Dr Vino's wine blog

SPIT: Food and wine gone awry
Cabernet and wedding cake, Cabernet and mac n cheese, pulled pork and Burgundy – great comments, and they’re yours! Check out all of the great and wonderful food pairings that knocked your world.

SPIT: the hippocampus!
Wine drinkers have a 10 percent smaller hippocampus than those who drink spirits or beer, researchers say! But I thought “Red wine antioxidants protect hippocampal neurons against ethanol-induced damage“! Ugh, my brain hurts.

SPIT: Chinese wine!
“Millions of Chinese will be disappointed by their first taste of wine” is Jancis Robinson’s assessment of home-grown wines in China. Reporting on a recent trip, she, too, was “disappointed” by the “chemical and occasionally rotten odours” in the wines and general lack of progress with the industry over the past five years. [FT]

SIPPED: Holy wine
In Manchester they may go for Fairtrade wine, but Craig Heffley and Seth Gross of Wine Authorities, a wine retailer in Durham, NC, have another goal in mind for the Duke Chapel: tasty. They plan to start selling a 3L bag-in-box next summer for use in the Eucharist. [Durham News]

SPIT: drinking wine
“The 2006 Insolia from Feudo Principi di Butera…can be pleasurably inhaled for minutes.” Going easy on the hippocampus, was he? [NYT]

SIPPED: understatement
Talk about an impossible food wine pairing! Wine critic and blogger Peter Liem visits a sake festival in Japan and eats live shrimp: “My first two passed complacently, but a third, a female full of salty-sweet roe, twitched a little as I decapitated her with my fingers.” What’s his title for this juicy posting? “Niigata Prefecture.” Tony Bourdain, your job is safe–for now!–until Peter recruits a headline writer from Gawker… [peterliem]

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While we were all out during the holidays, a fascinating piece by David Leonhardt about tax and wine ran in the business section of the Times. He met with Philip Cook, a Duke economist and Yellow Tail lover, who argues in his book that wine is getting a free ride from a tax perspective. The federal excise tax on wine has stayed level at $1.07 a gallon (about $0.21 a bottle, a tax that must be paid before the wine leaves the winery) since 1992. So Cook argues that we are “subsidizing” wine since the real tax rate has fallen by 33% in that time. He advocates doubling the excise tax on wine and alcohol since he says that the tax doesn’t cover the “costs” of alcohol on society. Here’s the way Leonhardt sums it up:

And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs. Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn’t coming close to covering those costs — the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.

Wine has ethyl alcohol in it so it contributes to these statistics. But the argument has floated around for centuries that wine is consumed differently than beer and spirits. Since at least the time of Thomas Jefferson, wine has had advocates who see wine as a drink of moderation since it is mostly consumed with food.

Further, since about 1991 when “60 Minutes” popularized the notion of the “French paradox,” there have been many studies underscoring the health benefits of wine, particularly the role of tannins. Heck, resveratrol extends life and promises fat-free gluttony!

So what do you say, does wine still deserve a sin tax? Of course, Cook does not take into account the fact that wine geeks already have been paying a “tax” called the declining dollar. Sobering indeed.

And if we’re opening the discussion of taxes and wine, there’s always the environmental cost of the wine industry in the form of greenhouse gases. A carbon tax, perhaps?

Reader mail: Which has more calories, red or white wine?
-Jill via yahoo mail

Well although I am a doctor, I’m not that kind of doctor. But I know where to turn. So I sat down with Geoff Kalish, MD who used to write a column about wine and health for the Wine Spectator.

Dr. Vino: So which is more caloric, red or white?

Dr. Kalish: Neither. The color of the wine makes no difference on the calories.

Dr. V: Aha! A red herring. So what does make one glass of wine more caloric than another?

Dr. K: Primarily, the alcohol level. A four ounce glass of wine at 12 percent alcohol has about 120 calories; the same size with a wine 14 percent alcohol has about 140-160 calories; a 16 percent alcohol wine, about 160-190 calories.

Dr. V: Holy Turley, Batman! What about residual sugar in a wine? Does that make a difference in the calories?

Dr. K: Not as much as alcohol.

Dr. V: What about moscato d’Asti at 5.5% alcohol and lots of sugar?

Dr. K: Sugar provides many less calories per gram than does alcohol (4 compared to 7). Moscato is a lower calorie wine. That, prosecco, brut zero Champagne are all low calorie wine choices. It’s zinfandel, amarone, some California chardonnays, for example, that have higher calories because of the alcohol level.

Dr. V: So should people watching their weight cut wine out as an easy way to reduce calories?

Dr. K: No. Research has shown a small amount of wine in a weight loss plan can actually act as an appetite suppressant, in part because of the alcohol level as well as the pectin content. However, young, tannic reds appear not to have this effect, so aim for a wine that is 11 – 12% alcohol and not overly tannic.

Dr. V: Interesting. I thought red wine was overall the “healthier” drink because of those tannins.

Dr. K: Tannins may have other health benefits but this is just in terms of acting as an appetite suppressant.

Dr. V: All right, thanks. And bottoms up with a dry chenin blanc!

Imagine my surprise the other evening when that I thought that through the rosé blur I saw a naked woman on the label. Was this one of those subliminal messaging ads? No. There she was, in silhouette on the label of Domaine Bernard Baudry Chinon rose 2006, and about nine months pregnant. And she was tossing back some wine. And that had a big line through it.

