It’s an understatement to say that non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic beverages are having a moment right now. NA wines and zero-proof spirits are big business—they’ve even given rise to a new retail category, the NA bottle shop. The shift is seemingly tied to the widening conversation around sobriety and what it means to different people.
Interestingly, those at the forefront of these movements include more than a handful of drinks professionals. Among them are sommeliers, individuals whose very job description—the curation and serving of wine—may at first blush seems at odds with alcohol abstinence. In Wine Enthusiast’s recent article, “Can a Sommelier Be Sober?,” contributor Lauren Paige Richeson profiles three such somms and dives into how sobriety has affected their work.
Among them was Laura Vidal, an award-winning, Montreal-born sommelier and restaurateur behind several lauded food and drinks spots across France. In 2021, Vidal was the first woman to be named sommelier of the year by the influential French restaurant guide, Gault Millau. She started identifying as sober more than four years ago.
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“I definitely feel like I can smell better, taste more precisely and get more deepness in texture [since going sober],” she told us.
We wanted to know more—how is this possible, and does she think the role of the sommelier is changing in light of the NA movement?
Listen as Vidal goes into this and more, with a focus on how she views her own sobriety and why her personal practices may look different from those of others who identify as sober. She explains her decision to sip (and spit) wine in a professional capacity and explores her sobriety against the backdrop of France’s famous culture of wine-splashed joie de vivre.
Episode Transcript
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.
Speakers: Rachel Tepper Paley, Laura Vidal
Rachel Tepper Paley 2:04
Hey, Laura, thanks so much for being here.
Laura Vidal 2:06
Hi, Rachel. Thanks for having me.
Rachel Tepper Paley 2:08 So you’ve been sober for four years. Can you tell me a little about your relationship with alcohol before that?
Laura Vidal 2:17
Sure. So my relationship with alcohol before I decided to stop drinking was one of discovery, a lot of curiosity because as a smell, you taste a lot of wine and would visit winemakers on a regular basis. Also in my restaurants, serving wine to customers having a glass of wine after service with my staff members and so forth. So I had a relationship to alcohol that was more social, I would not drink alone, I would probably be more the kind of person who used to go out with a bunch of friends who also were passionate about wine and food. And we would have you know, a bunch of bottles. And sometimes I would get really drunk. And sometimes I would get you know, just slightly tipsy. But my relationship wasn’t one that I deemed heavily problematic. But I definitely towards the end, started to have moments where I found that my relationship was a little bit problematic simply because I was drinking quite a fair amount and had a couple of times where I literally had blackouts and couldn’t remember exactly what I had talked about, or things that I had said and to whom that was a bit worrisome to me. So I think that there were little kind of red flags that came up before I made that decision, which also came before a really big year of events and pretty high profile clients that we had lined up. And I wanted to make sure that I had, you know a really cool head for that. So I decided to take a break from alcohol, just because I literally had a huge 35th birthday with my business partner, we went to like this amazing restaurant in the Basque Country, drank a bunch of delicious wine. And the next morning, I had the worst headache ever. So I wanted to sort of take a break from it simply because I didn’t feel like I had the bandwidth to do that kind of thing until all of those kind of big events were cased. And my initial plan was never to stop entirely. It was just to take a break from it.
Rachel Tepper Paley 4:14
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m curious about that period of time between when you started to abstain from alcohol. And when you decided to commit to sobriety. How did it feel in the beginning? And at what point did you think this could be more than a phase?
