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A man cannot make him laugh; but that’s no marvel, he drinks no wine.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY IV
IN BRIEF: Like beer, moderate wine drinking is a fun and healthy way to enjoy life. Approximately one glass of wine per day for men or women can have many health benefits, including a reduced risk of heart attacks and other cardiac events and type 2 diabetes.
In Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for stealing bread to feed his starving family. Thanks to the draconian legal system of 1800s France, this five-year sentence stretches to nineteen years. During that time Valjean is forced to work the oars in the galleys of French ships and is locked in the Bagne of Toulon, an infamous dungeon-like prison. Here, Valjean and his real-world counterparts have an iron ring and chain weighing about fifteen pounds clasped around their ankles. Along with meager daily portions of bread and bean soup, they received a daily ration of wine . . . yes, wine.
At the time, it was acceptable to jail people for years for a minor infraction, chain them to their beds by night, and force them into hellish, terrifying labor by day, but deprive them of wine? You can’t do that.
That would be cruel.
Today the galleys are long gone, but wine remains as much a part of French culture as cheese, frog legs, and hard-to-pronounce words. The beverage’s considerable health benefits, and the healthy appetite those living in France have for it, often are thought to contribute to the “French Paradox,” the counterintuitive way in which the French have lower rates of coronary heart disease while enjoying a diet high in saturated fats.
Indeed, when it comes to possible medicinal alcohol consumption, wine is in many ways the poster child of healthy drinking. Its potential health benefits have been recognized longer and are met with less skepticism than the benefits of beer or spirits.
Wine drinkers, like alcohol drinkers in general, enjoy a wide variety of benefits above and beyond the flavor of their drink of choice. More than a hundred studies point to between a 25 and 40 percent reduction in risk of death from all cardiovascular causes for moderate wine drinkers. The beverage also has been linked to decreased rates of type 2 diabetes and slower cognitive decline. Just remember, as with beer, these benefits have been found in moderate drinkers: those who drink about one or so 5-ounce glasses of wine a day.1
We’re halfway through our first 5-ounce glass of wine for the day at an Italian restaurant a short drive from New York City. We discuss how in addition to the general positive effects of moderate alcohol consumption, wine has many unique health properties and is rich in antioxidants and nutrients. Some of the world’s longest-living people consume it regularly. In The Blue Zones, author Dan Buettner discusses the lifestyle traits of centenarians, people a hundred years old and older, in areas of the world where there are extremely large numbers of them. For example, in Sardinia, Italy, where there are ten times more centenarians per capita than in the United States, Buettner and his fellow researchers found long-lived Sardinians generally walked several miles a day throughout their lives, ate a mostly plant-based diet with occasional meat, were deeply connected to their communities and families, and enjoyed a glass or two of wine daily.
These aged Sardinians would find much to enjoy at this restaurant. It’s family owned and operated, and each meal is prepared fresh with great care. The portions are medium sized, and sauces are used sparingly, but are rich with flavor. The wine is important, but not the most important part of the meal; that honor belongs to the food itself and to the sense of companionship shared by those dining.
In the 1970s, the elder of this book’s coauthors was a medical student in Italy, and it was then that he first witnessed the cultured and moderate appreciation of wine that Buettner observed in the Sardinians. Harry lived in a beautiful city where the ancient stone street was shaded by medieval archways, with a central piazza that was a beacon for the community.
It was here that, as noted in the introduction, Harry came to appreciate what Italians call la dolce vita, “the sweet life.” He would unwind after long days studying medical textbooks with a glass or two (okay, sometimes more) of the local vintage at home or with friends in town, often while enjoying handmade pasta and other Italian delicacies.
Almost every farm had grapes, and farmers made their own wine. Many of these wines were stored in giant roadside containers reminiscent of propane tanks. The wine could be purchased at bargain prices and you’d bring your own 50-liter demijohn and have it filled, much like one might buy gas here.
Harry also gained an appreciation of the hard work that went into harvesting the grapes for wine after working as a grape picker for a local vineyard in Umbria, Italy. Picking grapes was difficult, stooped labor. The more seasoned farmworkers (contadini) at the vineyard taught him to conserve energy by slowing down when the owner (padrone) was not around. When the landlord was nearby, cries of “Il padrone!” would ring out in warning from other grape pickers, so all of them could pick up the pace a bit and avoid any trouble. The lesson of these temporary slowdowns was that hard work and relaxation are not diametrically opposed, and that at the end of a long day in the fields picking grapes, one could, and arguably should, treat oneself to the fruit of that labor.