Would this wine make you infertile? Oh no. The penny dropped. This was some illustrated warning against drinking wine while pregnant!

Funny that it was a wine from France of all places, not the America, the land of the free and the Surgeon General.

And to top off the odd juxtaposition, I was chatting with a pregnant woman the other day in New York who had just had a prolonged amniocentesis. She said that the doctor had told her to go home and have a glass of wine to relax. And no, she wasn’t Rachel Weisz.

Wow, American doctors recommending wine. French wine makers posting warnings. Talk about changing attitudes to wine!

This just in: two wine and health news items! Up first, with a headline like “Cyanidin-3-rutinoside, a Natural Polyphenol Antioxidant, Selectively Kills Leukemic Cells by Induction of Oxidative Stress,” my eyes glaze over, even if it is yummy cyanidin under discussion. Cut to the Fredricksberg Lance-Star for the giddy synopsis:

AMAZING! It has been found that a pigmentation chemical that makes grape skins and wines red has been found to kill human leukemia and lymphoma cells cultured in a lab, according to research to be published May 4 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. [Fredricksberg Lance-Star, Journal of Biological Chemistry; thanks, Ryan!]

Meanwhile, Down Under, item number two, not from university researchers. The summary:

Screwcap wine drinkers have been given a health warning by wine writer Keith Stewart, who says there may be a link between the seal and increasing rates of breast cancer…[and] warns that the polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) seal used in the screwcaps is one of the endocrine disrupters identified by cancer researchers. [Marlborough Express; thanks, Jack!]

:rolleyes:

Related: “Resveratrol now promises cardiovascular sloth” [Dr. Vino]

Red wine beats the greenback
“Like chocolate was to the Aztecs, wine has become the ultimate currency,” said Daphne Derven, an independent scholar on food and wine based in Eugene, Ore. “It appears that the thieves, whoever they were, had more faith in the stability and accruing value of the ultimate bottle of wine than the American dollar.” The big wine heist in Silicon Valley [NYT]

Red wine makes greenbacks for entrepreneurs (almost)
In a cover story with a provocative headline, Fortune magazine profiles Sirtris, the biotech start-up that is trying to commercially develop resveratrol. The research into naturally occurring compound in red wine has been led by Dr. David Sinclair, red wine hater, at Harvard. It may hold the key for fighting diseases associated with aging. [Fortune]

IN: Yves Bénard
Yves Bénard, head of the Champagne division at LVMH and co-president of the regional Champagne body (CIVC), is likely to assume the presidency at the French wine regulatory body, INAO. Given that Champagne is one of the most commercially viable wine regions and Bénard is no stranger to brands, is he the man to lead the appellation system out of the morass they are in? [Decanter]

OUT: Michel Rolland
Two years after Michael Broadbent criticized their wine in the documentary Mondovino, the owners of Chateau Kirwan have dumped him. Begin the Rolland backlash? [Decanter.com–link mysteriously removed]

Wine for no greenbacks in NYC
Free, public tasting of 2005 Chateauneuf-du-Pape with importer Alain Junguenet, at Tribeca Grill on Feb. 3rd from 12:00-4:00. Six winemakers will be there pouring samples.

tags: wine | wine tasting | wine collecting

“I don’t care about red wine,” Dr. David Sinclair told the Boston Globe in a story that ran on Monday. Why should we care that he doesn’t care?

Sinclair, associate professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Pathology, is the lead researcher in the much-reported study about resveratrol and aging. He and his research team found that resveratrol extended life in yeast cells first, then tried it on mice. The mice not only lived longer but had lower incidence of diabetes.

Resveratrol is a naturally occurring component in red wine among other things. Lab mice were given the equivalent amount of resveratrol as a human would find in 300 glasses of wine.

So what’s up with the ‘tude, dude? Why denigrate red wine in it’s entirety? Where’s the respect for the French Paradox? Or intellectual curiosity? Or gastronomic adventure? He’s from Australia, after all. He may win a medal one day for his research on aging, but I doubt anyone is going to send him a case of shiraz with an attitude like that toward the fruits of the vine.

The 37 year old researcher is obsessed with mortality (if he wants to postpone death, what does he do with his equally inevitable tax payments?). “Aging is the worst thing that has ever been put upon humanity,” he told the Globe. Well, I guess he’ll be popping pills–not corks–til he’s old and crinkly. But he might just want to chill out from time to time, live that long life a bit, and have a glass of old vine grenache.

Related
“His research targets the aging process”, Boston Globe
Sinclair Lab, with pics of him and his research team
“Resveratrol now promises cardiovascular sloth” [Dr. V]
“BREAKING: resveratrol extends life and promises free gluttony” [Dr. V]

Two weeks ago a team of American researchers promised what the New York Times story called “guilt-free gluttony” through resveratrol, a component found in red wine.

Now, in a scientific detente, French researchers are doing them one better: cardiovascular-improving sloth. To wit:

“Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training,” said Dr. Johan Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France who led the study. [Read full story]

This is going to be serious competition for the ab toning belt.

We all know that red wine can cause pinot envy. So only four deadly sins to go! What will resveratrol create next? Humble pride? Gentle anger? Generous greed? Platonic lust?!?

Related:
“Lose weight on a red wine diet”–with video of lab mice! [Daily Telegraph]