Why Wine Belongs at the Table
But Not Always at the Centre of Attention
My Dry January ran out of steam last weekend. It hadn’t been entirely dry to begin with, and between a vermouth tasting in Turin (Italy) on Friday and meeting up to celebrate my eldest son’s birthday in Cartagena(Spain) on Saturday, it never really stood much of a chance.
That doesn’t feel like a failure. If anything, the exercise did what it was supposed to do. It sharpened my attention , not towards drinking less for the sake of it, but towards drinking better. Better bottles, better moments, fewer defaults. Something I was already focused on, but now with a little more clarity.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to pull the final two pieces of this Dry January series together
Why Wine Belongs at the Table and Why Choice Matters and put the whole thing to bed for another year. Dry January has probably run its course for most people by now anyway. What matters more is what lingers after it fades.
Wine has become very good at drawing attention to itself. Flights. Scores. Talking points. Labels turned outward. Glasses held up mid-sentence.
In some cases it has edged away from the table, from food, from conversation, from the rhythm of a shared meal and perhaps stepped into the spotlight instead.
Stepping back from the glass, even briefly, has a way of recalibrating that. When wine isn’t always present, you start to notice how much work it normally does and how easily that work can be overshadowed when attention drifts too far toward performance.
I found myself thinking about this in Turin, a city where wine knowledge runs deep and vintages genuinely matter. I was there on a flying visit, just one day, putting the final touches to our March Piedmont tour and a Vermouth tasting organised by Consorzio del Vermouth di Torino But there were no long lunches, no time for indulgence. And yet, it felt like exactly the right place to be thinking about wine’s role.
What struck me wasn’t an absence of wine culture, but its confidence. In Turin, wine doesn’t need to announce itself. Hierarchies are understood. References don’t need explaining. The culture is built around ritual: cafés, meals, aperitivo taken seriously but never noisily.
Wine matters enormously here.
But it matters because it’s integrated and because it binds food, people and place together rather than replacing them. Wine isn’t diminished by that position; it’s strengthened by it.
Somewhere between that trip and the end of the month, my Dry January quietly loosened its grip. Not because of excess or rebellion, simply because the point had already landed.
Wine returned, as it usually does, at the table.
Meals still had structure. Conversations still unfolded. The table still worked. Wine, when it appeared, felt like a companion rather than a protagonist, something doing its real work quietly, without demanding centre stage.
That balance feels increasingly rare when wine becomes the main event, everything else shrinks around it. Food becomes secondary. Conversation turns inward. Experience becomes commentary. Wine gains attention, but loses context.
At its best, wine does the opposite. It anchors a meal. It slows the table. It gives shape to time. It belongs among people, alongside food, carried by conversation rather than competing with it.
That’s where choice comes in as meaningful experiences aren’t built on rules. They’re built on choice, including the choice not to drink. Wine matters precisely because it’s chosen. When the glass is poured because it fits the food, the people, the moment, it carries meaning. When it’s automatic, it often doesn’t.
Choosing not to drink, for a night, a week, or a month , isn’t a rejection of wine. It’s part of the same spectrum of engagement. It sharpens intention. It reminds you that participation doesn’t always require consumption.
Dry January didn’t make me care less about wine. If anything, it clarified why wine matters and why it does its best work when it’s part of something bigger than itself.
Which in my opinion is at the table but not always at the centre of attention.
I’ll write more soon about what I got up to in Turin a brief but revealing visit that sat somewhere between work and curiosity and how those couple of days helped sharpen the shape of our upcoming SOLD OUT Piedmont tour. Less about ticking boxes, more about rhythm and place. That feels like a better place to continue the conversation.