Why tea is better than wine, and other difficult truths | Eve Wiseman

When it comes to a choice of drink, a hot cuppa beats a glass of red any time

England’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has suggested that, after work, instead of a glass of wine, people choose a cup of tea. Uproar. Statues crying blood. The worst. How dare she rip our sacred poison from us, said the alcohol-drinking world, through lips tinted a dry cabernet blue, their hair smelling just slightly of fat. Burn everything immediately on a fire of outrage and Twinings.

I nodded along. If they were to go further, to protest the obscenity, to show that I am edgy and vital and up for it, I would march with them, too. I would march, propping up a banner saying SAVE OUR FERMENTED JUICE or I would shuffle, as the back legs of a beer bottle or carafe. But my filthy secret would march with me, craving the hot teat of a teapot, the steaming mug of tasteless nectar that even now, with a supersized SportsDirect only recently in me, I yearn for. Tea. Lovely tea.

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