Wine After Work, Anyone?

Growing up and going to university in the Halifax area, including grad school, I got really used to the after school/work beer, especially on Fridays.  It seemed like every Friday around 4 pm, the taverns started to fill up. Pretty much everyone was drinking beer - the same beer, actually, because micro-brewed beer hadn't been invented yet! Yes, I'm that old.

Times have changed in Atlantic Canada, and the rest of the country too. Well, it changed in the big centres first, but we Easterners tagged along. First off, we stopped having those 3 beer lunches (we never had the 3 Martini lunches of Wall Street and Bay Street), as workplaces cracked down on lunchtime fun.  Some even use drug tests...Then the Friday after work crowd dwindled a bit.

One big change I've noticed is that many people are drinking wine instead of beer on Friday afternoons. This was very evident on a recent Friday in Saint John, the closest "major centre" to where I live now.  I was meeting my Halifax friends Heather and Christian, who are in the middle of opening a wine bar and were up to scope out happinez, the funky little wine bar in Uptown (NOT downtown!) Saint John.

I arrived with my 7 year old - learning wine starts early in my family - at 5 pm, and the place was filled with familiar faces, almost all of them sipping on a glass of wine. happinez owner Peter Smit, a native of Amsterdam and longtime hospitality industry member, was smiling and shuffling around, working the crowd.

Saint John doesn't have much of a reputation as a cool city to drink wine in, but when you're in happinez, you feel like you could be in Amsterdam, London, New York or Montreal - except for the accents. Heather and Christian had been there before, but not on a Friday afternoon, and they were pretty impressed with the scene.

There's no crowd like this in Halifax. Well, perhaps the Friday Firkin at Maxwell's Plum, where a cask of Garrison beer is tapped every Friday. But there's no wine crowd like at happinez.

For the longest time, the Friday after work hangout for my crowd was just up the street at O'Leary's pub, with everyone drinking Guinness and Moosehead, chatting about this, that and the other thing.   Now we sit in a cosy wine bar working our way through a few of the 30 or so wines by the glass - Smit uses a Le Verre de Vins wine preservation system - and snacking on local charcuterie and artisanal cheese.

Another lively Friday after work scene exists at Grannan's, where a live jazz band plays every Friday. Even there, I notice that quite a few people are drinking wine.

I love my beer, on Friday afternoon or any time, and luckily in my job I can still drink a pint with lunch, but there's no doubt that there has been a demographic shift in Atlantic Canada. More people, especially young people, are drinking wine.

Wine After Work is the new Happy Hour.

Cheers!

Craig Pinhey is a writer and Sommelier, available for private tastings. Visit him at www.frogspad.ca and follow him on twitter (@frogspadca)

Photo: Vaguely Vinous