends that i can smoke with and also only know them because of that, we game in out free time and only meet to hand over some herbs.
I would love to go out and meet new peers but i cannot without drinking and after spending like 60-70% on rent there is not enough to spend 6-8€ on a WATER.
My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Getting Gen-z to even get close enough to the glass to smell a nice red is a challenge. And when they do, they seem to recoil rapidly.
> they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Not surprising, sweetness literally mutes palate sensitivity. Genzers are the most sugar addicted generation, from a very young age. It would not surprise me to see research in some future that this massive early life sugar exposure comes with muted development of taste.
There's untold levels of chemicals in wine. Organic wine is BS in Europe, organic vineyards actually use more chemicals like giant quantities of copper sulphate. The US is actually a lot better than Europe in this regard.
Source: My father owned a vineyard in France before he keeled over with a subarachnoid haematoma after drinking 3 glasses of Rose at lunchtime.
And these things were cause and effect by some proof? Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0]
"Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
I told an anecdote for illustrative purposes and made no explicit links. Others have assumed the link however.
My purpose was to draw people's attention to some lesser known aspects of the wine industry which I think are consequential, and I was illustrating I have some insignts into this that people that haven't worked in the industry probbaly don't.
You can't generalise from one wineyard in one country, but you know that. And France is hardly an organic wine leader.
Copper sulphate is a fungicide used for centuries and is pretty safe (so safe that my chemical engineer father was willing to use it in his otherwise completely sans-chemicals garden). Organic wine not only does not use (other) fungicides and herbicides; it also does not use other chemicals and processes in later stages of winemaking.
My grandfather used to burn sulphur strips to clean the glass demijohns. I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days. Apart from this, I don't recall any other "chemical" being used, other than sugar.
Of course, this was decades ago and today would be called "artisanal" wine making.
> I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days.
Partly. There is some natural level of sulfites present in wines - very dependent on the terroir, and then the rest comes during the manufacturing process; some sulfites may be added directly so the wine does not spoil.
There are wines that do not contain any added sulfites and even then may cause trouble to the sensitive persons if the sulfur content of soil is naturally high. Some manufacturers therefore also add info about total measured sulfite content to the label.
And nowadays, not only demijohns or wooden barrels are used to hold wine; of course stainless steel vessels, but also concrete vessels and even things like the Georgian qvevri underground clay vessels or amphorae are having a comeback.
Most notably the chemical alcohol is known to cause all sorts of health problems and is present in wine.
If you are going to talk about "chemicals", you should be more specific. Most chemicals are harmless, some aren't. Most likely alcohol is the most toxic chemical in wine by a wide margin.
You could also just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
I'm rather glad I've drawn people's attention to the issue, despite having to endure extremely patronising comments like yours.
Second, I clearly have skin-in-the-game here because you did read the first comment, so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one (well done that was clever in 2015) can go forth and multiply.
> You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
You have not. Maybe you think you have, but just linking to the name of a chemical is not a cogent argument that that chemical in the quantities present in wine, are harmful in any way, and certainly not an argument for it being more harmful than the primary ingredient.
> having to endure extremely patronising comments
Apparently not patronising enough...
> so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one
You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
Look, i'm sorry for your loss. However you are basically spreading pseudo-science here. Doing so has potential to harm a lot of other people too.
There was no police involved. The police state attitude verbiage used by the OP refers to the constant monitoring of children and teens, by parents or other guardians, using things such as Apple FindMy to the point where teens can’t be mischievous to the degree they were able to in the past.
There’s also the implication that the repercussions are worse.
Lord Byron famously had a tame pet bear at university; he did it because the rules forbade pet dogs explicitly. The police state has been going for a while :)
Apparently until recently there was no rule about skinning bears in the dorms at Cornell. Kids at college can still be kids, at least until the administration catches wind of it
> My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Born in 1999, I qualify as GenZ. All my peers drink beer, which is unsurprising given the strong cultural presence. But more and more people have been moving to alcohol free beer, which is becoming more and more widespread. Loads of breweries reacted and started with alcohol free beers, even the ones you would have never expected, like Augustiner Bräu in Munich.
Pretty much all surveying data for my home country for the last few years suggests that GenZ is just drinking less alcohol overall. While there probably are some shifts within the consuming population, that does not fully explain the shift away from the alcoholic staples.
Before 2004 Germany had a %vol limit for selling alcohol to 16 year olds. In 2004 they changed the law such that it is not based on percentage, but whether it contains distilled alcohol to prevent under 18 year olds from drinking sweet alcopops, which apparently was a big thing back then.
I don't think the science is settled, but the idea that there's a lot more to do at home to stay occupied and entertained rather than going outside is factually true.
When I was growing up, there were only a handful of channels and then cable. Compared to what we have now, that was the Dark Ages. There's so much you can do on a screen now that's compelling.
Infinite scrolling on Shorts, YouTube, video games, social media, hanging out with people online, chatrooms—combine that with Uber Eats, and you can do whatever you want.
The one thing that will make you want to go out is, of course, meeting someone to have sex with, but that's become weaponized, especially for young adults.
Boys being called creepy and predatory for making the wrong move was always an issue, but now you can be shamed online with a video as proof. Why take the risk when you can meet somebody online?
Actually, most women don't like being assaulted, regardless of the attractiveness of the assaulter. Additionally, this is true of humans generally, not just women.
