ACROSS Europe, economies are stagnating and unemployment is climbing. Reason enough, you might think, to hit the bottle. Europeans put away over nine litres of alcohol a year per person, twice the global average. The European Commission has declared that alcohol is a “key public-health and social concern”. Yet in most big EU countries drinking is in decline. In France and Italy the average adult drinks over a third less than he or she did 30 years ago. Germans and Spaniards are also drying out quickly (see chart). Alcohol consumption has likewise fallen in most of eastern Europe in recent decades.

What explains the great sobering-up? In part, the drivers appear to be social and cultural. The decline in drinking is most marked in southern Europe, where there has been a notable dropping-off in wine-drinking, especially during the working day. Rising numbers of urban workers and the insidious spread of Anglo-Saxon fast-food habits are working against the old traditions of a glass with breakfast followed by a long lunch fuelled by a bottle or two. These countries also had a lot further to fall. In 1980 France, Italy and Spain were the booziest nations in Europe.

Not only are Europeans drinking less, they are drinking differently. Their habits are converging, as the old geography of drinking on the continent, with its well-defined wine, beer and vodka “belts”, slowly gives way to a patchwork quilt. Young people, unshackled by tradition, are leading the charge away from old stereotypes. Russians and Poles are these days almost as likely to be found downing bottles of beer as shots of vodka. Britain, which John Major, then prime minister, predicted in 1993 would still be a country of “warm beer” 50 years hence, has become a land of chardonnay and pinot noir: last year, for the first time, Britons spent more on wine than on beer.

This shift may also explain why Britain, in this matter as in so many others, is out of step with its EU partners. Alcohol consumption in Britain rose more or less continuously after 1956 and has levelled off only in the past few years. The British are still mid-tablers in the EU drinking league, but the extent to which the country is bucking the European trend—Poland is the only other country among the ten largest EU members to have seen a rise in alcohol consumption since 1980—is striking.

The shift from beer to wine in Britain may have boosted overall drinking, suggests Rachel Seabrook, research manager at the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a London-based think-tank. Britons may have adopted the tipple of southern Europeans, but they also retain a fondness for “heavy episodic drinking” (ie, bingeing): pouring the stuff down their throats rather than sipping it in the slow, relaxed manner of Spaniards or Italians. The difference is that they now do it with 12%-strength wine rather than 4%-strength beer. Affordability is another factor: Britons spend more time at home drinking cheap supermarket-bought booze than in the pub buying expensive pints. In Britain, at least, it may be right still to see alcohol as a big public-health and social concern.