Laura Vidal 4:31
For first because it was sort of just in my mind a break. I didn’t put a lot of pressure on myself. Socially speaking, I kind of told people look, I’m taking a break from booze for a while I have a really busy year coming up. I had this sort of excuse that made it simpler for me to be in society without having to have the dreaded question of like, Oh, why don’t you stop drinking, like Did something happen? Are you pregnant? Like always the same questions we get, especially as women, as if there’s something wrong with us. because we’re not drinking. So I would say that that period of time was a period where I did a lot of self care, like I got really like back into my yoga practice and did a lot of journaling, again, spent a lot of time in nature. And I was feeling very productive and sleeping better. I just felt generally better and my body physically and health wise. So it really made me feel quite empowered actually. And I think that’s one of the reasons why the life that I built, not drinking felt like it was just way more healthy and enjoyable than the one that I had beforehand. So I think that’s also the one of the reasons why it stuck, because there were clear benefits for me, that arrived quite quickly. And we’re especially visible after the fourth month of abstinence from drinking.
Rachel Tepper Paley 5:54
After that fourth month, what were some of those effects that you saw?
Laura Vidal 5:58
I think, mainly there. So there’s definitely more self awareness, I felt way more connected to my emotions in a healthier way. Like I wasn’t drowning things and alcohol, because even though it wasn’t my intention beforehand, when I was drinking, I think alcohol definitely helped to relieve stress and pressure that I felt in my job, and even in my personal life. So I think it was like a way for me to a bit self medicate, I would say unconsciously, to deal with issues that I had personally and professionally. And when I stopped drinking, I had to deal with those head ons. So I had to actually, you know, address them without that little crutch. And I believe that finding the tools to address that, after I stopped drinking without the crutch of drinking was was one of the reasons that helped me to rebuild relationships, rebuild also and get closer to the relationship I have with myself and therefore have healthier connections with people in my life with my employees, my business partners. And just like in general, my friends and family if I felt that there was a lot of good feedback about how I seemed more relaxed and less stressed out and more present, that was one of the things that came back a lot that I was more present.
Rachel Tepper Paley 7:15
Wow. How did people in your drinks community react to the news? And how did that affect you?
Laura Vidal 7:21
My employees were employees and, you know, business partner, my business partners were super supportive. My family and friends were also really supportive. Like everyone that was close to me, that’s not in the restaurant industry was also very encouraging. There were some people like winemakers or people that were like clients that used to come and I’d have drinks with, or people that I knew socially in the restaurant industry that I would have a drink with. And that was the main sort of reason we hung out that I sort of started seeing a bit less obviously, just because I wasn’t drinking as much. At the same time, I felt there was a lot of reactions that were about, there were a lot of curiosity, there was a lot of curiosity, people who were asking questions about why and had all this, you know, just wondering how I could actually stay in the restaurant industry continue to be smelly, even though I wasn’t actually drinking alcohol seem to be really puzzling to a lot of people. And I think just generally, some of the reactions that a lot of people get when they stop drinking is people get triggered and project a lot of their own issues about their relationship with alcohol onto you, and don’t want you to stop drinking, because then it maybe makes them feel like they’re doing it by themselves. So if I was out, I have a couple of friends who don’t drink. So like once I remember going out with my friends who didn’t drink and there was one person there who drank and they were very upset by the fact that nobody else was drinking as though that’s really boring. And like, Okay, well, you guys are no fun, that kind of thing. So, I mean, that happens, but it’s not I just, you know, I don’t take it personal because I know it’s not about me, really, it’s just more about their own views and relationship to alcohol. Because people who don’t have issues with alcohol, be it positive or negative. They don’t care if you’re drink or not. They just like they’re just, you know, happy to hang out with you. So it made it really clear who was genuinely a friend, and who was more there for other reasons, or, you know, I thought that was interesting, for sure.
Rachel Tepper Paley 9:21
I think that’s really insightful. Do you think that the fact that you’re based in France and you know, French culture is very intertwined with wine culture, do you think that affected anything?
