Is wine good for you?

The pendulum always swings when it comes to what foods and beverages are good for your health. I remember in the 70’s we were told that fat was bad, and along with that came cheese, avocados, butter, and bacon. Oh, the horror. People switched to margarine. I remember tubs of that processed hydrogenated vegetable oil taking up valuable space on the shelves of our fridge. (My father threw his body in front of the train when it came to cheese, but that’s another story. “It’s health food!” he would exclaim.)

If my father were alive to see the latest trend of alcohol-free beverages kicking wine off the grocery store shelves, he would be horrified. Wine was as much a part of our family dinners as were utensils on the table. My parents considered it the perfect complement to food, and despite the alcohol it contained, a healthy beverage – when taken in moderation. And yes, there were studies that backed this up. The Mediterranean diet was all the rage, and it included a couple of glasses of wine a day. The Europeans were living longer, with less obesity and heart disease, than their American counterparts, and they were also consuming a lot more wine.

“I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” – W.C. Fields

In my early 20’s I began to look closely at my diet due to some health issues. Not a single item went into my shopping cart without me reading the list of ingredients. I remember at the time that I had taken a liking to Mike’s Hard Lemonade (don’t judge, I was young and White Claw wasn’t around yet). I was shocked when I turned the bottle around and couldn’t find an ingredient list. What was in this stuff? And furthermore, why was breakfast cereal required to list ingredients and health information, and this mystery beverage not? The answer lies in government regulation. Food products are regulated by the FDA while alcohol is controlled by the TTB. The TTB has no label requirements for ingredients. They require manufacturers to list alcohol content, a sulfite warning, and little else. The Surgeon General recently made a suggestion that alcoholic beverages should also carry a cancer warning on the labels, much like cigarettes. I can hear my father screaming from the sky about this one.

“Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” – Alexander Fleming

Many studies have shown that there are health benefits to wine that is consumed in moderation. Furthermore, not all wines are created equal. Large-scale, supermarket brands tend to make their wine more like Coca Cola. It’s a formula. They want it to taste the same every time you pull a cork (or twist a screw cap), regardless of vineyard source or vintage. The TTB allows up to 75 chemicals that wineries are allowed to add to their wines, with no requirements to list them on the label. I can only imagine how many of these chemicals are in the bestselling big brands.

The lesson to be learned from this is that healthier (and more honest) wines usually come from the small producers, who are looking to make a wine according to its traditional, natural process of fermenting grapes with yeast, aging in oak barrels, and adding a small amount of sulfur prior to bottling for stability and freshness; like we have always done at Lumen. And starting in 2024, all of our wines labels will come with a list of ingredients, so you know exactly what you are drinking. “Wine is health food!” My father also liked to exclaim, and in our case, he was right.

-Will Henry