FOUR MIDDLE-AGED MEN are seated in a restaurant; three are drinking Champagne. They mock the outlier and eventually persuade him to have a drink.

This scene occurs early in “Another Round,” the acclaimed 2020 film from Denmark (“Druk,” in Danish). It centers on four friends who decide to test the theory that their lives would be better if they only raised their daily blood-alcohol level. The theory, attributed to Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud—erroneously, Mr. Skårderud has insisted, as it’s based on a misreading of his writing—holds that people are born with a deficiency of .05% alcohol, and by increasing that level, their lives will become richer and more fulfilling. The friends begin drinking regularly, and what happens is both predictable and otherwise. By turns exhilarating and depressing, the film left me thinking about the appeal of alcohol.

I’m not referring to excessive drinking—though that certainly takes place in the film and in life. That’s likely why no one I know talks about the appeal of alcohol. A wine drinker might note that a particular bottle is high in alcohol or low in alcohol, based on the percentage listed on the label. But that’s about as much as alcohol ever comes up.

Even wine professionals avoid mentioning the appeal of alcohol when describing a particular wine. They might single out attributes such as aroma, texture, origin and history, even price and scarcity, for praise or scorn. I’ve never read a tasting note on a retailer’s website or shelf talker, or heard a sommelier describe how she or he felt after drinking a glass or two of a particular Burgundy or Napa Cabernet. Nor have I, for that matter, ever written such a tasting note myself.

OUT OF THE BOTTLE In the Danish film ‘Another Round,’ Martin (Mads Mikkelson) has an ambivalent relationship with drinking alcohol.

Photo: Everett Collection

Yet alcohol is an inevitable outcome of fermenting grape juice and clearly one of its most appealing components to those who consume it. As Napa winemaker Aaron Pott observed in an email, “The reason we decided to harness the power of rotting fruit is because of what it did to us. It was mind altering. It made us feel good, say crazy s--t, lose our inhibitions, stop and look at the stars. It is the best part of wine. Western culture and philosophy would be different without it.”

Alcohol in wine certainly can deliver soothing, settling pleasure, even delight—as often described by novelists, playwrights, poets and film directors. In the memoir “A Moveable Feast,” published in 1964, Ernest Hemingway recalls a long-ago trip through France with F. Scott Fitzgerald during which they drank a great deal of “white Macon wine” (a simple white Burgundy). “In Europe then we thought of wine as something healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well-being and delight,” he writes. On the other hand, as Hemingway adds just a few pages later, he realized that his traveling companion was not served well by the wine: “It was obvious he should not drink anything and I had not been taking good care of him. Anything that he drank seemed to stimulate him too much and then to poison him and I planned the next day to cut all drinking to the minimum.” Sadly, by the time Hemingway wrote these words, he had long been the worse for alcohol himself.

The four friends of “Another Round” cite Hemingway when they begin their drinking experiment. They will only drink during work hours, “like Hemingway,” one friend declares—though gradually their drinking seeps into other times of the day and eventually takes over their lives, as it did Hemingway’s.

It’s worth noting that many of the literary figures most troubled by (too much) alcohol are the ones who describe its appeal so well. Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 2” captures the beneficent feeling that good wine can bring: “It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit.”

I’ve felt a bit wittier after a glass or two of wine myself and witnessed that effect in friends—though the alcohol’s role in loosening our tongues isn’t discussed. When I asked my friend Robert, a big wine collector, if he thought about or talked about the alcohol in wine, his response was a firm no. “The wine experience is bigger than that,” he said, a bit censoriously perhaps. I pressed on: Isn’t alcohol part of wine’s appeal? Robert conceded that it is but added a cautionary note: “It’s important to know when to stop.”

““The reason we decided to harness the power of rotting fruit is because of what it did to us. It was mind altering.””

The pleasure of alcohol isn’t much discussed among wine professionals, said Tahiirah Habibi, a sommelier and the founder and CEO of the Hue Society, an organization dedicated to increasing access to the wine world for Black, brown and indigenous professionals. Ms. Habibi speculated that there is “shame” attached to feeling more confident thanks to a bit of alcohol, especially among female wine professionals.

While I would agree that that particular brand of shame is commonplace in American culture, the French have long had a greater regard for the pleasures of alcohol in wine. “We say in France that if during World War II soldiers had not had their daily bottle of wine, we would have lost the war,” said winemaker Véronique Boss-Drouhin of Domaine Drouhin Oregon and Maison Joseph Drouhin in Burgundy, in an email. While Ms. Boss-Drouhin noted that wine without alcohol would not be wine, she, too, sounded a note of caution: “It is too much of a tricky line nowadays to link pleasure and alcohol.”

World War II scholars will likely point out that Sir Winston Churchill was a prodigious wine lover before, during and after the war. He was especially keen on Pol Roger Champagne; the Champagne house returned the favor by naming their top cuvée after the great statesman. “A single glass of Champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred, the wits become more nimble,” Churchill wrote. However, he further noted, “A bottle produces a contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility.”

At the end of “Another Round,” the character Martin (played by Mads Mikkelsen) and his friends happen upon a crowd of young people dancing and drinking. Martin runs through the crowd; they spray him with beer and Champagne. He takes a drink and breaks into a riotously joyous, balletic dance. The very last frame of the film is purposely ambiguous. Has Martin finally become more aware, more connected—or destroyed himself? It’s an ambiguity that could be said to exist at the very heart of wine.

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Email Lettie at wine@wsj.com.

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