26: Drinking in Singapore
In moderation, of course.
In my line of work, I only get paid if people drink lots of wine.
Okay, that’s a bit reductive, not to say rather dark (just like youthful Shiraz, amiright?) but my point is that wine professionals like me rely on people drinking the stuff to make our money. After all, let’s face it: nobody’s paying me for clever-dick jokes about youthful Shiraz.
(This would be the perfect place to put in the Substack paywall, if I had one.)
Growing up in the UK, drinking booze was completely uncontroversial, and so was earning a living from it. In fact, drinking was rather honourable in an old-fashioned yet self-destructive way, much like dying for your country. But these days, tides are turning around the world, and moderation, or even complete abstinence, is becoming more and more mainstream.
So what’s drinking culture like in Singapore, where you can’t even consume water on public transport, let alone alcohol?
I’ve spent the last five years finding out.
In several ways, Singapore treats alcohol the same as in the UK. It’s widely available in retail, bars and restaurants. Alcohol licences are issued freely. Outlets offer the same brands you find around the world, albeit with a higher proportion of Asian drinks such as baijiu and soju.
Baijiu is the revered Chinese distillate that is usually served neat and downed enthusiastically at the sort of gatherings that are usually best avoided. Soju is another spirit, this time from Korea and most commonly encountered as a sweet, flavoured, ready-to-drink alcopop. I was ambushed with it at a surprise birthday party once, and at the end of the night found myself wearing only one flip-flop in a taxi filled with balloons.
Most people, quite wisely, stick to beer - it is Singapore’s most popular drink by far1. Tiger is Singapore’s home-grown brew, although Heineken is the more popular brand these days (both belong to the same company). I prefer Tiger: despite its reputation as bog-standard lager, it’s the ideal thirst-quencher in Singapore’s tropical heat. (Although for an alternative view on Tiger, this entertaining account from 2011 is worth a read.)
Advertising for booze is commonplace, as witness the Penfolds campaign I saw in an underpass on Orchard Road, Singapore’s high-end shopping district (see also Going to the loo in Singapore). The messaging is targeting the Chinese New Year gift-giving season, but other than that, it looks like an advert you might see anywhere.
The impression seems to be that alcohol is treated liberally in Singapore. Yet duty levels tell another story: they are punitively high, a so-called sin tax, meaning that a bottle of Smirnoff costs the equivalent of £34, while Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz is equivalent to £17. The same products in the UK are £18 and £10 respectively. (And remember not to drink that Shiraz too young, amiright?)
Once you get used to the eye-watering prices, it’s easy enough to get your hands on booze, but what about the actual drinking of it? While it’s common to see people drinking in Singapore, it’s much rarer to see the sort of brazen bingeing for which British town centres are notorious.
On a typical Friday night, groups of old uncles gather at local hawker centres to work their way through buckets of beer, while in the expat enclave of Robertson Quay, it’s more likely to be magnums of rosé among young Westerners. On Sundays, migrant workers gather for picnics across the island, washing them down with high-alcohol beer like Anchor Strong, a 7% abv bruiser (again, from the Heineken-Tiger stable). Meanwhile, expats flock to the dozens of free-flow champagne brunches that take place in fancy-fancy hotel restaurants.
Yet it all stays terribly civilised. It’s rare to see any outright drunkenness in Singapore. Perhaps it’s more normal in the parts of Singapore that are especially dedicated to drinking (such as Circular Road - see Breaking the law in Singapore) but Singapore’s reputation for overall decorum is well deserved. Balloon-filled taxis notwithstanding.
In 2023, beer had a 61% share of the Singapore alcohol market by value; see https://my.nzte.govt.nz/article/whats-popular-in-singapores-alcoholic-beverages-market