Culture of drinking alcohol during family and holiday dinners in different countries.

I have never understood the culture of drinking alcohol in my country of Russia. And no, it’s not that they drink a lot (contrary to popular belief, Russia is not even in the top 30 countries in terms of pure alcohol consumption). I am talking about the culture of drinking alcohol at family and holiday dinners.

I will tell you how we drink here. And from you I ask you to write about drinking culture in your countries in the comments.

First of all, Russians are unfamiliar with such words as apéritif and digestif. Apéritif is served before a meal to stimulate the appetite, digestif is usually drunk after a meal. In Russia, at family dinners, alcohol is drunk directly with the food throughout the celebration.

Yes, it is customary to make an opening toast at the beginning, after which champagne is usually drunk. So far, everything seems to be fine, as it should be. But the problem is that one spoken toast is not enough in our country, and the word is passed around until each adult member of the family says his toast. And after each toast, as it is not hard to guess, everyone has to drink.

The problem with drinking alcohol in this way is that the food is worse digested, and alcohol does not cause such intoxication if you constantly snack on fatty food. Speaking of greasy food, that’s what’s usually at a feast. It starts with some kind of salad, generously seasoned with mayonnaise. It continues with one or two more salads, and then a hot dish is served, usually some kind of steak of meat or fish. Even if it is an expensive restaurant and the best meat, we often have potatoes on the side.

Because of all of the above, people drink much more than usual and the hangover in the morning is just disgusting. The funny thing is that everyone is aware of this, and they would rather take a stomach pill before dinner than change their drinking culture.

The other side of having fatty foods on the table is that your taste buds are completely clogged. I can still understand if people drink vodka, it has no flavor. But in my experience, it’s becoming more and more common to see cognac at Russian feasts. And I don’t understand why you should drink expensive cognac that you can’t taste because of fat and mayonnaise. My grandfather once joked that after the third toast you could carefully swap all the expensive cognac for cheap one, and no one would notice.

Only young people, especially the rich, drink worse than adults. The popular alcohol at parties is whiskey and coke, and sometimes it hurts me to see my classmates mixing sweet coke and some expensive whiskey, which should be drunk exclusively neat, otherwise what is the point of spending such money? Any cheap whiskey and coke tastes no different from the most expensive whiskey and coke. Or anything with coke.

Do other countries, especially white collar families in Europe and the US drink the same way? Please tell me they don’t.