Gateway glug / Why I took my eight-year-old son wine-tasting |
My eight-year-old son’s eyes widened when I unwrapped a Christmas present I got from my parents: a bottle of cherry brandy from the Lyme Bay winery in Axminster. ‘Can I have some?’ Humphrey asked, for he had been hitting the cherry brandy hard over the summer. Not the alcoholic kind, of course, but the cherry brandy-flavoured lollies sold by the ice-cream van that parks outside his school on a hot afternoon. How could I refuse?
Ashley Dalton would be scandalised. The junior health minister said this month that the government is looking into banning the sale of non-alcoholic versions of booze to teenagers in case it ‘normalises drinking’ and becomes a ‘gateway’ to the real thing. Children will be allowed to vote at 16 under this government, but not drink a Lucky Saint.
The sale of cherry brandy lollies to schoolchildren – brace yourself, the van sells apple cider lollies too – will surely go on the list next. Why, a young lad at Gordonstoun in the early 1960s famously ordered a cherry brandy in a pub because it was the only drink he’d heard of and started to get delusions that one day he might be King.
When I told Humph that this was alcohol........