In order to understand the micro-sociological explanations behind the decline in alcoholic beverage consumption, particularly wine, in Italy during the last 30 years, we studied social mechanisms affecting the behavior of individuals. Alcohol consumption patterns, context, time of day, people with whom it was consumed, regularity and quantity consumed, all vary over the course of a person's life. One of the approaches adopted in analyzing changes in consumption patterns was the sociological “approach to the lifecourse” that focused its attention on the transitions from one phase of life to the next and looked at the paths characterizing the lives of individuals. The complex study of alcoholic beverage consumption was addressed with interviews that combined completely standardized techniques (questionnaires with fixed questions and answers) and partially standardized approaches (semi-structured interviews). Altogether, 117 men of two cohorts (40–45 years and 65–70 years) were interviewed, all of whom had reduced their alcohol consumption over the course of their lives. Two focus groups were also organized and conducted. The age groups were designed to record the consumption habits in the initial phase of the period of interest—that is the early 1970s—of two important social groups. The first one was young and in their adolescent years during the 1970s, while the second group was made up of people already in their adult years.

From individual interviews with Italian men aged 40–45 and 65–70 three prevailing models of consumption pattern can be categorized: the use of alcohol gradually increases and remains a constant in the subject's life until the adult phase is reached, when it decreases; alcohol consumption rises gradually until reaching a peak that characterizes a phase of elevated consumption, after which it decreases; alcohol consumption varies considerably over the years—a pattern which is characterized by different phases. The traditional model, adopted by most of the members of the group aged 65–70, was a pattern of consumption in which alcohol use grew gradually (the period of adolescence/youth) and then remained constant for a long period over a person's lifetime. Instead, the consumption pattern of the members of the group now aged 40–45 illustrated an interesting “action-oriented learning mechanism”: the traditional model of consumption, taught by the family, was what the subjects adopted after abandoning the socializing/intoxicating model, once their situations changed due to different life transitions. The historical-social process of “the internationalization of consumption styles” did not seem to have reduced the influence of the traditional model typical of a “wet” culture: if anything, those who were adolescents in the 1970s, as previously documented, were exposed to several consumption models.

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