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Vinismo endorses responsible drinking. Wine is a strong alcoholic beverage, typically ranging from 10 to 20 % alcohol by volume. One drink or two a day is a reasonable amount if you plan on living a long and honorable life. Wine can even improve your heart condition; scientists have shown that some red varietals, under certain climate and vinification conditions, and associated to a healthy lifestyle, can keep heart problems at bay. But that's only if you drink responsibly. As we said, one or two glasses a day - of the regular, small kind of glass - is a healthy dosage. Like all the great pleasures of life, wine must be consumed with caution and moderation.
Too much alcohol on a regular basis can ruin your health and bring you a plethora of personal problems. Some people who try hard to stay sober after abusing alcohol could tell you that it is a very sneaky addiction, which takes control of you before you realize it - and then you have to deal with it for the rest of your life. It's a different story than what you see in beer ads on TV; but it's the sad reality for a lot of people.
edit Tasting is not drinking
Professional wine tasters don't even drink the wines they taste. They sip half an ounce from a tastevin then spit it out elegantly in a jar.
Of course, regular wine lovers don't have to spit out the wine they drink (except maybe during winery tours or other wine-tasting events). That would actually be a waste, since fine wines usually cost money.
However, if you want to fully appreciate the qualities of your wines, it's better to limit your drinking to a few sips. Before getting to half-glass, you should already have lost all the surprise and novelty, hence much of the tasting. If you pursue your drinking after that, it's not tasting anymore. It's, well, drinking. There's no problem with that; it's just not called tasting anymore, and implies the risk of getting drunk. If that's your goal, that's fine, really... As long as you don't drive!
edit Don't drink and drive
It sounds like the most obvious thing to say, and still, traffic data relentlessly show that we'll never repeat it enough : drinking and driving is one of the stupidest and bloodiest mixes there is. Taxis and local non-profit organizations offering free rides are a good option to come back home safely when you've drunk too much. Or you can sleep over. Whoever you sleep with, and whatever amount of alcohol you drink, nobody should care or blame you (except your liver), as long as you don't put your human bomb on the road.
edit Legal drinking age
Vinismo chose not to use any age-verification tool on the site, first because we don't sell alcohol and don't promote abusive drinking in either way, and also because legal drinking age varies greatly from one country to another (21 in the U.S., 18 or 19 in Canada, 16 in some parts of Europe, etc.). Vinismo users come from all around the world. Some of our youngest users may enjoy the right to drink wine already while other users of the same age don't. The Internet being what is is, it's hard to check if a particular user is of legal drinking age in his/her country. Even if we did control the age of our users, it wouldn't be very efficient.
If you're under legal drinking age in your country, you can still participate in the Vinismo community to learn about wines or just to take part in our great Wiki community. There's a good chance you won't know what you're reading and writing about, though, since you're not supposed to have tasted any alcoholic beverage in your life yet - right ?
