Kmflett's Blog

I’ll gloss over the political figure who most often uses ‘it’s official’ and also note that the title of this post is not a summary of the weather for January 2026 which was wet, wet, wet.

Rather we’re talking or rather drinking Dry January here. Its about abstaining from alcohol for a month to recover physically and materially from the excesses of the festive season.

Figures from Waitrose show that while in January 2022 sales of alcohol were 42% lower than other months of the year in January 2026 this figure had dropped to 25%.The increase in imbibement was reportedly most notable on the red wine shelves (Waitrose for the unfamiliar is distinctly up market on wine). Sales of Argentinian red were up 25% and Chilean red up 27%.

Waitrose says 12th January was the date when shoppers felt it was safe to visit the beer, wine and spirits aisles again with sales up 11% on the previous week.

The Times (2nd February) which managed an Editorial on the subject suggests that while people drank less in January instead of complete abstinence there was a mixture of lo and no drinking together with alcoholic beverages