This isn't some hair-of-the-dog thing; it's not a hangover cure. Just a glass of red wine with breakfast--runny eggs, toast, slightly chilled Chianti. With the newspaper, or SportsCenter, if you must, because everyone does something else while eating breakfast, the most undignified meal--uncelebrated, solitary, functional. A muffin crumbling all over your desk--okay, sometimes breakfast has to be like that. But once a week, try. Refrigerate a bottle for ten minutes, crack the foil seal, drive the corkscrew into the tender cork, and yank it out. Pour some instead of OJ today, and sit down and relax.At this hour, red wine--it must be red--is bracing. Afterward, you somehow feel more prepared. Like any doubts about the day ahead, any potential hindrances, can be handled. One glass gives you the perfect amount of buzz, and it doesn't make you groggy. It drives a wedge between your cottony, postsleep morning and the rest of your day. My great uncle Luigi, who lives north of Milan, would think it odd to be writing about this--like going on and on about the virtues of having a doughnut once in a while.

And it doesn't have to be Chianti. A red zinfandel is perfect. A Brewing Company Used 30 Lobsters to Make This Beer Starbucks Is About to Open Their Most Extravagant Location Ever How to Crack an Egg Without Looking Like an Idiot How to Make the Perfect Glazed Turkey Sandwich Why San Francisco Chefs Are Obsessed with This Pho The Best Wing Spot In Every State The Genius of 'Billions' Is in the Food Watch a Bunch of Bartenders Guess Who's Underage The Best Caipirinha Recipe Ever Anthony Bourdain on Jeremiah Tower, the 'First F*ckable Chef'Barack Obama enjoyed a breakfast beer at the G7 summit and a London bar is now serving morning wine. From bloody mary to brandy, an early tipple is a fine European tradition Barack Obama with his breakfast beer. Barack Obama enjoyed a breakfast beer at the G7 summit and a London bar is now serving morning wine. The sight of Barack Obama downing a pint at his pre-G7 summit Alpine breakfast on Sunday was surprising and cheering in equal measure.

Drinking early in the day doesn’t usually come with such official approbation. wine bar la tableWe tend to think of morning drinks in extremes – a bloody mary or swift half to provide a much-needed quick fix after a long night, or perhaps bubbles for special occasion breakfasts. what is the best wine on a dietHowever, in many parts of the world, booze at breakfast is seen as a perfectly normal way to start the day.best wine from paris The weisswurst frühstück Obama was enjoying is a beery Bavarian stalwart: boiled sausages with mustard, freshly baked pretzels and a cold weissbier, the operative word here being cold. buy wine kits online canada

Alcohol in the morning must be fresh and zippy. best italian red wine 2015A bit of fizz, something dry, a hint of sweetness, a sharp kick – as drinks writer Henry Jeffreys puts it, “it’s the pick-me-up that makes you mellow”. best red wine under 300Beer or ale for breakfast is not uncommon in the rest of northern Europe, particularly in Belgium – and even, until as late as the 1980s, in England, where breweries would give free drinks to their workers. While this was probably to counter pilfering, it also continued a long tradition of brewers enjoying a hearty brew to start the day, harking back to the “liquid bread” of 16th-century friars. It would seem there is more to an early-morning pint than just hair of the dog. Around the Mediterranean, you’ll often see older patrons having a caffè corretto, the espresso quite literally “corrected” with a shot of something stronger: grappa, sambuca or brandy.

It is a habit Mitch Tonks and Mat Prowse adopted at a fish market in Spain 15 years ago; they call it their morning fire. The grappa is sometimes substituted with armagnac, Fernet-Branca or whatever other local spirit the two chefs encounter on their travels. “It takes the body by surprise,” writes Tonks in his new cookbook, The Seahorse. “We have found that in this moment of lightness and clarity we have made our best decisions.” Which makes the Seahorse restaurant staff living proof that drinking in the day might not actually render working minds as useless as you’d think. It’s all about being restrained: “The trick is to have just one glass,” says Tonks, “otherwise the surprise is spoiled.” London wine bar Vinoteca has just opened a Kings Cross branch, the first to serve breakfast. “You don’t have to not drink wine early in the day,” counsels co-owner Brett Woonton. Woonton and his partner, Charlie Young, focused on bottles that would work best with breakfast, plumping for lightness and freshness over full-bodied heft;

drinks that would be accessible and approachable. So they have got a pink moscato, the sweet, fruity fizz of which sits handsomely with a plate of pancakes; a slightly frizzante, dry red bonarda that cuts judiciously through the richness of a meaty breakfast; and a German riesling to pair with fresh fruit or muesli. Vinoteca in King’s Cross, London, advertises its breakfast wines. For Woonton, a good breakfast wine should be the oenological equivalent of an early-morning swim: invigorating and enlivening. And that is a strategy tried and tested in Sicily. Food writer Rachel Roddy, the author of Five Quarters, says her partner’s grandfather, a Sicilian farmer, “drank a litre of white with his breakfast of bread and caponata every single morning at six”. That would be followed by a whole lemon, eaten like an apple, before he left the house. “He also drank a litre for lunch,” she continues “and never drank water. He was tiny, without fat, as strong as a horse and he lived until 95.”