Only days to go until Christmas and preparations are mad. But during the crazy scramble to organise who is going to bring the trifle, who will be in charge of strawberries, who's bringing the bubbly, who's dressing up as Santa and who's going to sort out the new potatoes, please think about those impressionable children and teenagers that'll be watching your every move. You might think they're not the foggiest bit interested in what the uncool oldies are doing, but believe me they're taking in everything they're seeing and somewhere, somehow down the line, whether they realise it or not, they'll model their behaviour on you.
There's something about Christmas that loosens our grip on what constitutes moderate alcohol consumption. Just because we're among family and dressed in our best clothes and drinking nice wine from the family crystal, we tend to think that somehow that excuses us from being labelled "binge drinkers". Yet no matter how well we're dressed and what we might consider our social status to be, the accident and emergency staff, the Victim Support people, the police, the fire officers and Women's Refuge staff, the Anger Management and Alcoholics Anonymous counsellors - not to mention the funeral directors - only see the end result of excessive consumption and it's not pretty.
You're reading this column, therefore you're literate, you're media-savvy, you're interested in wine and food, you have spare cash (otherwise you wouldn't have bought this newspaper), so clearly you're an intelligent person. Now you might think it's a hoot having that fourth glass of bubbles while opening presents with the kids that morning or that seventh beer while basting the ham on the barbecue or that it's a laugh giving your 14-year-old nephew a sneaky glass of port when his parents aren't looking - but it's not funny and that's where our problems start.
Sparkling wines get screwed
Kim Crawford has launched the first screw cap lid on a New Zealand sparkling wine. The best part of the last five years has been spent perfecting the unique closure, ensuring it was suited to traditional (five-gas volume) or high-pressure sparkling wines and it's now available on the Kim Crawford First Pick sparkling sauvignon blanc ($17). Okay, so you won't hear the "pop", but the benefits include no more eye injuries from rocket-propelled corks and you can have just one or two glasses then screw on the cap, lay the bottle down in the fridge and keep those bubbles fresh for later. Plus there'll be no more worrying about someone kicking over the bottle and spilling the wine during that game of backyard cricket this summer. Excellent.