But his wife claims he wasn't much of a drinker.
What you're saying goes along with the wife's statement— she said he was a careful drinker.
Remember, Mrs. Byrne said Jeffrey wasn't much of a drinker.
He is at once the gigantic eater of Turpin, the huge warrior eight feet high, who could lift the armed knight standing on his open hand to a level with his head, the crusading conqueror of Jerusalem in days before the crusades, and yet with all this the temperate drinker and admirer of St Augustine, as his character had filtered down through various channels from the historical pages of Einhard.
El Motaddid was a poet and a lover of letters, who was also a poisoner, a drinker of wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree.