Kingsley offers some advice for drinking abroad. A few of these items, I'm guessing, would apply locally as well:
Faced with a choice between bad or untrustworthy red wine on the one hand, and ditto white on the other, pick the red.
Smell the stuff carefully before drinking.
If the red strikes you as thick, dark and heavy, feel no shame in cutting it with the local bubbly mineral water; worth trying in parts of Italy and Spain.
Gin men should slip a small bottle of Angostura into their luggage. You can knock together some sort of drink with it–and gin–under almost any conditions, and you can never find it abroad; well, yes, Gibraltar and Malta, perhaps.
One of partners got me a nifty flask for Christmas. After reading this, I went and filled it up.
