Headed to your favourite cellar door, brewery or distillery and want to keep it lowkey? Follow our 6 top tips for drinking responsibly on a big day out.
When it comes to getting to know your favourite drink, nothing beats going straight to the source. Winery cellar doors, brewery taprooms and distillery bars all offer incredibly engaging hands-on experiences – think wine tastings and vineyard tours, beer paddles and cocktail-making classes. And who can go past a long lunch when each course is paired to a different drink?
But what if you need to drive home? Or maybe you have several venues lined up? Whatever the situation, it’s always good to play it safe and keep your cool. If you’re wondering how to do all that and still enjoy the drinks and experiences on offer, we have some tips to help you sail through your big day out.
In regular, civilised society, spitting is frowned upon, but this is different at the tasting table. Cellar doors have spittoons available – sometimes even built into the counter – so you don’t have to drink everything you taste. Can you still enjoy wine in all its glory if you don’t actually consume it? Absolutely. That’s how critics and judges assess wine, after all. That means you can sniff, swirl and sip to your heart’s content – and then ditch your mouthful so you don’t consume the alcohol.
While this sounds easy enough, it can sometimes be intimidating. If you’re worried about dribbling wine down your chin, lean right over the spittoon to release your mouthful. In seated tastings, you’re likely to get your own spittoon, so you can bring it right up to your mouth to ensure you don’t miss. Don’t ever feel embarrassed to spit – it’s what all wine writers, tasters and makers do. Another hot tip? Practice spitting water in the shower. Sounds silly, but it will help you develop your aim and confidence.
Just because a producer has many drinks in their collection, it doesn’t mean you have to try them all. That makes the set wine flights and tasting paddles at these venues some of the best ways to explore a number of releases in reasonable quantities; their team has done all the work for you. Distilleries also offer savvy ways to try their spirits, with half-shots often offered in a tasting line-up and in their mixed drinks, too.
Increasingly, venues are charging for quality tasting experiences, which have all been created with responsible service of alcohol in mind, and commonly also include a bite or two. This can all make it tempting to work through each drink on offer to get your money’s worth, but don’t be afraid to skip a few drinks in the line-up or at least leave behind something in each glass. Lean on the expertise of the people behind the bar – all staff are trained in responsible service and keeping your safety in mind.
When you’re visiting a few venues and sampling the goods, it can be easy to lose count of the drinks you’ve had. Even those small sample pours add up surprisingly quickly, so tastings can be deceiving. Enter DrinkWise and their clever scratch cards, which can now be found in many wineries around Australia.
As you sample each pour, you simply scratch off a section on the card (just like a scratchie), each one making up one portion of a wine glass. It’s a great visual way of staying on top of your tally. With six 15mL pours of wine adding up to about one standard drink – and more substantial samples obviously hitting that total even sooner – it’s an excellent solution. Let the cards do the counting for you and, whether you’re driving or just keen to stay restrained, also understand when you might need to stop. Just be sure to ask about the alcohol content of the wine you’re trying to get the full picture.
Start your day with a big brekkie and, just as you plan to sample the drinks on your tour, work through a few snacks along the way, too. Far from an afterthought, so many wineries, breweries and cellar doors have dedicated kitchens turning out seriously good food. These dishes have been designed to complement the drinks, their key ingredients and the local produce – and they also do a great job of soaking up the booze. It would be rude not to indulge.
Better yet, throw a long lunch into your day. You might like to push the boat out at a winery restaurant that dishes up elaborate degustation meals. If each course is paired to a different style of wine, ask about serving sizes and options, or, instead, you can always go for a single glass of your new favourite wine and sip on it throughout the meal.
Just remember that food doesn’t cancel out alcohol. There’s no way to have less alcohol in your system other than consuming less alcohol.
Yep, we’ve heard it before, and we’ll say it again – drink the water. All of it. These venues always have free water in easy reach, and, in a fancy turn of events, many now offer self-serve sparkling water, too. Keep a glass of it on hand throughout your visit, and alternate between the drink samples and water in front of you. Look out for your mates, too. Continue to fill everyone’s glasses and check you’re all sipping on water throughout the day – it really does go a long way to staying in peak form.
In brilliant news for all of us, there are now plenty of geniuses making incredible zero% drinks. But did you know there are also venues entirely dedicated to serving up non-alcoholic tipples? In Melbourne, you’ll find Brunswick Aces – the brainchild of seven friends who wanted to be able to forgo a drink in a bar without feeling like outsiders. Their distillery makes about 3,000 litres of juniper-forward non-alcoholic infusions a week, and it’s attached to Australia's first permanent non-alcoholic bar and bottle shop. The only alcoholic tipple on offer is a run-of-the-mill gin and tonic in loving derision of ‘normal’ bars stocking just one option for the non-drinkers.
In Sydney, Australia’s first non-alcoholic distillery, Seadrift Distillery in the Northern Beaches, operates So Bar on Friday and Saturday evenings, a fully non-alcoholic venue where you can sample their award-winning spirits made purely from local botanicals and sea kelp. It offers the full distillery experience – tasting paddles and grazing plates included – without any of the alcohol and all of the enjoyment.
