I find that my drink preference depends strongly on the company I’m in.

When I’m alone, which is most often the case since my husband died, I like French and Italian herb-infused drinks like vermouth, Aperol, Campari and Pernod. One is quite enough (thank God). When it’s hot, I’ll have a beer — usually the IPA from the local Black Swan Brewery — on the porch in the late afternoon. If I cook a lamb chop, I’ll crack a bottle of Niagara red and have one — count ‘em, one — glass and stop up the rest with a vacuum cork.

A fiddle-playing friend occasionally rides over on her bike, giving me a good reason to open a bottle of riesling. Fortunately, she always texts me to ask if I’m up for company, which gives me time to fetch the wine out of the cellar and put it in the fridge. Dinner parties have pretty well died out since the pandemic, so the boozy evenings over port and cheese don’t happen any more.

I like whisky — in fact, I like it a lot — but I don’t drink it on my Tod. Cocktails, ditto — the very idea of a solitary Old Fashioned makes me want to cry.

As for lager — returning to the original subject of this thread — that’s what I drink in the beer tent when a beer tent appears in my vicinity.