Sober in Italy?

Nobody will care - really.

Ask for a nice water, enjoy the meal, save a few coins.

dantbarnes, you have nothing to worry about; you won't be pressured at all. My husband and I do indulge but I rarely drink wine (I downed more beer than vino in Italy) and at no time or place were we ever 'encouraged' to order anything but what we wished to. Soft drinks tend to be quite expensive in restaurants but large bottles of mineral water are as common a fixture on tables as salt and paper are here, and cost just a few euros. There are sure to be other options available as well.

You'll be just fine, and you will also not be alone. :O)

I was in Italy for 14 days last year and consumed exactly one sip of wine while there. Nobody thought anything of it. I am a water drinker and had bottled water with each meal and for carrying around. Most places offer Sparkling water and un-carbonated varieties for sale..

Thanks everyone!!

I agree with Nigel - no one will care what you drink.

Just consider that 4 Italians out of 10 do not drink alcohol.

I was in Italy for 19 days and didn't have any alcohol do to the medicine I was taking. I even attended a wine tasting with my wife and it didn't even raise any eyebrows by my not drinking. It was a non issue during my visit to Italy.

This is a frequent question so I wonder where or why this idea got started that you have to have wine in Italy. I mean it is a good idea but no required. We are one glass per meal type and our splurge is maybe a whole bottle. If I feel forced to drink anything, it is that d...... fuzzy water. Definitely an acquired taste.

When you watch the cooking programs or the daytime tv shows that have cooking included , the chef's are always talking about Italian wines how much they all love them and sometimes commenting on how much they drink.... You certainly get the idea that is the norm. Then you also have the other programs or just anyone else on TV talking about wine ..

I have more trouble here in the states people who are bugged because I don't or "we " don't drink. It is like a personal offence if you don't . A couple of years ago a waiter in the afternoon " famous P. F. C..told my daughter , granddaughter and I that we should have a drink as we're boring if we don't. My granddaughter maybe was 19 ? which is legal but she could of been underage he didn't know how old she was .

Italian restaurants are very different from American ones, in that there's absolutely no pressure to finish, pay, and leave - it's so relaxing and pleasant. I can't imagine being pressured to drink wine, either.

Hubby and I are not drinkers AT ALL (we will have the rare hard lemonade). Never had any issues in any country - be it Germany, France, Italy...at home when we eat out, we generally have Coke/Sprite or iced tea. In Europe, I find the soda prices really expensive at restaurants (especially with the exchange rate - on average it would be about $7-8 in Canadian money for a glass of Coke, compared with the usual $3 we pay at home), so we'll generally get a litre or two of water and share that.

We've even stayed with couchsurfers who offered us beer/wine - never had any issue turning them down. I did partake in a glass of white when staying with some couchsurfers in France - I drank half of it and that was enough (I've just never acquired a taste for wine). The best one tho - some other couchsurfers in France offered us some hard apple cider - so we thought 'oh, we like cider' - ugh - it tasted like cough medicine...lol. We both took a sip, said nope - and our host was like - that's OK, I'll drink it :) And another host took us to a friends house for supper - they offered us wine, we said no, we don't do wine, so they sent their son out to get 'fake wine' - aka - grape juice. No one was at all offended.

Some stereotypes are stubborn, and one is that everyone in certain countries drinks alcohol, and that further in these places you will be criticized if you aren't having alcohol. In Italy, despite the stereotypes, neither one is true. Plenty of people in Italy will not be having wine with a meal, for various reasons. And while you may be asked if you want wine, it's no different than being asked if you want dessert - you are free to decline. You need not say why, either. But more common is just being asked what you want to drink.

Now getting tap water - that's hard. Be prepared to buy bottled mineral water. However, the large liter bottles of this are not that expensive in Italy, even in restaurants.

I am curious about where this idea comes from as it emerges here and on other travel sites from time to time. I have seen people pressured to drink in the US by their peers but have never observed waiters anywhere pressuring one one way or the other. Lots of Europeans don't drink with meals; alcohol has lots of calories and many people, particularly women don't drink for that reason. And no one cares what you order. You may get a raised eyebrow ordering cappucino after dinner (although it makes a lovely dessert) but they will still bring you one. No one will be slightly surprised or interested in whether you drink wine or water with the meal. In France, it is the norm to drink tap water and most people do it and it saves money; in Italy that is not really the case. We always drink bottled water; it isn't very expensive. And after observing people from a restaurant where we ate in Lucignano refilling the bottled water at the town pump, we always order it with gas. I doubt there are all that many refillers, but we know there is at least one. And if I am paying for bottled water, I would like to know I am getting it.

I have always been sober in Italy. I might have a single glass of wine with dinner, but not much more than that. No one, either on a RS tour or alone, has ever pushed wine or any other alcohol on me anywhere in Europe.

Been to italy a few times, no pressure whatsoever to drink neither wine nor beer

RE: ...consider that 4 Italians out of 10 do not drink alcohol.

Being interested in the origin of the 4 in 10 statistic, I found this:
http://www.euromonitor.com/alcoholic-drinks-in-italy/report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Economic recession still taking its toll on sales of alcoholic drinks

Italians drink less wine today than they did previously Despite being
one of the major countries worldwide for the production of wine, Italy
faces a continuous decline in per capita wine consumption. While in
the past Italian families would almost always have wine on the table
at every meal, today people prefer not to indulge in wine on a daily
basis, reducing consumption to a minimum. While the work routine is
not suitable for drinking wine during the day, consumption at other
times of the day is now limited to a few glasses, to the point where
consumers often prefer to buy wine in bag-in-box containers so as to
avoid wasting wine.

No obligation to order anything you don't want. Plenty of Italians don't drink by choice or doctor's order.

If you ask me the biggest pressure from restaurants is in America, where, even before you're finished your plate, they ask you if they can take it away and immediately put the check on the table. Of course they tell you "no rush" out of courtesy, but try to stay an additional 2 hours without ordering anything.

I have seen several of these questions here on the RS forums...where did they come from??? European restaurants aren't in the business of handing out free wine. Therefore if you don't order it they WON'T bring it - just like in the USA.

Italy and wine certainly go hand in hand....

Interesting Wine Institute data on world per capita consumption of wine:
http://www.wineinstitute.org/files/World_Per_Capita_Wine_Consumption_Revised_Nov_2015.pdf

Per capta in liters:
Vatican = 54.26
France = 42.52
Italy = 33.30
Germany = 24.84
UK = 21.99
Canada = 14.75
US = 10.25

Americans are near the bottom of the consumption list. Looks like the Vatican does a lot of sacraments.