It's really gross that you think of women as so alien and inhuman.
If you like reading sci-fi, I’d really recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) to get some perspective on the extreme of a life where everything you do is potentially visible to any and everyone around you.
Frankly, I am waaay past this bullshit argument. No, awkward does not come across as creepy on itself. Yes, it is possible for an awkward guy to be creepy, harasser or abuser.
It is never ending cycle of "they do not understand social", "you are infantilizing them by explaining them social explicitly" while the same guys are perfectly charismatic to anyone with actual power or friends.
Awkwardness doesn't come across as creepy to you, but it may to other people. The vast majority of men aren't harassers or abusers, but a lot of women revel in the power to label them "creepy".
If I were young I would stick to dating apps exclusively, since everyone on the app has already signaled a receptiveness to advances.
Vast majority of men are not accused of being creepy. I also dont know what "women in power" have to do with dating or hook ups, are you trying to hit on a boss or something?
And I mean, yes, obviously if you are looking for hookup, you should go to where hookup looking people go. That is not something specific to modern society.
what i've derived from my north american anecdata is that any kind of flirtation or even just talking to a stranger about a neutral topic is increasingly automatically graded as creepy. I'd say the social fabric has simply degraded to the point that people have forgotten how to talk to one another, social atrophy i guess. In my northern europe experience women deflect attention with much less fearfulness, and I'd say people just have much higher trust towards one another.
I'm too old, and my kids too young, so the current landscape is foreign to me.
As an outside observer, could it be that manosphere influence has an undue effect on young mens behavior, which (if true) would indeed be creepy for a lot of (most?) women, regardless if the execution is awkward or not.
I was certainly awkward in my teens/young adulthood, but in my singular experience, the maturity and confidence didn't come from acting cocky or showing off, but just treating anyone I had an interest in as a person first and foremost, and being comfortable and even open about my awkwardness and shortcomings.
That did wonders. Also accepting that a rejection doesn't mean a personal slight to you, nor a failure in appreciation of you from her, but merely a lack of mutual interest, which is also fine.
One big problem is a camera in everyone’s pocket together with a culture of posting everything online.
In an environment like that getting drunk just isn’t very good for your life/career. Even something as small as going to the dance floor when you are not really good at it takes a lot more from you when there is 5 cameras recording you the moment you look stupid/funny dancing.
Afaik, they also commit less crimes and get less pregnant as teenagers. They are overall more responsible then the generation that complains about them.
Anecdotal experience tells me that they're just better at hiding it than previous generations. Gen-z is depressed, and depressed people reach for drugs and alcohol to cope. I think we're going to find that the data on this has been manipulated.
> While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
All of these are cheap. As long as you got a garden and it's legal, growing weed is ridiculously easy - it's literally called weed because it thrives pretty much anywhere. Vapes are much cheaper than cigarettes (eh, we'll see how long that lasts and authorities crack down on shops selling smuggled / greymarket vapes...).
In contrast, going out and getting drunk to the point of getting decently hammered can easily cost you 100€ and more here in Germany, and we have low alcohol taxes...
Let's just say it as it is... Wine is 'supposedly' an acquired taste but for most, it tastes bitter and not enjoyable for the cost. Tastes shift and luxury items from yesteryear no longer makes a strong statement about affluence to this generation.
I think it just depends on what you like. I am not a big fan or most red wines (though some are good) and they give me headaches, but many chilled white wines I can drink like water.
Acrid is probably the word they were looking for. Wine isn't sour.
It could be that my affinity for port & madeira biases me, but the wine-haters I know have all expressed a strong dislike of what they described as its "acidity".
I don't think you'll have several thousand years of people enjoying wine and then suddenly one generation decides that "wait this doesn't even taste good?".
I really like wine, and a $8.50 bottle of good quality French bubbles isn't a luxury good or a status symbol it's just life.
But it's definitely acquired - and the fewer that acquire that taste, the less you'll sell. And people I guess often establish that taste in the 20-30 year age, and if people go out less and drink less, perhaps they'll not grow up to be wine-drinking 50 year olds?
I was thinking the same thing. Why not just sell the grapes straight to us grape loving people? They do have a short shelf life though, and as a lover of concord grapes I do go bananas during concord grape season but I really can only eat so many before they start to spoil and I do eat large amounts of them. The concord grape dealers know me and flag me down to give me deals.
This is being repeated over and over again on this page, but it's factually untrue… I've tasted dozens of kinds of wine grapes, and lots are tasty or at least as palatable as some of the blander table grapes – some are even widely recognized as such (muscat!). Also, even varieties that are not great for eating can often be used to produce some very nice juice – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay are all used for high-end, monovarietal grape juices in France for instance.
"Eating" grapes are mostly not optimized for eating, they are optimized for shipping and lifetime at the supermarket. Wine grapes taste great, but don't travel well (and have bigger seeds, smaller fruit, etc.). American supermarkets sell mostly seedless grapes, which don't taste great, but are easy to eat and to give to kids.
I'm Gen X. I lived my best life in the 80s and 90s, socializing, partying (frat boy years included), with alcohol as the main social lubricant. After Covid, almost everyone in my circle stopped or cut back on going out to bars and drinking, me included. It wasn't the price of drinks. Something about the lockdowns simply rewired the social norms (and our brains).
I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
Yeah it’s probably both at once though. At least my experience has been that spending some time away from alcohol made the negative effects more apparent, and simultaneously, time marches on, making the negative effects more pronounced.
The thing is, over lockdown I stopped drinking socially. And then I realized I didn’t miss the feeling of intoxication. And then I realized my sleep got a whole lot better.
And then lockdown loosened, so some friends and I went out for drinks for old times’ sake, and I felt awful, both that evening and the next morning. My tolerance for alcohol is just gone, and I don’t have any particular desire to get it back.
I had the same realisation but before COVID. I had a friend who didn't drink, but he was always the most fun person to be around. I realised you didn't need alcohol, or any drugs, to have a good time. Without alcohol I was funnier, had more and better sex, slept better, and had no hangover the next day. I never looked back really.
Nowadays I'm older and not looking for sex so don't take part in that scene. I would say a few years ago when I would go out there was still some peer pressure to drink and I was considered odd going for non-alcoholic options. But nowadays it's not weird at all and the alcohol-free options are much more numerous and varied. Lime and soda was my go to for years but now I'll partake of an alcohol-free beer or cider.
I found the opposite effect from covid personally as a 'zillennial'. As soon as the lockdowns and 'rule of six' were over the first thing me and my friends did was rent a nice house in the middle of the Welsh countryside and have a massive multi-day party. We all felt that lockdowns had stolen what was left of our early 20s from us and wanted to make up for it!
I often wonder if there's a lot of national differences here, in the UK people for the most part wanted to reverse everything about the covid norms as quickly as possible after Partygate and all the political drama. People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
> People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
Yep, same over here in central europe/balkans.
Covid came, bars were closed, bars reopened with limited seating, prices went up, tourism restarted, our city center became a tourist trap, prices went up, and higher prices then radiated outside the tourist traps, and well... it doesn't add up anymore.
Sure, college students can buy cheap wine or booze and drink in parks, but sitting in a bar has become very expensive.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 61.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/wine-related-produ...
- Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
- Boomer wine buyers dying off
- younger generations drinking less overall and being less into wine
- everyone on GLP-1s drinking less
Why's this?
The tariff wars and "boycott US wine" goes way beyond Canada. I (in Europe) completely stopped buying US wine during this admin. Polls support this.
Not just Canada
Grow more table grapes? Here in "Northern America" I haven't seen grapes on sale the whole summer, not even once.
It did not feel right to buy murican grapes at full price in the middle of the summer.
That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.
Quick poking around Google... Italy, France, and Germany all have mid-tier bottles of their own domestic wine for far less than we (in the US) get any wine, domestic or import.
Often times, wealthy people buy wineries as a hobby to dabble in, but end up selling and calling it a day before it drains their cash. If you want to buy wine for cheap that is made in California, buy mass-market wine.
Smaller brands are generally expensive because that price is necessary to sustain operations, but most of the time that fails, and the owners end up selling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Groundwater_Manage...
The article fails to mention that Bill Berryhill is a former Republican state rep, from a family of Republican politicians, likely a Trump supporter, and therefore a supporter of Trump's Canadian policies. Now he wants to complain when it impacts him.
And it links to a Feb 2025 article titled "Canada Tariffs Paused, but California Wineries Fear a Trade Dispute Would Be Crushing"
https://www.kqed.org/news/12025404/canada-tariffs-paused-cal...
Both political parties are made up of constituent cohorts. All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists. I think you'll find farmers in particular are generally much more pro-trade and pro-immigrant than the rest of the party.
The story is these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest. But the reality is they probably put up with his views on immigration and trade hoping they would be more than offset by his views on land use and tax policy (and have been sorely mistaken).
I know that people really want to make schadenfreude out of this But when the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans make these same kind of ad hominem attacks they equally fall flat. No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
There is a good amount of research that suggests people do not vote using reason, or necessarily consider their own best interests. Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality; and then they vote on tribal lines.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5120865/
Well obviously, I rather have someone making decisions, that hurt me a bit, but are morally good, then someone who makes me a profit, but acts evil.
There has to be a large number of these? Or how do you explain voting him out and then back in?
What does this have to do with the existence of reluctant Trump voters who disapprove of some of what he does?
It's a little hard to feel bad for these people when they already saw how Trump didn't actually push their interests during his first term, and yet they voted for him again.
Meanwhile, the Project 2025 handbook was there for everyone to read, and Trump's rhetoric was based on cracking down on immigration (bye-bye, seasonal labor), beating up our trade partners (need to import farm tools? pay more!), and slashing federal government spending (haphazard and largely a failure to actually save money or tackle deficits or debt).
The 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was a fine preview for more of the same in 2025, so I'm not sure what these voters were looking for when it comes to tax policy.
Land use is generally a state-level concern, so I'm not sure what they think Trump would be doing for them there.
Democrats are not anti-work socialists and never were. They never had rhetoric that would imply so. However, republicans do have anti-immigration, anti-trade rhetoric and politics.
> No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
Of course, because Biden was not hating police and was not a communist. Republican party however is exactly what it is accused of being here. And Trump is its ruler and champion.
Please observe the guidelines, which include avoiding political battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It does suck for everyone else who didn't vote for this and I feel for them.
You shouldn’t have worded it a different way; you shouldn’t have raised it at all. It’s a weak point, almost completely substance-free, is in clear breach of the guidelines. HN is only a place where people want to participate because most people try to make strong points, and avoid posting junk like this.
Anyways
But, also, the income of younger generations has been crushed so much, the ones that do still drink can't afford expensive luxury booze. Decent wine is an expensive way to drink alcohol.
That's fine if you believe this is a long-term trend and creative destruction needs to replace it with something. Maybe it will even be more economically productive than a strip mall or a subdivision. (Maybe...)
That's less fine if you think this is due to temporary fluctuations in demands, such as say decreased demand of american goods due to either economic status or perception of american goods in global markets. That framing is one where some stupid national-level moves may have destroyed or consolidated american economic might. And whether consolidation is the same thing as destruction, it at least decreases competition and increases mediocrity, which reading between the lines on your tone is something I suspect you in theory might support.
The knock on effect is massive. The seasonal workers supported a large permanent workforce - and more importantly tax revenues in the county are collapsing.
But the really important thing to understand is that once the industry is gone, it's gone for a long time. The other markets competing with the US are already expanding their industries to fill the void. Once those trees are planted, they produce fruit for several decades to come.
And I know that some Washington apple packing and Florida citrus packing companies have declared bankruptcy in the past year, so those would be my guesses.
But when the specific varietal always sucked, that's a good reason to replace it.
I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
"Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
WTF?
This just sounds like yet another thing that can give me a rash or some kind of weird cancer in 20 years.
I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though, well as cold as it would ever get - 80F was typical.
For curry, it does get better if you leave it out in the sun a day and pretreat it, I forget why.
Setting takes time. Heat makes it worse, as it accelerates the chemical reactions.
Most of the heavy duty stuff is when people ignore it, or industrial settings.
They sell little cleaner sticks (look like deodorant sticks or the like). Most dry cleaners will have someone who specializes in stain removal.
If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
I knew a number of people whose home had central vacs but funny enough, none of them worked anymore. It was a sort of "what's that weird plug thing" conversation that lead to that somewhat underwhelming finding. I get the sense it is one of those things where if you want it fixed, you'd have to call a technician who will probably give you a quote you don't want to hear. Then you just forget about ever getting it fixed.
Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
Who know if they are actually the same, plain genetic drift, or they have been selected to be more shelf stable at the cost of taste.
However, it seems there are multiple things with that name. I've had one that looked different and tasted... less bad.
One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
See this as a list of merely the most popular varieties you can find at stores: https://waapple.org/varieties/all/
Usually most staffing issues can be solved with higher wages. Could it be a solution here?
Not every industry has tech level profits.
You also lose a significant amount of productivity from first-timers in any process, and other full-time jobs taking away your expe
I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)
Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.
All of which is irrelevant to the wine conversation, because the relatively dry climate is exactly what makes the Napa and Livermore valleys some of the best in the world to grow grapes. You've got good soil, dry summers allowing for control over how much water the grapes get that make them grow more flavorful, and very few frosts. The fact that the region gets almost all of their rainfall during the winter also helps avoid the grapes going to mold.
They have to pump water OUT of their fields and pay for the privilege of doing so as opposed to pumping it in from an irrigation canal.
Nothern California has no shortage of water whatsoever, and indeed it’s a regular news item whether or not to divert a few million extra gallows into the ocean to sustain some variety of fish that likes to swim around in the delta.
Even if there was an extreme drought, putting water in people's bodies via drinking should never be curtailed.
(though maybe stop watering crops with brawndo)
Some of the best and most versatile farmland in the US is in California, and the northern half of the state is flush with water. Before the current system of watersheds was built, there was regular flooding. Some of us in NorCal get to experience some of the tastiest, cleanest drinking water in the country.
What an uninformed take...
I once had a red from Franciscan, made from a vineyard right next to Opus One. To me it tasted remarkably similar, yet it cost more than 30x less.
You have your pet theory, you, without evidence, decide that every fact you see is confirmation for that theory, so now you believe your theory even more.
I want to say something to make you feel bad about this, but you think I'm telling you that you were right all along.
As usual the reason overall wine sales would be down e.g. 10% and US wine sales down 20% in a country will be a combination of multiple factors. My pet theory though is that at least for some countries, the boycott factor is the big one.
> "In 2025 the U.S. wine exports plummeted 33.5 percent compared to 2024, driven largely by a 76.8 percent drop to its largest market, Canada, according to new data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau. In total, American wine exports fell from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $850 million this past year, a $428 million loss." [1]
So the largest export market dropped by 3/4 which led the total exports to fall by 1/3. I don't know how that is anything but a "real consequence"?
[1] https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/us-wine-exports-fell-...
Thank you for confirming my point though.
Do you really go through life seeing confirmation of all your beliefs everywhere, without ever checking?
America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.
If you want a cheap bottle of wine it would be New Zealand, Chilean or Spanish
I suspect wine is extremely susceptible to this effect too. It’s basically always stocked alongside produce from many other countries, the origin is most of the marketing, and there aren’t really any stand out brands. I’ve probably had a Californian wine before but couldn’t name a single one.
I say it in past tense because Bourbon drinkers in Canada are switching to similar liquors. "Corn Whisky" is selling well, now.
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
looking from the tail end of the generation, many of my friends ( and also I ) were led to believe somehow that things like marijuana, psychedelics, non-Alcohol have such low consequences that are entirely a rounding error compared to alcohol. which is ...
