An ode to summer boozing

New Statesman​

7 days ago

The fading sun dances over the river as you carefully shuffle out from the air-conditioned pub towards your friends' table, a plastic tray of cold continental lager in hand. You are three pints deep, and desperately trying not to drop said tray all over the surrounding picnic benches. Or maybe you're sitting on a gingham blanket in a park on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a melange of crisps, crudités and mid-priced cava spread slapdash all about you. With a bubbly-induced buzz, you stare up at the cloudless sky and wonder where in the world that plane is heading to. Nothing else matters; work is bullshit; Monday doesn't exist. Or perhaps you're dining al fresco in a pedestrianised provincial town square, half a bottle of Montepulciano down and a blissful three hours ahead until you have to be back for the babysitter. Twenty metres away, the local goths are vaping and listening to Drain Gang outside a doner kebab joint.
There's nothing quite like boozing in the UK during summer. Like lower league football, high tea and a baffling crabs-in-bucket mentality, it's one of the things the British do better than almost any other nation. It's there in those long, languid evenings in which the air fizzes with promise and possibility: an impromptu picnic, the recovery after a country walk, the inevitable 'yeah, go on then' when someone asks you for a quick drink after work.
You leave the house or the office with no real plan and end up having the night of your life: a warm, hazy odyssey to the outer limits of sobriety and decency. Unlike the winter, when getting pissed is confined to stuffy, packed establishments, during the summer everywhere is a potential drinking spot. Rooftops. Canals. That scrub of edgeland underneath the pylons by the A127.
As a country we're remarkably resilient when it comes to outdoor drinking. No obstacle or inconvenience will stand in the way of our getting sloshed in the summer air. Head into London Bridge or Soho on any given weeknight and you'll find thousands of post-work cinq à sept-ers, spilling out on to the pavements.
It's a phenomenon by no means confined to the capital: outstanding pubs such as Manchester's Peveril of the Peak, or the Baltic Fleet in Liverpool, regularly have punters loitering on the patches of land outside. There can be few other activities in which standing uncomfortably for hours on end is accepted – encouraged, even – yet there we all are: bag between legs, pint nestled in arm, as we attempt to roll a cigarette, nattering to Pete from accounts about office politics and – after a few too many San Miguels on an empty stomach – actual politics.
But no matter where in the country you're located, the real place to be when the temperature ventures higher than 17 degrees is undoubtedly the pub garden. Whether it's an undulating countryside plot or – as is the case with Nambucca on London's Holloway Road – a couple of chairs and a wonky bench plonked hurriedly on the pavement, the beer garden remains the perfect arena for revelry from April to September. These theatres of grass and patio act, for a few months at least, as the backdrops to our lives, against which we play out the birthdays, weddings and deep gossip sessions with reckless abandon.
They're also places, for me at least, of memory. It was as a boy in the grounds of the Newt & Ferret in Kingston-upon-Thames where I had my first sort-of kiss – a quick peck on the lips from another bored child. I remember break-ups and piss-ups, international tournaments and engagement parties; who I was with and what I was drinking.
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Because with every new summer comes a new fad tipple. This year's drink du jour is, if you're a teenager, or the type of person who longs for an eternal 'Brat summer', BuzzBallz – those annoyingly pluralised pre-mixed spheres of sickly sweet 15 per cent ABV liquid – or the Hugo spritz, an elderflower and prosecco cocktail with a name that sounds like it belongs to a Weimar field marshal. Although, confusingly, the Hugo spritz was also said to have been both 2024's and 2023's drink of the summer – so who really knows.
There have been whispers on the pint-vine of a Finnish drink, Lonkero, being this year's hottest hooch, but I've yet to see it anywhere, so I'm discounting it as some kind of Nordic psyop such as hygge or Rasmus Højlund. Across the Atlantic, American drinkers are allegedly imbibing something called the 'Spaghett', which consists of bottled beer (often Miller High Life) topped up with lemon juice and Aperol.
