Wine Tasting: Brits Gone Wild?

With all of the tasting posts going up throughout the wine blog-o-sphere about wine tasting gone wildthis summer, first about New York, then about my hometown of Temecula, I thought I'd toss this one into the mix. It seems that British teenagers, specifically girls have been hitting the sauce earlier and earlier. Girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed as alcoholics with cirrhosis of the liver.

In fact, one in five 15-year-olds in England drinks at least seven units of alcohol a week - the equivalent of almost a bottle of wine. In some parts of the country one in eight 12-year-olds is drinking this heavily.

Binge drinking is also to blame for more than 4,300 teenage pregnancies, 11,500 expulsions and suspensions from school and 5.5million lost days of schooling each year.

Drunk British girls are among the most violent in the western world. Previous studies have shown that 15 boys and girls under the age of 16 drink themselves into A&E wards every day, with some downing more than a bottle of vodka in a single session, and that drink-fueled British girls are among the most violent in the western world.

So what does this mean? It means that a few drunken wine tasters in Temecula and New York don't look so bad now. I'm not trying to make light of these are staggering statistics for underage drinking. But it does put things into perspective a little doesn't it?

I do have to applaud the statistics from the same article that stated:

More than a million men drink more than 50 units of alcohol a week. With a bottle of wine containing nine units, this is equivalent to almost six bottles or two bottles of spirits.

In 2005, Britons drank a staggering 6.5 billion litres of alcohol at an overall cost to the economy of £20 billion.

This reconfirms my desire to visit here but makes me wonder whether I will be bringing along my teenage daughter or not.

For the full story, go here.