But that's only because alcohol is so incredibly dangerous. There is real risk with inhaling particulates and burning gases into your lungs. And it should not be ignored. It's just that compared to the lives ended by alcohol it is a rounding error and that makes it seem safe. Neither are.
While it may be rational to try to lump it with other newer dangerous substances, removing alcohol from humanity would be full on cultural erasure for many places. Not to mention to total destruction of entire industries that people's livelihoods depend on.
I guess a way to think of it is - if it was part of culture for 1000s of years it'll probably take at least 100s of years to phase out.
Alcohol used to be safer than water to drink for a period in time.
Your comparing 1-2% alcohol consumed because the regular drinking water was not accessible and unsafe to 7%+ alcohol consumed for recreation. Disengenuous.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1714728114
Some Roman wines were drunk undiluted in the 14% range
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vint...
Extract a sugary liquid from fruit or malted grain, expose it to the pervasive and random yeast in the air around us and if it doesn't mold over first you'll probably get something in the 8% ABV range before the alcohol waste product inhibits the yeasts' metabolism. With some deliberate cultivation, which humans thousands of years ago figured out, you can selectively breed the yeast slurry in your vessels up to a 11-14% alcohol tolerance. They didn't know the science but they knew the process.
Leave it exposed and you'll eventually get a random acetobacter infection and ta-da, now you have a vat of vinegar. Which would still have utility, but is much less fun.
The 1-2% alcohol drinks were called "small beers" and were the second runnings off the grain that was used to make full-strength beers or barleywines. Humans liked variety.
And people drank water, not just alcoholic small beers, there are depictions of water filters dating back at least 3500 years, and a long history of water purification techniques, and a ton of ancient wells which were dug.
we've been collectively alcoholic for 15000 years, turning the body's chemical filtration plant into the body's largest organ that is literally called the liver, and we're supposed to give it up in 20 years? bosh. flimshaw
https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/tobacco/data_statistics/...
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html
I don’t know if there is responsible weed or psychedelic use (not my area) but I’m confident that responsible alcohol consumption exists.
Though I doubt any of it is a net benefit to society.
Cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s.
Cannabis, the literal plant, is strong than the 70s, but it's not like humans haven't been making concentrates (hash, resins, etc.) for 1000s of years.
The people I know who are using it are buying it as tablets and gummies that come in 1mg increment doses, and taking exactly as much as they want to have, which typically isn’t much.
Vape pens are presumably also more consistent and predictable, and seem to be taking over. I can’t even remember the last time I smelled actual weed smoke.
It actually strikes me as much more healthy than alcohol culture, where dose control can still be a problem because it’s hard to tell how many units of alcohol the bartender put in your cocktail, and driving home afterward is still quite normalized.
Also, there are high grade derived products that do exactly what's on the label.
For an example of reasonable use: if you want to lower anxiety a bit, which is a primary driver of alcohol use, you can now reliably get a high CBT strain, or CBT gummies, or CBT values, and they are generally less dangerous and less addictive than other chemical solutions.
This would also hold for decriminalising party drugs. Most of the fentanyl deaths for instance are in people that didn't even know they're having fentanyl.
You can make an argument in the other for alcohol. Yeast can only ferment up to a certain alcohol concentration and then they die. But that doesn’t tell us much about the potency of consumer alcohol products because we have a variety of manufacturing processes for controlling alcohol concentration. These it’s less common, outside of home production, to just accept whatever unpredictable thing the yeast are doing and call it good.
While I don't drink that much anymore, when I do I just kinda have a murky mental binder of how strong a drink is at a given venue I've visited before but even then it's very unsophisticated.
No, weed is not a one way path to a death sentence as you become a raving Satanist! But it also isn't harmless and there are things to keep an eye on, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean it gets the all clear.
If you want to do it, go for it, but please be aware of the potential issues.
Used responsibly it's perfectly safe. Much less harmful than alcohol. I don't know why people assume that something is unsafe just because we give it to horses. Do you think people want to harm their horses?
Not only that, alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood, which in essence means the feeling you get from drinking is brain damage.
Notice how like 90-95% of the tkme when skmeone does something uncharecteristically horrible such as rape, murder of passion, or assault, they are drunk. Is that a coincidence?
That's not even talking about drunk driving, one of the leadings cause for all major traffic accidents in the US.
Prohibition literally started because drunkards were beating their wives, wasting their entire paycheck at the saloon (free lunch), and other savagry so much the women, who couldn't even vote at the time, were so pissed off they created the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Let's be clear here too, most temperance groups were the biggest supporters of abolition. Only reason abolition didn't work is the government was too lax on enforcement and allowed written doctors notes for alcohol use the basis for evil organizations like CVS and Walgeens that have devestated this country with access to highly addictive prescription medication.
You’re regurgitation of propaganda here is so laughably missing the point.
Drunk driving is a conscious decision, not an accident.
A personal anecdote. My extended family has a long history of substance abuse and addiction. Of course, historically the substance so abused has mostly been alcohol (and tobacco, but that is less harmful in this kind of sense), and I saw [both first-hand and second-hand] a lot of direct and indirect effects of it that were very harmful and destructive. But recently, with another family member, I also saw first-hand the effects of addiction to another drug, methamphetamine, with induced psychosis, and I would choose dealing with an alcohol addict over this a thousand times. At least an alcohol addict is unlikely to suddenly decide to murder you, or to jump out of window, or any such mad move, just because some demons tell them or they suddenly realize that you have been an alien or a reptilian all along, or any similar crazy thing [which is actually pretty horrific when you face it in a real life from a close person]. A drunk person is also much more easily defeated physically than somebody who is high on meth and has some psychotic episode. [Though I am aware that alcohol caused or catalyzed many violent attack and murders too, I am not trying to trivialize that.]
Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol
I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
But it is much cheaper. And Gen Z by necessity is more price sensitive than other generations.
kinda implies the claim was said
I guess I just wrote a much longer variation of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker", eh?
(this is not drinking advice, folks: you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too)
I'm skeptical. I don't see how there can be a meaningful difference between a regular-strength sixteen ounce beer and one shot of regular-strength vodka mixed in with slightly less than sixteen ounces of water. [0]
I do agree that -because you're drinking far less fluid- it's far easier for those who aren't monitoring how much they drink to get massively intoxicated when drinking liquor rather than beer or wine.
[0] ...other than taste, that is. Sixteen ounces of dilute vodka-water wouldn't be a joy to drink.
It was just outright more cost effective and as college students we just didn't have money for the alternative so most of the time it was hard liquor and maybe once a week we'd go out to drink and then it was mostly rail liquor mixed drinks or outright shots and shooters.
Exactly. If you want to get fucked up, you drink it straight, or with minimal flavoring. If you want to drink on the cheap, you prep it in one of many "sane drinking" preparations, like a Screwdriver.
Sure, I read your second paragraph, but as I pointed out in my own post, you might as well express skepticism that people harm themselves faster with beer than with shandy whilst treating not mixing beer with four parts water as edge case irresponsibility rather than how people actually drink it. Every drink is equally safe, diluted down enough...
I used to be a serious drinker and remain an abstinent alcoholic, but your description obligates me to ask "What the fuck is wrong with kids these days?".
> What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
> Sure, I read your second paragraph...
I -uh- think that whomever you tend to drink with is way more hardcore than I was... and that's frightening.
So about 1.5 fluid ounces of 40% strength vodka mixed with about 4 of orange juice; a little more alcohol than a regular beer at more than twice the strength.
I think your evident belief you weren't drinking something twice the strength of beer proves my point entirely. And you may well have made the sensible decision to have stopped all that, but I assume at the time the notion of doubles, shots, "on the rocks" or with "just a dash" of cola or lemonade weren't alien to you or more moderate drinkers either. The one thing I can safely say I haven't done with spirits is carefully mix them down to 4-5%
In all my years, I've never known anyone who serves up breakfast OJ in four-ounce glasses. Twelve to sixteen is normal. I mean, shit, bro... you've seen a red Solo cup? The standard size for those is eighteen ounces.
> ...I assume at the time the notion of doubles, shots... [was] alien to you...
gestures back at this thread fork [0] you've probably not seen
I stand by my claim that diluted drinks like Screwdrivers are what you drink if you want to get drunk on the cheap [1] and straight liquor is what you drink if you want to get fucked up. Your continued reference to careful measurement does make sense if the only drinking glasses you've ever had around you were four ounces and smaller.
[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49890725>
[1] ...and if you're too strapped for cash to buy stuff like OJ, you cut it with tap water...
Effectively every non sleeping minute of your life monetized by tech.
And if "people be watching videos" was the wet dream of tech monetization, we wouldn't need to be worried about tech monetization.
The number of these jobs is constantly shrinking, and a lot of jobs actually have people training AI models to replace them.
I never understood this logic. It can absolutely change. Tastes and habits do change in society sometimes forever. Just because people did a thing a long time ago and a tradition has lasted for thousands of years doesn't mean it will continue.
This is far from the first fluctuation of alcohol consumption rates we have data for. This is a major trend that will last decades but not a march to long term 0.
On the other hand, alcohol has already survived prohibition.
I would be more willing to bet on someone trying Prohibition 2.0 again.
This might be an odd fluctuation to do with the first primarily social media generation? Don't know but that is just how I have seen it.
You are probably right about banning weed/vapes. They don't have anywhere near the same indoctrination into the structures of commerce and power that alcohol has.
Born 1940s, about 14u/week. 1960s about 12u, By 1980s dropped to 10u, and by 2000 down to about 7-8.
The grocery-store bottle lost to seltzers and stuff that comes in a can. That's a worse problem for a grape grower than people being sober.
Or are we saying that wine drinking is significantly more social than beer drinking?
It's "interesting" that this new isolationist culture we've built for ourselves is causing economic problems
In Germany beer is down 20% in a decade, and 33% since 2000.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/4628/umfrage/...
Scrunching up my face trying to figure out how to respond to this...
I think you are right that a lot of the wine which people consume, the mega industrial mass volume stuff sold in supermarkets, is a bit sweet, although often not by a lot--Josh and Bota Box, two of the biggest brands, have like 5-10 g/L of sugar. Stuff like La Marca Prosecco and Barefoot Pink Moscato is noticeably sweeter.
However, in general, I don't think it's fair to say "wine is sweet". Wine in general is not sweet outside of certain styles that are intended to be so. If you grow grapes, crush them, and ferment them, the fermentation will generally run until the yeast run out of sugar, leaving only trace amounts behind.
