A standard bottle of wine is only three doubles of spirits. An alcoholic can easily drink three doubles in a couple of minutes. I could certainly do that, when I was a practising alcoholic. But I would have the spirits, not wine. The wine is a probably a good deal cheaper than spirits, per measure of alcohol (not that we think in measures; we hand pour what we need). He is doing that to give himself a quick fix. He would do that if he had just woken up , for example. On waking, we have a great need for alcohol suddenly. I would keep a bottle of vodka by my bed, with something to mix it with, usually a carton of tomato juice. If, by chance, I forgot and found, to my horror, that I had no alcohol, there was a desperate rush to the nearest outlet. The rule was, I think, that it could not be sold before 8.30 but that changed to 8, I seem to remember. Even drinking socially, I needed a double every twenty minutes or so to keep functioning normally. He's an alcoholic; typically,like me, he would be drinking well over a litre bottle of vodka a day or its equivalent. Put in the whole context, his drinking, as witnessed, is nothing extraordinary