ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which some alcoholic beverages have become produced and consumed via a discourse and practice of ‘craft’ which foregrounds notions of quality, taste and connoisseurship. The ascendance of craft beer and artisanal spirits as intoxicants with elevated levels of consumer status and desirability adds cultural legitimacy to specific intoxicants and those who consume them. Craft drinks makers and consumers invest in ideas of ‘authenticity’ which are communicated via packaging, branding and the narratives told and heard by both producers and consumers. Craft intoxicants hold higher cultural status than their mass-produced equivalents. Because of this, the consumer can derive social status from being seen to consume such beverages and have their associated position as a ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘tasteful’ consumer acknowledge by others. Much of this emphasises a studied appreciation of style, taste and flavour over consumption orientated towards inebriation and drunkenness and means that discourses of craft and connoisseurship often obscure or neutralise the physical, psychological and social harms associated with intoxication. Thus, the way in which craft beers are selected, consumed, evaluated and discussed by self-confessed ‘beer geeks’ raises pertinent questions to how intoxication is understood when it is, at least ostensibly, no longer the sole or even primary motivation for the consumption of intoxicants. Craft discourse is therefore normative in that it can position the knowing and tasteful consumer of craft beer or artisanal gin as legitimate while marginalising ‘other’ consumers and ‘other’ intoxicants as illegitimate and harmful.