I've noticed that a lot of people who don't have that much experience with wine will tend to mis-identify things as sweetness when they're really noticing some other aspect of the wine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmLO69c_fyw
I'm using night life as a stand in for drinking, but I think it's closely related.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
A barkeeper from a prestigious, world class cocktail bar around the corner told me that it really is more about health/alcohol.
He had a group the other day of 20 young people and 18 of them ordered non-alcoholic drinks. He is desperate about his profession.
Now, how can I be so sure? Because I’ve been starving at some of these events, whereas others can seemingly call a single slice of pizza dinner.
There’s most definitely a health aspect in there too, but I don’t think it paints the whole story.
It's just not related to drug consuming acts and more about sports, poker, board games, etc.
I believe that drug-related communications are flawed and closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones. It's better to have a maturity and social skills to communicate, joke and maintain a conversation with interesting people without stimulators.
I'm not from the US though so it's not about the US social scene which is mainly discussed here.
That's exactly the point. To experience animalistic joy, rather than the socially-conditioned one.
> It's better to have a maturity and social skills
That's a very silly argument because it doesn't take into account the fact that a day has 24 hours and also people have different natural abilities. Imagine telling a kid with Down Syndrome "come on, you can do it, PhD in physics ain't that difficult".
I disagree.
Communication is a skill like everything else. Having a constant workaround just reduces your ability to be good at it. Why would a healthy young adult make his own skills worse?
You can either get short-term gains with long-term worsening of your daily life by being incapable of new connections and genuine communications or cut the short-term low-level improvements, suffer for a year or two, learn a bit and have a better life for years to come.
It's like going to gym or do other sports. It's often hard and unpleasant at the start, but the more you're doing it, the fitter you are and the more benefits you bring to yourself in the long-term.
It's really difficult to square the circle that being sober improves your communication skills long-term yet somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends that previous generations of alcohlics.
I have a feeling that many young people sit behind the screen all the time.
My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize. Still have to make an effort and go through the uncomfortable awkward stage when you are shy or lost for words in most interactions.
I know enough no-drinkers who are just fine even with drinking people, that's the matter of empathy and being able to relax and being open without stimulators which is something not a given to people without a practice.
Yeah exactly. Alcohol makes it easier to start and then continue.
In the 90s, MDMA got senators’ panties in a twist. Now, there are multiple 100k+ MDMA-focused events in the western USA annually.
Getting Gen-z to even get close enough to the glass to smell a nice red is a challenge. And when they do, they seem to recoil rapidly.
Anecdata only.
Not surprising, sweetness literally mutes palate sensitivity. Genzers are the most sugar addicted generation, from a very young age. It would not surprise me to see research in some future that this massive early life sugar exposure comes with muted development of taste.
There's untold levels of chemicals in wine. Organic wine is BS in Europe, organic vineyards actually use more chemicals like giant quantities of copper sulphate. The US is actually a lot better than Europe in this regard.
Source: My father owned a vineyard in France before he keeled over with a subarachnoid haematoma after drinking 3 glasses of Rose at lunchtime.
The “source” you do mention seems rather anecdotal, and linking it to the discussed topic requires a fair number of other assumptions, too.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0] "Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming...
My purpose was to draw people's attention to some lesser known aspects of the wine industry which I think are consequential, and I was illustrating I have some insignts into this that people that haven't worked in the industry probbaly don't.
Copper sulphate is a fungicide used for centuries and is pretty safe (so safe that my chemical engineer father was willing to use it in his otherwise completely sans-chemicals garden). Organic wine not only does not use (other) fungicides and herbicides; it also does not use other chemicals and processes in later stages of winemaking.
Such as dihydrogen monoxide?
Of course, this was decades ago and today would be called "artisanal" wine making.
Partly. There is some natural level of sulfites present in wines - very dependent on the terroir, and then the rest comes during the manufacturing process; some sulfites may be added directly so the wine does not spoil.
There are wines that do not contain any added sulfites and even then may cause trouble to the sensitive persons if the sulfur content of soil is naturally high. Some manufacturers therefore also add info about total measured sulfite content to the label.
And nowadays, not only demijohns or wooden barrels are used to hold wine; of course stainless steel vessels, but also concrete vessels and even things like the Georgian qvevri underground clay vessels or amphorae are having a comeback.
Most notably the chemical alcohol is known to cause all sorts of health problems and is present in wine.
If you are going to talk about "chemicals", you should be more specific. Most chemicals are harmless, some aren't. Most likely alcohol is the most toxic chemical in wine by a wide margin.
You could also just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
I'm rather glad I've drawn people's attention to the issue, despite having to endure extremely patronising comments like yours.
Second, I clearly have skin-in-the-game here because you did read the first comment, so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one (well done that was clever in 2015) can go forth and multiply.
You have not. Maybe you think you have, but just linking to the name of a chemical is not a cogent argument that that chemical in the quantities present in wine, are harmful in any way, and certainly not an argument for it being more harmful than the primary ingredient.
> having to endure extremely patronising comments
Apparently not patronising enough...
> so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one
You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
Look, i'm sorry for your loss. However you are basically spreading pseudo-science here. Doing so has potential to harm a lot of other people too.
No! At what point did I imply that? Can you please stop trolling.
Again, go back and read the links that were posted by both myself and some others. Or do some research yourself.
if you played hooky on a high school field trip in 80s or 90s you would probably not lose your college admission to harvard
this police state attitude completely sterilizes young people socially, their parents regulate behaviour and monitor people with airtags and life360
There’s also the implication that the repercussions are worse.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cornell-university-stud...