Yes, Aperol: the most successful 'drink of the summer' in recent years (with Pimm's arguably the first of the genre). Back in the late 2010s, us Brits went woo-woo for the herby orange aperitif and everything it represented. Like many things our nation enjoys, the Aperol spritz is rooted in good old-fashioned escapism. Quaff five or six spritzes at any given regional branch of Be at One and it really does feel like you've bought a slice of la dolce vita to Cardiff, Chelmsford or Chester.
The other big fad drink of recent years also had its roots in escapism: Madrí Excepcional, el alma de Madrid. The little behatted bloke on the label – meant to resemble a traditional Madrilenian chulapo – launched a thousand thinkpieces and pithy tweets. The lager first hit British locals in 2020, but reached ubiquity in the summer of 2022, when news outlets including Lad Bible and Time Out willed its renown into existence with articles about how it was taking over the country's pubs.
It quickly became known that the lager was brewed by Molson Coors (supposedly in a joint venture with the virtually unknown Madrid brewery La Sagra) – not in Spain, but in Tadcaster. Being about as Spanish as Andrew Sachs in Fawlty Towers didn't seem to do it any harm, though: it sits comfortably in the top ten lagers by sale in the UK.
In almost every year following Madrí's arrival, new brands of premium Euroslop have attempted to break the market. In 2021, Budweiser acquired the rights to sell the actual Madrid lager Mahou on these shores. In 2023 Heineken launched Cruzcampo in pubs across the UK (with the titillating slogan 'Choose to Cruz'). Like Madrí, Cruzcampo is brewed in England, although to be fair to the beer, it is at least recognised and drunk in the Iberian peninsula.
There was also Victoria Malaga, and Birra Moretti Sale di Mare. Even Lidl got in on the act with its Madrí rip-off, Sabor. We are, it seems, hopping mad for a taste of the continent, which is perhaps unsurprising. Getting pissed is an act of escape – and if the lager you're drinking is transporting you poolside in Molfetta or Marbella, so much the better.
Speaking of Marbella, it would be remiss to speak about British summer boozing without mentioning our hordes of holidaymakers and expats. It doesn't matter if it's an all-inclusive in Benidorm or a rustic villa in the South of France, alcohol plays an important role whenever we sojourn.
For the younger generation, it starts with the 6am airport pint, then makes its way through a few bottles on the balcony as you're getting ready for a night out, and ends with hulking great fishbowls of indeterminate fluorescent liquor.
But even for the more genteel travellers among us, booze is ever present: the wine with dinner, the digestifs, the well-deserved gin and tonic after a long hike in the mountains. According to the travel organisation ABTA, 84 per cent of Brits take a holiday each year. And while almost all of those trips pass without incident, we've still somehow got a reputation on the continent as boorish drunks and arrogant diners. Plus ça change, as the French would say. And it's been so long since we've thrown plastic chairs around European market squares, too.
Of course, there are some dos and don'ts to getting hooned al fresco in the warmer months. Don't buy big four-pint jugs of lager – it'll just go warm and flat, and each pint poured inevitably ends up with more head than a discount tennis shop. Do wear sunscreen. Don't let your dog or kids run around other people's tables while they're trying to relax. Do take your empty glasses back in when you go to the bar. Don't take your top off – no one wants to see your sweaty, sunburnt back fat. Do get the round in. Don't plonk yourself down on a massive table if it's just you, your pint of Ruddles and a copy of the New Statesman. Do share your crisps – we're all in this together, after all. And for the love of God, don't ironically cheer when someone smashes a glass.
But, crucially, enjoy it while it lasts – we've only got another month or so left of all this. Then it's back to the grind. Back to the gym. Time to hunker down, learn to cook goulash, and finally start that Martin Amis novel you've been meaning to read for the past five months. Soon the nights will be filled with the brume of autumn, all bonfires and late Saturday kick-offs and niggling respiratory diseases.
The winter months bring with them a different kind of drinking, which admittedly does have its own elements of bacchanalia and bliss. But nothing quite compares to that freedom, that sense of possibility, that summer sousing entails. So take your mate up on that pint in the sun. You'll miss it when it's gone.
[See also: The Sydney Sweeney vibe shift is futile]
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