Sophia Money-Coutts: Why clinking glasses and saying ‘Cheers!’ is a tiny bit embarrassing

Let’s start with a quick test: you’re sitting around a table with a handful of friends and you’ve each just been handed a crisp, full, deliciously cold glass of wine. Before having a sip, do you:

a) clink your glasses together and cry ‘Cheers!’

b) lift your glass slightly in the air and mumble ‘good health?’

Time’s up. It’s the second one. Almost everyone these days thinks the first option is polite. Actually, saying ‘Cheers!’ and clinking glasses is monstrously common and means you don’t have the right glasses. Real poshos have crystal glasses and wouldn’t dream of smashing them together lest they chip or crack, so they lift them and mutter ‘good health’ instead, then get on with the important matter of drinking.

It is one of those generational schisms. My father and uncle view clinking glasses as more embarrassing than farting in public, whereas anyone under 45 (ish) may think differently. Occasionally, I will admit, when I’m out with friends and everyone lifts their glasses expectantly, I join so as not to out myself as a honking snob. But what a faff. Someone at one end of the table isn’t paying attention, so they’re late with clinking their glass when everyone else is near dying of thirst. ‘Come on, Rupert!’ someone cries, and Rupert eventually snaps to it and picks up his glass, but then everyone slowly and deliberately has to widen their eyes at everyone else around the table, as if you’re playing a game of Wink Murder, and there’s always someone who insists on clinking with absolutely every single person, so just as you retract your glass, just as you’re about to take that first sip, they protest. ‘Sophia, hang on! I missed you!’ they say, stretching their glass out, putting another precious few seconds between you and your wine, which is now almost warm because this ordeal has taken so long.

Medieval drinkers in bawdy alehouses cracked their tankards against others to slosh their beers together and denote the contents weren’t poisoned. Except how likely is it really, these days, that your 6pm glass of sauvignon blanc will have been poisoned? Unless you’re working for a rogue state in some capacity, fairly slim.

Some believe clinking glasses and cheering wards off demons or evil spirits, that the sound of glass against glass replicates the holy sound of church bells (I suspect whoever thought of that one had enjoyed a few). Also, that smashing glasses together would spill a few drops on the floor for the evil spirits, so they didn’t feel hard done by. But worrying about evil spirits floating around at floor-level seems overly paranoid when you’re at a dinner party in Battersea. Stick to ‘good health’ if you want to sound proper.