In Connecticut in the present day, as our meal draws to a close, Patty Ofgang (Harry’s wife and Erik’s mother) recalls how in Italy, the appreciation of wine extends from the countryside into medical facilities. She worked as a nurse at an Italian hospital, where her duties included giving each patient their daily allotment of wine. She says that quite often, this and some chamomile tea would make it unnecessary to give a patient a sleeping pill in the evening. She and Harry fondly recall the oft-heard chant by young and old alike in Italy: “L’acqua fa male, il vino fa cantare” (water makes you feel bad, wine makes you sing).
The concept of wine in hospitals may be alien to many, but wine as medicine has a long history. Hippocrates, who was born in 460 BC, used wine as a disinfectant to clean wounds, mixed it with herbs to make them more palatable, and used it as medicine in its own right—prescribing the drink as a cure for diarrhea and pain during childbirth. He once wrote, “Wine is an appropriate article for mankind, both for the healthy body and for the ailing man.”
Moderate wine drinking by those who treat wine not as a highway to drunkenness but as an ingredient in la dolce vita, to relax from the hustle and bustle of daily life, may bring not only the momentary delight of the wine but also may help the drinker live longer and age more gracefully.
The evidence has long supported these observations, and the studies highlighting wine’s many virtues continue to be conducted. In 2015, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study in which participants in Israel with controlled type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to drink either 150 milliliters (a little more than 5 ounces) of mineral water, white wine, or red wine with dinner for two years. All three groups followed a Mediterranean diet without caloric restriction.
The results give red wine lovers plenty to toast.
Those assigned to drink red wine saw modest but significant decreases in cardiometabolic risk (a person’s chances of having diabetes, heart disease, or stroke), in part because it increased HDL (good cholesterol). As an added bonus, drinkers of both red and white wine enjoyed better-quality sleep than the water drinkers. Unlike many alcohol studies, which are epidemiology studies, this was a randomized control study, considered a better method for pinpointing specific traits or behaviors.2
A 2005 study published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology found that those who had one to eight glasses of wine a week were less likely to develop colon tumors.3 And wine, like beer and spirits, has been shown to reduce cognitive decline and the onset of Alzheimer’s, as well as decrease the chances of developing type 2 diabetes.4
In particular, two ingredients in wine are hailed for their health-giving properties: resveratrol and procyanidins. Resveratrol is a naturally occurring compound found in grape skins that has been linked to reductions in osteoporosis, decreased fat cell production, and reduction of blood pressure. Particularly prevalent in red wine, resveratrol has been shown to slow the aging-related degenerative process in the lungs of mice5 and increase the lifespan of mice on high-calorie diets.6
As incredible as some of these laboratory results on resveratrol have been, a 2006 study by researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, concluded that there was not enough resveratrol present in wine to account for the beverage’s health benefits. Instead, this study suggested that procyanidin compounds, also found in wine, are more likely responsible for some of wine’s health benefits. They found procyanidins “are present at higher concentrations in wines from areas of southwestern France and Sardinia, where traditional production methods ensure that these compounds are efficiently extracted during vinification.” As the study concluded, “These regions also happen to be associated with increased longevity in the population.”7
Despite the unique health properties of wine, recent studies have suggested the health benefits of wine, beer, and spirits are more closely related. In other words, wine’s healthiest ingredients are not fully understood. If you’re a wine drinker, cheers and keep on drinking what you’re drinking. If you’re a beer or spirits drinker, there’s not enough evidence showing a significant difference between wine and other alcoholic beverages to justify an unwanted switch, though it never hurts to broaden your drinking horizons, so mix in a glass of wine here and there.8
As with beer and other alcohol, drinking wine may have some risk, especially for women, but overall many negative studies are inconclusive and at this point indicate that the rewards of moderate drinking may outweigh the risks.
Whether you’re locked up in a French dungeon like Jean Valjean or find yourself in an Italian hospital, wine—the drink of both peasants and kings—may be a good dietary choice and is a key part of the lifestyle of many of the globe’s healthiest cultures and communities. As those who live on the Mediterranean are already aware, wine can be an important part of living la dolce vita.