City of Softies : Trends: Many L.A. party-goers won’t touch the hard stuff. Wine, soda and water are increasingly ‘in’ on the social circuit.

There’s a new social axiom: You can lead a guest to the bar, but you can’t make him drink. Maybe he’ll sip some white wine. Perhaps he could be cajoled into accepting a margarita. But essentially, we live in the days of white wine and water. A time when Diet Pepsi is more critical to a party’s success than Jim Beam.

“People are amazed at how low hosted bar bills are (at benefit parties),” says professional fund-raiser Judy Levy. “I’m not saying it’s cheap, but in the general scheme of things it’s become relatively inexpensive.

“It’s across the board, from political to nonprofit (fund-raising affairs). People are drinking and smoking less. The only thing you see more of is chicken on the menu.”

Experts point to a number of reasons for the decline in social drinking: the consciousness that alcohol is another drug to say no to, the awareness of the effect an alcoholic parent can have on a child, concern over health--health clubs have replaced bars as neighborhood hangouts.

“Between health clubs and coffeehouses, you never have to drink in a bar again,” says TV news producer Carla Soviero.

Also, new drinking and driving laws have had an effect. “It’s not as though you sit in jail for three days in a bathrobe and puffy slippers catching up on your reading,” said a Los Angeles club promoter who was caught with his blood-alcohol level slightly over the legal limit, a first offense. It took six months for him to regain driving privileges. He spent three days gardening at a sheriff’s station. There were 30 hours (with no more than two hours a week) of alcohol-education classes and group therapy, six Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, three years’ probation, plus $1,300 in fines and court costs. And his insurance went from $560 to $1,500 annually.

It’s no wonder hosts have scaled back on liquor.

“Thirty to 35 years ago you always had a pitcher of gin martinis and a pitcher of manhattans in the refrigerator,” says publicist Dale Olson, who entertains at home often. “When people came over you immediately poured a drink. Twenty years ago if you had 100 guests at a party you’d spend $200 to $400 on booze. Now it’s maybe $70, and the rest is on soft drinks--and water, lots of water.”

Alcohol consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is at its lowest point since 1970. Market Watch, an industry publication, projects a further decline in the drinking rate until at least 2000.

In an effort to sell alcoholic beverages, the Beverly Hilton has a program in which waiters are trained to be more specific when asking guests for their orders. The idea is to suggest a drink--say a margarita or a wine cooler. “If you ask a guest, ‘Do you want a drink?,’ ” says catering manager Kathy Carpenter, “they’ll ask for iced tea.”

So many party-goers are calling for softer drinks that caterers have a name for bars without hard liquor--”clear bars,” which stock only wine, sodas and bottled water.

It’s understandable that when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles celebrated Roger Mahony’s ascension to cardinal only wine was served at the party for 1,000 at Union Station.

But when the thoroughly secular Television Academy of Arts and Sciences dedicated its new home recently, it also stuck with wine.

When “Star Trek VI” had its wrap party at the Museum of Flying, organizers first opted for a clear bar, then decided to run out for jugs of vodka and Scotch. The hard liquor was hardly touched.

It doesn’t look as if there’s much change on the horizon. Those accustomed to hard liquor belong to an older crowd, and they stay with it because “they came from it and they enjoy it,” says Ray Henderson of Rococo catering.

The heaviest drinkers are men ages 21 to 34, but they tend to “begin weaning themselves off alcohol in their early 30s,” says Andrea Mitchell of the Berkeley Alcohol Research Group.

John Aungier, who manages the Young Dubliners, a band that plays in the predominantly Irish bars of Santa Monica, bemoans Americans’ declining alcohol consumption. “You can’t imagine how the bars stay in business,” he says. “If you go into one of the Irish or English bars you never see a sign about a two-drink minimum,” he said. “There’s simply no need.

“Europeans still drink a lot. A lot of English and Irish grow up in an environment where social life revolves around going to a bar. There’s none of that belonging to a health club or hanging out at the beach.”