Born in 1999, I qualify as GenZ. All my peers drink beer, which is unsurprising given the strong cultural presence. But more and more people have been moving to alcohol free beer, which is becoming more and more widespread. Loads of breweries reacted and started with alcohol free beers, even the ones you would have never expected, like Augustiner Bräu in Munich.
Pretty much all surveying data for my home country for the last few years suggests that GenZ is just drinking less alcohol overall. While there probably are some shifts within the consuming population, that does not fully explain the shift away from the alcoholic staples.
Before 2004 Germany had a %vol limit for selling alcohol to 16 year olds. In 2004 they changed the law such that it is not based on percentage, but whether it contains distilled alcohol to prevent under 18 year olds from drinking sweet alcopops, which apparently was a big thing back then.
When I was growing up, there were only a handful of channels and then cable. Compared to what we have now, that was the Dark Ages. There's so much you can do on a screen now that's compelling.
Infinite scrolling on Shorts, YouTube, video games, social media, hanging out with people online, chatrooms—combine that with Uber Eats, and you can do whatever you want.
The one thing that will make you want to go out is, of course, meeting someone to have sex with, but that's become weaponized, especially for young adults.
Boys being called creepy and predatory for making the wrong move was always an issue, but now you can be shamed online with a video as proof. Why take the risk when you can meet somebody online?
This is why the memes of some guy talking to a coworker is considered sexual assault, where if Tom Brady does it, it’s considered cute flirtation
It's really gross that you think of women as so alien and inhuman.
It is never ending cycle of "they do not understand social", "you are infantilizing them by explaining them social explicitly" while the same guys are perfectly charismatic to anyone with actual power or friends.
If I were young I would stick to dating apps exclusively, since everyone on the app has already signaled a receptiveness to advances.
And I mean, yes, obviously if you are looking for hookup, you should go to where hookup looking people go. That is not something specific to modern society.
As an outside observer, could it be that manosphere influence has an undue effect on young mens behavior, which (if true) would indeed be creepy for a lot of (most?) women, regardless if the execution is awkward or not.
I was certainly awkward in my teens/young adulthood, but in my singular experience, the maturity and confidence didn't come from acting cocky or showing off, but just treating anyone I had an interest in as a person first and foremost, and being comfortable and even open about my awkwardness and shortcomings.
That did wonders. Also accepting that a rejection doesn't mean a personal slight to you, nor a failure in appreciation of you from her, but merely a lack of mutual interest, which is also fine.
In an environment like that getting drunk just isn’t very good for your life/career. Even something as small as going to the dance floor when you are not really good at it takes a lot more from you when there is 5 cameras recording you the moment you look stupid/funny dancing.
All of these are cheap. As long as you got a garden and it's legal, growing weed is ridiculously easy - it's literally called weed because it thrives pretty much anywhere. Vapes are much cheaper than cigarettes (eh, we'll see how long that lasts and authorities crack down on shops selling smuggled / greymarket vapes...).
In contrast, going out and getting drunk to the point of getting decently hammered can easily cost you 100€ and more here in Germany, and we have low alcohol taxes...
Try a sweet wine, or if that's still too bitter, try a dessert wine. Wine has a huge range of sweetness.
Yeah, that's another problem with wine. Too many options and you never know what to expect.
It could be that my affinity for port & madeira biases me, but the wine-haters I know have all expressed a strong dislike of what they described as its "acidity".
This lets you do it: https://codeberg.org/veqq/declarative-dsls
Clearly haven't tasted Eiswein[1]. That said, can be too sweet for my tastes.
I'm not a wine drinker but when eating with work we usually get the wine menu, and a good wine pairing really can elevate it I find
But yeah casual drinking is not for me.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine
I really like wine, and a $8.50 bottle of good quality French bubbles isn't a luxury good or a status symbol it's just life.
But it's definitely acquired - and the fewer that acquire that taste, the less you'll sell. And people I guess often establish that taste in the 20-30 year age, and if people go out less and drink less, perhaps they'll not grow up to be wine-drinking 50 year olds?
I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
The thing is, over lockdown I stopped drinking socially. And then I realized I didn’t miss the feeling of intoxication. And then I realized my sleep got a whole lot better.
And then lockdown loosened, so some friends and I went out for drinks for old times’ sake, and I felt awful, both that evening and the next morning. My tolerance for alcohol is just gone, and I don’t have any particular desire to get it back.
Nowadays I'm older and not looking for sex so don't take part in that scene. I would say a few years ago when I would go out there was still some peer pressure to drink and I was considered odd going for non-alcoholic options. But nowadays it's not weird at all and the alcohol-free options are much more numerous and varied. Lime and soda was my go to for years but now I'll partake of an alcohol-free beer or cider.
I often wonder if there's a lot of national differences here, in the UK people for the most part wanted to reverse everything about the covid norms as quickly as possible after Partygate and all the political drama. People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
Yep, same over here in central europe/balkans.
Covid came, bars were closed, bars reopened with limited seating, prices went up, tourism restarted, our city center became a tourist trap, prices went up, and higher prices then radiated outside the tourist traps, and well... it doesn't add up anymore.
Sure, college students can buy cheap wine or booze and drink in parks, but sitting in a bar has become very expensive.