Tippling Point

Campari with your cornflakes? Whether booze is okay at breakfast depends on time and place

- Max Allen

It’s eight o’clock on Christmas morning and we’re already onto our second bottle of Champagne. It’s a family ritual. Opening presents, scoffing panettone, guzzling the bubbly. Happens every year. And because it’s Christmas, and because it’s a family ritual, none of us thinks twice about the fact we’re drinking at dawn.

Funny, isn’t it? If I popped the cork on a bottle of fizz at 7.30am at any other time of year, my wife would accuse me of being a hopeless alcoholic. Again. And she’d probably be right. But somehow our family – and many others I know – have decided that boozing at breakfast is perfectly okay on Christmas Day. (Indeed, my wife is one of the staunchest defenders of the ritual.)

It’s far from the only example of how complex and often contradictory the rules can be about when and where it’s fine to drink.

Sip pinot from fine crystal at the dinner table and everyone thinks you’re sophisticated. Sip pinot from plastic cups on a park bench (come on, we’ve all done it) and everyone thinks you’re a plonko. Same wine, same person; different setting, different assumptions.