The Review - FOOD & DRINK - The Wine Press with DON & JOHN Published: 17th January 2008
iIlustrations from the cover of The Wine Diet
The best way to raise a glass to your health
An analysis of why ‘moderate’ drinking is good for you carries an interesting message about the sort of wines we should drink
THE most important function of wine is to improve the taste of food and aid its digestion. Can we go beyond this and say that drinking wine has wider benefits for health?
Professor Roger Corder’s message in his book The Wine Diet is that wine drinkers have less heart disease and diabetes and are less likely to suffer from dementia in old age. One to three glasses of wine a day (from one-sixth to a half of the standard 75cl bottle) are defined as “moderate”.
The book’s argument can be divided into three stages:
l explaining the perceived beneficial effects of wine on health;
l exploring more precisely its protective qualities;
l identifying which wines have these qualities and which do not.
This ambitious plan involves separating out the influence of wine from diet and lifestyle, and, having completed this, reassembling the three into “a complete nutrition and lifestyle plan”.
Complete nutrition means eating foods that balance fats, carbohydrates and proteins and that meet vitamin and mineral requirements.
Given this scope, it is not surprising that space has had to be sacrificed to exercise, dieting, vitamins, recipes etc. This is done at the expense of Professor Corder’s own research into the properties of red wine which, arguably, deserves a fuller account.
Modern medical research starts with the need (particularly as we age) to protect our blood vessels from atherosclerosis, the build up of fatty deposits in the arteries that can obstruct the flow of blood.
High levels of polyphenols, a principal determinant of colour and taste in red wine, have beneficial effects on the cells coating our blood vessels that control blood supply. The most abundant polyphenols are chemicals called procyanadins that give young red wine its astringency and later on the “condensed tannins” that determine structure and ageing.
In maintaining a healthy artery wall within our blood vessels, they may also help to explain – along with diet and lifestyle – why certain populations live longer than others.
This takes Professor Corder to the Nuoro province in Sardinia, which has the highest proportion of centenarians in Europe, vividly illustrated by a number of offers to introduce him to local people who could remember DH Lawrence’s visit to the island in 1921. (Lawrence praises the local Sorgono wine in his book Sea and Sardinia.)
The next stop is Crete (popular with researchers into ageing), then to Georgia (where the Saperavi grape is rich in procyanidins). Corder, however, settles on south-west France where the highest proportion of very old people was recorded in the 1999 French census. Thanks to the Tannat grape, wines of the area have the highest concentration of procyanadins he has yet discovered.
Concentrating on Madiran and the wines of Côtes de Saint-Mont, Corder argues persuasively that the coming together of this astringent, “almost brutally” tannic grape and a small number of winemakers not afraid to experiment, has produced “outstanding wines with the authentic character of the region”. But, he says, “the tannic taste of such wines is precisely what many modern wines lack”. This is because “a high proportion of modern red wines could be described as alcoholic fruit drinks, low in tannins and with little health benefit”.
To put it precisely, it’s scarcely worth regarding them as wines at all.
Surprisingly this needn’t restrict choice. Where wine-makers are going for longer fermentation periods and maceration, the wine will retain reasonable concentrations of the necessary procyanadins.
Consequently, Corder is able to recommend individual vineyards in Argentina, Australia, California, Chile, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Uruguay as well as other parts of France.
The good news doesn’t end there. Benefits are independent of alcohol and therefore present in other foods. These include cocoa, “good” black chocolate, apples, cranberries, raspberries and other berry fruits, pomegranates, the lesser-known persimmons and sharon fruit, as well as nuts and cinnamon. “Good” chocolate means the bitter, tannic taste similar to that in wine.
If we extend the argument, this may be part of a general move away from sugar, over-sweet foods and the “Coca-Cola generation”.
• The Wine Diet: A Complete Nutrition and Lifestyle Plan.
By Roger Corder. Sphere £9.99.
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