Oh yea Burgundy is nice !..I don’t drink much of it though, as I’m down south and tend to drink the local.
No, I give them excellent wine, most of my English guests get Cahors in a box or rosé in a box because they are happy with that. Quantity seems to interest them more than quality as long as it isn’t complete rotgut, so as most of my cellar isn’t really meant for swigging the boxes do fine. When I have someone like the editor of Decanter for supper or lunch I get out interesting wines.
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You certainly have total control over the english !!! 
Quantity, I would think, comes from our culture of Pubs…drink before the bell rings !..Last orders ! If you know GB, you will understand, if not…well…
But I think we do appriciate good wines…so why not bring out the intersting ones now and again and “re-educate” us ?
Oh I know GB all right, I went to school and university there ;-)I was less abstemious as an undergraduate but I tended to stick to whisky.
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How long ago was that Vero… how long were you there for ?..maybe you know english culture…but BEING english …I think is another story !..c’est d
dans les gènes
I am half Scottish, went to school in Scotland and then university in the fens. But you’re right, I’m not English at all and even though my parents lived in central London and I know it well, as I do my university town; the rest of England feels very foreign to me. I go back and forth fairly frequently though less than I did as a child when I was on a plane from Edinburgh to Nice and back via LHR about every 6 weeks.
No surprise that Brits are big drinkers - goes way back in our cultural history. If the streets weren’t flowing with gin, it was mead - both of which were safer than drinking water back in the day!
The thing that rattles me it the number of Brits living in France who drive after their drinking sessions. It’s almost endemic in the immigrant community - as if drinking and driving in a different country simply doesn’t matter.
That said, I’m also pretty amazed that members of the French armed forces and police are ‘allowed’ a glass of beer or wine with their lunch, whilst on duty and whilst carrying firearms. How mad is that?
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@cat saw an EDF/GDF (or maybe police?) helicopter land at a restaurant in Normandy, everyone got out and had wine with lunch then took off again!
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We get a bottle of wine at school which some people drink a glass of. It’s just there and you help yourself…
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Our meals , which are the same as the pupils’, cost a different amount according to which pay level we are on - so eg I pay €4.35 and the pupils pay €2.80 for 4 courses. The wine is just there, I imagine it is factored in somehow. We are staggeringly well fed at school, I have tested many other canteens and ours is outstanding.
Today’s menu:
Entrée : egg mayo, various crudités (4 or 5), avocat vinaigrette (you help yourself to these)
Plat: sautė de canard forestière with peas and or fried potatoes
Cheese and salad ( again you help yourself, there are usually about 6 different cheeses, salade verte obv)
Pudding: home-made Paris-Brest, or yoghurt (pechalou plain ones or greek yoghurt on apricot sludge) and grapes and plums
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I’m not so sure that everybody should be so concerned about how much wine they drink - maybe I could share my experience of my very first visit to a doctor here?
I am a ‘late-onset’ diabetic, insulin dependent - so when we moved permanently to France about 15 years ago, I had to register with a GP for my insulin prescription. We had got through all the CPAM registration stuff, so asked friends for a recommendation for a good local medecin.
With an appointment made, I had my first experience of a local GP - he practiced from three rooms of his house (his consulting room; a waiting room; and a general admin room with a microscope and a photocopier - no secretary, much less a nurse of any kind).
He was a genial man, with a beard and ‘pince-nez’ spectacles perched on the end of his nose. The phone went at intervals, worried patients that received patient advice . . . . and so he said, “I will open a dossier for you”, and tapped away at his keyboard:
“Your full name?” . . . “Address?” . . . “Age?” . . . “How long have you been a diabetic?” . . . and then he started on the same old questions they all ask - “How much alcohol do you drink?” I thought, better be honest, no point otherwise, so I sat up straight and said “I drink a bottle of wine a day - a white apéro, and red wine with my meal and afterwards”. “No! No!” he retorted, with a little frustration “What I mean is do you drink whisky, or gin, or other spirits - ‘alcohol’?” “No, never” I replied, “I used to drink whisky, but not now”.
Up comes the next sledgehammer - “Do you smoke?” - “No” - “Have you ever?” - " A couple behind the woodshed when I was a kid, but didn’t like the taste, and my parents spent every New Year wishing to give up!"
He looked over his pince-nez at me, across his desk, and said: “Well, that’s very good! Because that means that you can appreciate your wine much better!”
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My first ever experience of alcohol…was a picnic by the River Loire, Brie, Pain and vin rouge sec…circa 57? A school trip. Disappointed that wine tasted so disgusting, I never did look forward to a glass of wine again, till I moved here…and discovered…not all wine tastes like embalming fluid or vinegar. Still…any loss of consciousness, however marginal, seems like a bad idea, although Brie, pain with beurre, and a glass of vin doux, any colour, has become a top favourite nosh.
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Since hitting my 50s I really can’t take more than a glass of wine or I will overheat so my preferred drink is tonic water with a splash of Angostura bitters. Still has the tart taste. Or a splash of white or rose in a long glass of mineral water … that’s nice. Hubby was recently diagnosed with gout and the doctor said to cut back on the drink and we replied that he has probably one glass of wine a week, if that. Doctor was most surprised as he said that most Brits he knew drank like fishes!
A glass of red at nights while I make my salad, and way too much at parties !!! I have better control when I drink alone.
I should specify also that my wine glass is big, I promise, it’s
not a fishbowl!!! LOL
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I usually drink a small glass with my meal every evening, depending on what I am having it could be white, rosé or red. As I do the driving at night, I am restricted to water at the Bals, not being a lover of coca cola etc.
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When I lived just outside Dijon, the family there would start the day with breakfast wine ( a small glass two thirds and topped up with water) the a bottle or two of white an red over dinner, this was between the five of us. Now that I’m back in Edinburgh we tend to drink on a Friday and Saturday evening. A few cooking beers while preping dinner, then a bottle or two of red during dinner.
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