In Casino Royale, James Bond famously declares “champagne and Benzedrine! Never again!”

We’ve all woken up with that head-splitting hangover that elicits a “never again”, before drinking again a few nights later.

As such, there are a lot of hangover cures floating around. Anyone who enjoys a bit of tipple every now and then has their own “tried and tested” cure for the horrible things that happen to your body after you drink.

Here’s the thing, though – prevention is always better than a cure, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that if there was a way to drink without the awful after-effects, we’d all like to know about it.

Enter Janan Ganesh, for the Financial Times (the FT, as us discerning readers call it), who thinks he may have cracked the code, beat the system, and found a way to drink, sans hangovers.

My advice: quality over quantity. But to the nth degree. The trick is to identify your favourite booze, the more decadent the better, and renounce almost everything else. The expense will prevent all but the best-off among us drinking very much, and the depth of the sensual thrill will make up for its lesser incidence.

Utility calculations are impossible in these matters but I seem to experience in two glasses twice a week the same sum of pleasure that was once spread across four every other day. The distribution rather than the aggregate scale of the fun is what changes.

I personally love a glass of wine, or four, when I’m socialising. I have noticed that when I’m drinking the good stuff, I’m less likely to wake up screaming. In fact, I only drink the good stuff now.

As we get older, the hangovers get worse, so there’s a point in every person’s life when they have to ditch the R50 box wine and make better life choices.

It is just a matter of scouring one’s tastes for the extortionate refreshment of choice. You should find that specialisation of this kind has an advantage over and above pricing yourself out of eyeball-immobilising mornings-after. It is the way a subject, and the community devoted to it, open up to you.

This is where I, (and soon you, dear reader) have the upper hand on Ganesh, because while he’s “pricing his way” out of a hangover, in order to enjoy the benefits of quality wine, I’m drinking quality wine without breaking the bank.

I tend to dabble in the Anthonij Rupert range of wines, because whichever bottle you choose is guaranteed to be topped up with quality wine.

Those above – a mighty fine bottle of Optima – will only set you back R200.

If that’s still above your price range, at only around R60, a bottle of the Protea range combines top-shelf wine with affordability, packaged in a bottle that can then be upcycled.

Greta Thunberg would be proud.

There’s nothing like doing your bit for the environment to up the smugness that you’ll feel when you wake up fresh and full of energy.

Just remember, the golden rule still applies here – everything in moderation.

So, that leaves us with great wine, good times, and hangover-free mornings?

I’ll drink to that.

[source:financialtimes]