Here's a quote for N8:
Hip urbanites, she writes, turned drinking in moderation into a high-class avocation. The devotees arent drinkers. Theyre connoisseurs and critics, priests of ritual, sniffers and tasters, discerning scholars scowling thoughtfully into their glass. Fun has nothing to do with it. ... In the metropolitan haunts of the highly sophisticated, the cocktail is no longer an instrument of friendship but a competitive fashion statement, or one-upmanship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/review/Harris.t.html?ref=dining
Hip urbanites, she writes, turned drinking in moderation into a high-class avocation. The devotees arent drinkers. Theyre connoisseurs and critics, priests of ritual, sniffers and tasters, discerning scholars scowling thoughtfully into their glass. Fun has nothing to do with it. ... In the metropolitan haunts of the highly sophisticated, the cocktail is no longer an instrument of friendship but a competitive fashion statement, or one-upmanship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/review/Harris.t.html?ref=dining