This warmer weather will give riper, sweeter grapes, which then become stronger, more alcoholic wines: "post classics" that lack the fine, complex subtle characteristics that are associated with the world's finest wines today. Red wines may be more immediately pleasing to drink, thanks to the lower levels of mouth-drying tannin that has historically been the hallmark of most young bordeaux and barolo, for example, but like the whites, they will lack the fresh bite of acidity that makes wine such a great accompaniment to food.

This paragraph demonstrates the extent of the problem.

Many wine lovers will have already noticed the phenomenon. In the 1991 edition of his seminal book on bordeaux, David Peppercorn recalled that the great reds of the Medoc in the 1940s usually had alcoholic strengths of 11-11.5%. By the late 1980s, he regretted the trend towards 12.5% having become "the norm to be aimed at". In 2005, the norm was closer to 13.5% and critically well-received reds such as Chateau Balthus and Lynsolence weighed in at a whopping 14.5%. In California, where, in 1971, red wines averaged 12.5%, the Martinelli winery now makes a zinfandel with an alcohol content of 17.4%.

So, in the last 25 years bottles of wine seem to be becoming stronger, year by year. Now the issue is that alcohol, like salt in food, gives a bigger, fatter impression of "taste" in the mouth. So a wine that might have seemed average at 11.5% becomes a booming powerful and impressive presence at 13.5 - 14.5%.

When lovers of classic wines that taste the way they did in the 1950s and 1960s have wanted to apportion blame for the fact that their modern counterparts have become bigger, richer and less "elegant" and "austere" - to use the old-fashioned winetaster's vocabulary - they have usually pointed their fingers at the US guru Robert Parker and his favourite winemaker Michel Rolland. Parker, the "emperor of wine" whose opinions shape the destinies and even the pricing policies of the most famous wines in the world, likes the big flavours that are associated with ripe grapes. His tasting notes rarely include words such as "elegant". The bottles that get the highest marks tend to be described as "opulent", "inky" "blockbusters" with "gobs of fruit". That 17.4% Zinfandel was, for example, a wine he particularly liked.

Parker owes his success to the fact that large numbers of people across the world agree with his tastes - or, at the very least, have lost their inclination for the way wines used to be.

Or rather, a big whack of alcohol gives a better impression in the mouth than a weaker wine. And funnily enough, exactly the same happens with beer. When I first started drinking in pubs most beers were 3.5 - 3.8% and strong beers were 4.2 - 4.5%. A 5% beer would be for the occasional bezerker fun.

But as brewery accountants started insisting on cheaper ingredients to improve profitability, the beers began to taste bad. This was especially noticeable with British lager, already an expensive but shoddily produced drink, the lower quality of ingredients produced brews that tasted positively nasty. The option of chilling that allowed American beers such as Budweiser to get away with cheapened ingredients (including rice !!) wasn't really available in a beer culture that (at that time) preferred cool, but never cold drinks. So, they went for adding cheap sugars to increase the brew strength to hide the lousy flaours.

Nowadays in British pubs the strength of average lagers has increased to 5 - 5.5%. Many standard bitters are 4.3 - 4.5% and premium ales will be 5.5%. Beers with a strength below 4% are rarely considered to be quality products and are of generally poor quality (yes, I can list a lot of exceptions, but few are widely available).

So booze is getting stronger, but certainly my impression is that the stronger the beer, the more expensive the ingredients have to be to create a balanced flavour. Yet my view is that, in high volume end of the market particularly, the exact opposite is happening.

So we're drinking poorer quality drinks which hide behind increased alcohol, mostly without realising it. But it tastes good, so why worry ? Well, look at any British high street, the problem of binge drinking has only become paramount in the last 25 years. People have always drunk to excess (I know, I've done my fair share), but the extent to which people are getting utterly incapable is much more than I remember (although culturally it isn't new). And to this I blame the stength of drink.

A sign of manhood in Britain has always been drinking 8 - 10 pints in a session, but now that involves nearly 20 - 30% more alcohol than previously. Humans haven't evolved that quickly and they can't process that increased amount of alcohol any better than their parents could.

We don't need more epxnsive drink, we need weaker drink.

This is probably worth reading alongside the essay 24-hour drinking by In Wales (that's written by, not practised by)