Laura Vidal 9:33
I think that alcohol is alcohol, so it’s the same thing. It’s ethanol, and it’s an all alcohol based products, be it the be the really fancy ones from burgundy or champagne. That’s, you know, extremely well made by a small producer, or cheap tequila from Mexico. I mean, it’s all the same thing really, at the end of the day. So I think it’s really important to clarify that in France There’s definitely a culture of what we call like Bo vivo, it means good living. And that includes, you know, eating well drinking well, and having culture around wine, which means knowing about different, you know, wine regions and varietals and being well read in the wine world. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that if the relationship to that consumption is unhealthy and excessive, it’s doesn’t matter if it’s wine or anything else, really. But there is something to be said about the hypocrisy around that. Simply because wine does take a big place has a big has a big place in the French culture, that has been something that I have had to grapple with. Because personally, there’s a little bit of like cognitive dissonance for me, when it comes to it, I love, I actually do love wine. And I continue to this day to taste wine and spit it even sometimes for purely pleasures slash intellectual curiosity purposes. And at the same time, I just don’t want the effects of the ethanol in my body, and the you know, the hangover, or the tiredness, or the little sort of blur that it brings to my life, kind of want to be really like present for it all. And I’m also not, I’m not excessive in my in my vision of it in the sense that there there is a distinction between someone who’s completely abstinent from alcohol, someone who’s sober, curious, so someone who sort of occasionally has a drink here and there, but is extremely mindful and conscious in their consumption. And I think that for me, I would say that like, since I stopped drinking, I have had a couple sips of beer, right, left and center and a couple sips of wine, right, left and center. But I would say it’s not, you know, been over two or three times a year. So it’s extremely rare, but it does happen, and I don’t give myself crap for it. Like, I am not judging myself for having a SIP here. And there, I don’t have that sort of all or nothing vision about it. And I think it’s important to bring neurons to what corresponds to a healthy relationship to alcohol for everybody. So I think that if you say if you decide that in your, your vision of drinking, you want to have a really delicious glass of Burgundy once in a while, because that feels correct and right for you, and you’re feeling really good about it. And it makes sense, then that’s great. And if you want to sometimes do, I don’t know a shot of tequila because it makes you feel happy or whatever. But it’s very conscious and like, you’re careful not to engage in unhealthy behavior because of it or whatnot. That’s great. So I’m not judging anyone’s choice. Everyone has their own sort of design of their relationship to alcohol, I think it’s just important to take a step back, really be honest about it, take a good hard look in the mirror about the reasons why we’re drinking. And that drinking involves, you know, anything from wine, to beer, to cocktails, to whatever it is that takes you away from the present moment.
Rachel Tepper Paley 13:01
I think that makes a lot of sense. And it leads into another question I wanted to ask you because, as you say, you do sip wine, you taste wine as you need to for work, occasionally, socially. That’s a line that some other sober folks may choose not to cross. But I’d love to hear a little bit about why that works for you personally, but why it might not work for others, and also how that perhaps plays into this sort of changing notion of what sobriety is right now.
Laura Vidal 13:33
It’s a really good question. I think there’s, it’s important to note the difference between alcohol dependency so addiction to alcohol, which is actually something that requires abstinence to get through. And for different people for different reasons, just the relationship to alcohol, there’s no need, there might not be a need to completely be abstinent, you can have a more moderate relationship to alcohol. And it’s okay to design that the way that you feel is right for you. And I do think that this notion of complete abstinence and stopping entirely and as soon as you have a sip, it’s like considered a relapse does come a certain extent from the popular belief relayed by Alcoholics Anonymous, which is a format that helps has helped and I’m sure will continue to help a lot of people because of its reliance on like a higher power and acknowledging that you have a problem and following the 12 steps, which are extremely helpful for a lot of people. However, I do find that there is an element and it’s something that I read in a book called quitting like a woman by Holly Whitaker, which is an incredible book that talks about how you can design in a more sort of female centric way. Your