Not my special combination, I first heard of gin and Dubonnet as the favourite drink of Queen Elizabeth II and her mother. According to her staff, the Queen has a gin and Dubonnet (one part gin, two parts Dubonnet) mid morning, followed by a glass of white wine with lunch, then a dry martini and a glass of champagne at night. When this was revealed a few years ago there was disapproval from health experts who labelled her a heavy drinker. Her defenders noted that by spacing out her four daily drinks from morning to late at night she would not be drunk at any time (she would probably pass a breath test if driving). Apparently her doctors have recently advised her to cut out the martini.
As for the Queen Mother, a friend said she was never drunk, but she was never quite sober. She lived to be 101, and her daughter is currently 96, so this level of alcohol consumption might not be all that damaging. Correlation is not causation, but moderate drinkers outlive teetotallers on average.
New Zealanders do drink a lot of tea, and increasingly coffee, I'm just not typical.
I normally don't drink gin, but next time I'm out to dinner I'll give it a try.
The mid-morning thing rather surprises me, and if all the 4 drinks were of "hard" liquor, I don't know if that would be what I call moderate, but I do believe some alcohol a day is, on balance, probably a good thing. Certainly, in my family, and every family I knew as a child, the adults always had a glass of wine with lunch and dinner, and I doubt it did them any harm. (The wine was very low in alcohol, however.)
As for the longevity thing, I believe there are some people who have so many of the right combination of genes that substances that fell other people don't bother them at all. My paternal grandfather drank a raw egg and grappa for breakfast, wine for lunch and dinner, and some more grappa afterwards, smoke every day of his life since he was a young teen, and lived to 87, which is pretty respectable. My mother did everything right and was dead at 62, so there you go. It's why I don't pay much attention to don't do this and don't do that.
My problem with alcohol is that I think they put preservatives in the wine sold here, because I get headaches and an upset stomach from the wine I buy here, unlike the homemade wine at home, and "hard" liquor affects me too quickly, and I don't like the feeling, even when I really like the taste, as with things like a pina colada, or mojito, or daiquiri, all of which I like very much. So, I stick to one when I go out, and hope the bartender doesn't have a heavy hand.
