Why Wine can Actually be Good for you

If a winter were to tell you, in one of his advertisements, that you ought to drink wine because it is the best of all tranquilizers—one product of nature that relaxes you gently with no harm to your system—he would be promptly taken to task by the United States Government, which has the power to revoke his license and put him out of business. There is a certain federal regulation, ambiguous in its language but backed up by some unambiguous bureaucratic rulings, that effectively prevents him from advertising this important truth.

It is high time that someone came forth with that best of all reasons (there are plenty of others!) why tension-tormented America should include wine in its daily diet! Before anyone asks "Aren't beer, whiskey and gin the same as wine?" and "Are you advocating that we all become alcoholics?" lets address both questions.

Wine is essentially a natural product; malt and distilled beverages are manufactured. The grape is the only fruit that will preserve itself naturally, without anything being added or taken away. This is because it contains fermentable sugars and because the dust like "bloom" on its skin contains natural yeasts that can ferment those sugars into alcohol. If we crush a handful of grapes and leave the juice in a cup, it will turn into wine.

There is a great deal more in wine than mere alcohol. It has been medically substantiated that wines, depending on their type, contain not only fruit sugars valuable in the human diet, but in addition are the only common alcoholic beverages containing significant quantities of the B vitamins, plus all of the thirteen mineral elements recognized as essential to maintain animal and human life. They also have the ability to improve appetite and promote digestion. A glass of Malbec a day can actually improve your health.

It is their non-alcoholic components, not found in spirituous beverages that make wines behave differently in the human body. Somehow, in ways not yet fully understood by medical researchers, the organic acids, esters, and nitrogen-bearing compounds in wines slow down the rate at which the alcohol in wines enters your blood stream. The slow rate of absorption is important. Your blood-alcohol level, when you drink wine, reaches a plateau instead of a peak; the alcohol circulates at low levels through your body, where it lulls and helps to relax your jumpy nerve centers; you feel a pleasant glow. The pleasant feeling from wine lasts longer than that from other drinks. Alcohol from the others gets into your blood more quickly; its effects are more sudden and more pronounced.

In other words, don't drink wine for a "kick," because if it's a kick you want, you will get it fastest and hardest from vodka. Wine's alcoholic effect is more gradual. If you haven't already discovered for yourself the relaxing quality of a fine glass of Petite Sirah, ask a few of your friends if wine doesn't make them sleepy more readily than a stronger drink does.

Some noted medical authorities have said that wine could well supplant 90% of the drugs used to induce sleep. There is also reason to wonder whether Americans would be gulping well over 65,000,000 aspirin tablets every twenty-four hours to reduce pain if more people used wine.