relationship to alcohol that doesn’t involve this like extremely black or white, performance based getting your little chip that says you stopped for three months and so forth, can lead to, you know, anxiety and this feeling that you’re failing at something if you relapse and this notion of shame, which is very linked also to the whole concept of, you know, giving it up to God and all that stuff, I think there’s an element of too much black or white, and pressure to perform almost, which is something we already have to deal with on a day to day basis. And she brings a really interesting perspective in her book that that I really adhere to. And that spoke to me and made me feel less alone in my process, which states basically, that creating a life that you want to live fully is actually the goal of sobriety and not, you know, abstaining from something that’s not going to be helping you. So it’s very focused on sort of working on yourself and improving your life in a way that’s helpful, and feels right for you. Without having this whole demonization of your addiction. However, I will, I will nuance and say that some people do clearly need and want to go in that in that program, because it really helps them to have that structure. And again, I don’t, I don’t feel that that’s something that I need or want. But I do feel that some people might need that. And that’s why I’m a big proponent of proponent of tailor your own sobriety to your needs, and be really close to yourself and aware of what it is that helps you get support that you need from any means necessary, be it a therapist, or energy workers spirituality, or a group like a as well can definitely help. So I would say that, sorry for the long answer. But that’s kind of why I’ve decided to look at my sobriety in a way that is very honest, and not say that I’m 100% sober, because it’s hard sometimes to talk to someone who’s, you know, had serious battles with addiction. And for them, even dipping their lips into a glass of wine is too much and goes beyond their boundaries gives them too much temptation. However, that’s not my case, like I can taste you know, 100 wines in a wine fair spit, every single one of them not have a single drink the whole time. And that’s totally fine. For me, I don’t feel the need to. But at other times, I could go to like a really nice restaurant and have a little sip of my boyfriend’s beer, just because I’m really hot. And that’s, that’s enough for me as well. And then I could also just not drink for or not have a single sip of anything for literally like five months. And that’s totally okay. So think everyone’s different. And that’s really important to acknowledge more than anything else.
Rachel Tepper Paley 17:46
Going back to your personal sobriety in our article on wine enthusiast.com, you talk about how being sober actually helps you smell better and taste more precisely. How do you think this is? And can you walk us through your process of of tasting while being sober?
Laura Vidal 18:07
Sure. So I think that it’s something that’s interesting to observe, because I found that my memory has gotten better. Over the years since I stopped drinking, I feel like I had all this memory loss before. And that was actually one of the red flags is like this memory loss. I was like, What is this memory loss. And since I stopped drinking, I’ve had much better memory and part of wine tasting is also you know, remembering what you’re tasting and having, having memory of the taste and smell of a wine and where you think it’s going to be going in the next couple of years is really crucial. So I actually found that it’s gotten better for that, that reason. But another reason also is that when you go to wine tastings, it’s kind of like a big social event for smelly A’s and winemakers and everybody gets together and there’s always like a really fun dinner at the end of the one salons. And usually at those one salons you end up drinking in the evening. And usually you end up having you know, more than a couple drinks and getting into like a fun little party vibe. And everyone’s dancing and usually finished pretty drunk and hungover the next morning and when you’re hungover the next morning, like your palate, just like physically your tongue and your your buds is saturated and tired and you’re tired and you don’t have good memory and you’re like not thinking clearly. And so that’s just one of the things that I don’t have to deal with anymore. Because even though I do get saturated by tasting like tons and tons of wine, out of wine tasting the evening of where usually used to get, you know, slosh with a bunch of other friends or whatever now I don’t so I wake up fresh. I get to the wine tasting early and I’m like on point and I just feel that it’s something that has allowed me to progress more efficiently since I stopped.
Rachel Tepper Paley 20:33
NA products as well as sober and sober curious lifestyles are huge right now. Do you think that the role of the sommelier is changing in light of those movements and also your own personal experience?
