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Today their descendants worry about not getting enough of it. The business lunch, for example, was once a two-plus martini milieu in which to cut a deal or woo a client. Now trust is more often won by a show of efficiency and orders for monkfish and mineral water. Water snobbery has replaced wine snobbery as the latest noon-hour recreation. People order their eau by brand name, as they once did Scotch. The fastidious will not take it on the rocks, because ice bruises the bubbles. Only aspiring starlets drink Perrier ("designer water," sniff detractors). Evian is Hollywood's chic refresher, and the hottest innovation of all is Cit-Jet, a pressurized can of lemon juice from France that will flavor the waters of summer '85. Says Novelist-Screenwriter Josh Greenfeld (Harry and Tonto): "Pretty soon we'll be ordering water by the year."
Bosses increasingly frown on employees who smell of liquor after lunch, and aggressive yuppies, some of whom have turned to the coke spoon instead of the bottle, fear that booze will slow them down. "You can't run on the fast track with demon rum eating at your stamina," says Sam Wolfe, a recent University of North Carolina law school graduate. "I can't remember a single business meeting in a long time where anybody's had a drink," says Warner LeRoy, owner of New York City's Maxwell's Plum. When someone orders a stiff one, "a mental trigger goes off with other executives at the table," says Jay Chiat, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Chiat/Day advertising firm. "It's not being judgmental; it's just that it's so much rarer."
Calls for spirits are the lowest ever at the superdeluxe Ma Maison restaurant in Los Angeles; wine accounts for 80% of sales. Patrons of New York City's most famous saloon, the "21" Club, are rattling the aged bar with their orders for such low-proof and nostalgic concoctions as kir royale--champagne sweetened with a spoonful of French black-currant liqueur. At Elaine's restaurant, an uptown Manhattan hangout favored by the likes of Woody Allen and Michael Caine, the wee-hours drinkers have evaporated; the bar empties "early," around 1 a.m. Commuters on the Long Island Rail Road are buying a lot less liquor. Trendies at Sage's restaurant in Chicago interface over watermelon coolers. Everyone is still drinking white wine, according to Michael Roberts, chef and partner of Trumps, the hip West Hollywood bistro. "It's not nearly as interesting as red," says he. "It has a lot less personality. I guess most people have less personality."
The new temperance is going beyond real-life social situations. On prime-time television, a drink is no longer an acceptable hand prop for heroes and heroines. "We don't want to close down the bar on Love Boat," says Larry Stewart, chairman of the Hollywood-based Caucus of Writers, Producers and Directors Alcohol and Drug Abuse Committee. "But we were unwittingly making drinking macho, cute and acceptable." Thanks to pressure by the 175-member committee, concerned over sending subliminal messages into the nation's living rooms each night, most drinking scenes have been cut from Dallas scripts.