Laura Vidal 20:46
Totally. I really do. I feel that people are more and more interested in having options when it comes to non alcoholic or low alcohol drinks. So we have on our you know, in my restaurants since I stopped drinking, I got really interested in that obviously because it’s something that I was looking for as well. And so you know, non alcoholic beers, Kombucha is or pet not teas, as we call them. As well as alternative alternatives to wine have become more and more popular. And in France, it took a bit of time, I think more than in the US or the UK. But definitely we’re we’ve reached a point now where there’s a lot of small startups that have started creating alternatives to alcohol, and are trying to work on things that are not too sweet and not too bubbly. And they’re trying to find sort of inbetweeners. Also, personally, I thought that it was really important to propose non alcoholic cocktails on our wine on our, on our drinks program, at the various restaurants we have, and we found some really cool oak ah, Kombucha is from the Basque Country, we found this really cool dude, that makes incredible alternatives from Denmark called Murray. And they’re all really interesting, because they’re actually not like soft drinks, they’re really more, I would say, alternative low or non alcoholic beverages. And I feel that that’s really where we’re going with all of this is that, it’s nice to imagine that we’re going to just do something completely different from non alcoholic this or non alcoholic that like instead of doing non alcoholic rum, or non alcoholic beer, it’s interesting to think that we’re gonna have these really like interesting alternatives that have nothing to do with anything we know already, and therefore can be proposed and be interesting for anyone, including people who do drink alcohol.
Rachel Tepper Paley 22:36
I think that’s really interesting. And it almost makes me think of kind of the vegetarian and vegan movements that, you know, in the 90s, maybe the early 2000s, a lot of vegetarian and vegan products were faux meats, they were tofu, or beancurd, or whatever, trying to be meat. And I think it turned a lot of people off, because those things will never be meat. But as we progressed, you know, people started being more open to those things, as they’re made, you know, in Asian cultures, basically, like not trying to hide that tofu was tofu. And I think that, personally, it made me you know, eat those foods when they were not pretending to be meat. And I’m curious if you think that there’s a parallel here in the NA space.
Laura Vidal 23:31
Yeah, for sure. Like, I definitely think that there’s there’s certain things that are interesting, even if they’re non alcoholic, like beer is an example simply because you can do a beer that’s low alcohol as in a non alcoholic beer at 0% is obviously going to be inverse osmosis and requires a lot of energy and water. And it’s not the greatest, but it’s a lot of investment because the machine that does that is extremely expensive. And so that’s what usually big beer companies use. But smaller brewers do high temperature fermentation so that the yeast that work at that temperature, don’t transform the malt into the mountain the sweet or will the alcohol in basically into alcohol, they transform it into very little. So there’s like 0.7%, or whatnot, but much less than that sometimes. And that’s considered, you know, non alcoholic, but in a certain way that still remains artisanal. But I do feel that like, you know, not like wine that’s non alcoholic, it’s also inverse osmosis. And it just takes away. It doesn’t feel very genuine to me, and I’m not a big proponent of it. So I do prefer, I like the idea of elevating kombucha, creating different like techniques that make it a bit more interesting and different. I like the idea of combining different techniques of fermentation like VAs with kefir, and kombucha mother to do something completely different and see if people can, you know, take pleasure and there can be different sort of flavor profiles that can bring complex City to a meal. And also create this ceremonious aspect of drinking a glass of something delicious, which I think is part of the pleasure of enjoying a meal at a table. And like we’re talking earlier about the French culture, every time that we serve anything non alcoholic in our restaurants, we try to put it into a nice glass. So there’s an element of feeling special, and that you’re not excluded from the social fun and you know, conviviality that people are looking for when they go out.
Rachel Tepper Paley 25:32
And I imagine you see that it’s very much part of your role as a sommelier.
Laura Vidal 25:36
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, when we learn about when, when we do our training, as civilians, we learn about all kinds of different things, including alcohol, but also soft drinks and cocktails, and mocktails, and teas and coffees and all that stuff. So it’s part of our job, I think, to now and large in our perspective and our knowledge base to include these different sorts of offers that can really surprise people. And I have a friend of mine who is called Benoit and a few and he started doing non alcoholic pairings for gastronomic restaurants and does a bunch of events all over the place. Now, he actually, you know, does his own concoctions and he’s a bit like a druid, like he does his own mixes, and it’s all homemade. And it’s very tailored to the to the food. So to a certain extent, it’s much more high end and it’s very like gastronomic experience. But in the idea of it, the whole point is to be able to have a really interesting experience with non alcoholic beverages. And there is a huge like possible. There’s a world of possibles when it comes to non alcoholic beverages, that we can make ourselves some liaise and work on. So I think it’s something that’s going to develop more and more and will also bring value to the to the work that we do as smellies. Because we are sort of curators and not creators. And so I think if we start working on, if we start working in the non alcoholic sphere, we can also bring a bit more creativity to our line of work and therefore make it even, like making more valuable and interesting to work in that sector.
Rachel Tepper Paley 27:19
I think that’s great. So looking forward, do you think your sobriety will look the same in 10 years as it does now?
Laura Vidal 27:28
I do think that it’s going to evolve over time, like I’ve actually been thinking about starting to drink again, but more on a very, like sort of occasional basis. Like right now I feel like what I do is really like small amounts, and never a glass and you know, never never, literally a month at a time sort of a part kind of thing. So I think it might change. But I’m not, I’m really trying to be very present with my feeling and listening to myself and making sure that I’m doing it for the right reasons that I’m holding my sobriety for the right reasons, but also that if I do have a glass, or a sip of something, it’s also for the right reasons, and never to compensate or to numb myself from feeling the present moment. And so I have no idea what it’s going to look like in 10 years from now. But I think it’ll have evolved because for sure, I’m evolving all the time. And so I do know, however, that it’s got, it’s really been one of the best decisions of my life. And I don’t feel that I’m going to sort of go back and drinking ever again the way that I used to. But the door is not close to rethinking a new format for that in my life. Because wine and the whole restaurant industry is a huge part of my life. And I love it very much. And I don’t want it to be sort of considered excluded from options. But at this time in my life, I’m feeling really good about my choices. And I just want to stay in that dynamic. So whatever it looks like it’s going to probably evolve. But there’s always going to be a lot of presence and a lot of consideration brought to that for sure.
Rachel Tepper Paley 29:05
And what would you tell other drinks professionals who are considering sobriety, especially other sommeliers?
Laura Vidal 29:12
I think that it’s interesting always to look at our relationship to alcohol, be it whoever we are, in whatever domain we work, but even more so as we work very closely with a product that can be dangerous when abused. I think it’s important to look at our consumption as civilians and really, you know, ask ourselves the right questions of why we’re drinking the way we are. Is it really bringing out the best in us and for us? Is it serving us or is it something that’s not serving us? So I would say just look at your relationship to alcohol as honestly as possible. And you can ask people that love you what they think about your relationship to alcohol because sometimes being in the world of wine, we get sort of caught up in the whole whirlwind and we’re surrounded by people doing the same Same thing as us. So it doesn’t feel like it’s a problem. But other people in our life who are not in it might have other opinions. So I think it’s interesting to look at that. And I would definitely say that there’s nothing stopping you from taking a break here and there. So like dread dry, January’s a great way to start just to like, get some perspective, actually, and see how it feels to be a sober person in the world. And that that also helps us to be better smellies to be able to propose alternatives to those people who cannot or will not drink. for other reasons. Maybe someone has a health issue. Maybe somebody’s pregnant, there’s all kinds of reasons why you can’t be drinking, not just, you know, choice based. And I think it’s really nice to be able to put ourselves in our customers shoes as well to give them options that are actually really cool, delicious, make them feel included. Because I think feeling included is kind of part of our job, like we’re there to be hospitable. welcome people into our space and make them feel like they’re part of something cool and special, and fun. And so if we can do that, with wine, we can also and should really also be doing it with non alcoholic options.
Rachel Tepper Paley 31:06
I think that’s great. Thank you so much, Laura, for being here today. This has been a fascinating conversation and I think you’ve given people a lot to think about.
Laura Vidal 31:15
Thank you so much for having me, Rachel.
Published: January 17, 2024
