Book Review: "Ancient Wine: the Search for the Origins of Viniculture" by Patrick E. McGovern

I hope you like pottery! Like, really really like pottery! A lot! Because that's what Ancient Wine by Patrick E. McGovern is pretty much all about. This is because when you go back thousands and thousands of years, before writing, all we can hope to know about ancient wine is through the pottery that survived and the residue that remains within.

Patrick E. McGovern is the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. According to this book, he and his laboratory have made some pretty incredible discoveries on the ancient history of wine, including the discovery that wine has been around for thousands of years before we thought.

Ancient Wine doesn't read like a story about wine, starting from the beginning and moving forward. Ancient Wine reads like the story of McGovern's career, going in the order of as things were revealed to him through his work. Although McGovern TRIES to keep it by place and time, it very much does bounce around all over the place a lot, so going into this it helps to know your ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilizations and their timelines.

Not only does Ancient Wine go into the history of wine (and beer, as well) in ancient times, but also the science behind the knowledge and technology that we use today to find what kind of beverage was in that pottery and how we know how old it is. Very, very cool book that will teach you a lot of very, very cool things you didn't know you wanted know.

(Originally published in 2003, this reprint from 2019 includes an Afterword by the author to catch you up on all of the updates in what we have learned and what is new in archaeological technology since the original printing.)

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Book Review: "Alcohol: The World's Favorite Drug" by Griffith Edwards (2000)

 "Alcohol: The World's Favorite Drug" was published in 2000, one year before I was legal to drink. I heard about it in the past month when it was mentioned in the book "Drunk" (read my review of that book here), and I was able to purchase a used copy online that once called Richards Library in Newport, New Hampshire, home.

The author of Alcohol is Griffith Edwards; an MD whose work is on the study of addiction to alcohol and other drugs, and you can definitely tell. The book is kind of misleading in title, as it focuses on alcohol dependency most of the time. And it does so very effectively, especially when it talks about alcohol dependency from the viewpoint of the dependent; how they think about it and the excuses they tell themselves.

It is not misleading in saying that it's "a look at fact and falsehoods, and how to tell the difference." There are many things that we all think we know about the history of alcohol that simply aren't true, but we've been conditioned into believing them by rhetoric from the anti-alcohol and pro-alcohol movements and industries.

"Alcohol is a fact around which are created myths, and those myths themselves then become powerful facts."

With the 90th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition upon us, let's use that as an example. The Gin Craze in eighteenth century England was really really bad, but nothing has touched alcohol abuse as much as America in the 1830's. This is when the US was at 18 liters per capita in consumption, whiskey was cheaper than tea and coffee, and there certainly was fair enough grounds for a temperance movement to grow. At first this movement was just against distilled spirits, but the conditions in the 1830's lead it to be against any alcohol at all, such as beer and wine

Fast forward 90 years, with many events and individual state prohibitions in between, what was a valid movement against a very real problem had become the myth that all alcohol consumption is evil and the cause of all of mankind's woes, which is simply not true but many still believe. This all lead to the US national Prohibition. Over the next decade and beyond, the anti-Prohibitionists blamed speakeasies and organized crime and bootlegging on Prohibition, and even though those existed long before Prohibition, this is rhetoric we still believe. Fascinatingly, calling alcoholism a disease started in the 1800's but faded in the early 1900's... but then it was revived by the anti-Prohibitionists to say "hey, it's not the alcohol that's the problem, it's YOU!"

"With intoxication, there is the supposed removal of decent civilizing restraint when those centres (autonomic nervous system) are anaesthetized by alcohol and the more primitive parts of the brain are allowed to take over control of the behavior. Often there seems to be more of a metaphor than of brain science in this kind of theory."

So yes, the book explains how facts turn into myth and then myth into facts as we know them, and it does it very well with each topic it touches.

Alcohol is basically a book about "to-drink-or-not-to-drink", a history of alcohol dependency and abuse, and then even recovery. So while it claims to be neither for or against the consumption of alcohol, and it proves that many times by staying with facts and keeping opinions in the grey area, the outcome of everything that it discusses weighs heavily on the downside of drinking over the upside. Honestly, that's where that facts go in science and history. (Drunk goes into how important drinking is to our social needs as humans, but still comes to the same conclusion in physical health costs.)

Thus, it is a very powerful book for those who need to quit, want to quit, struggling to be sober, or successful in sobriety.

It can be anyone. "... proneness to develop alcohol dependence does not have any single master explanation to cover every individual. It is not a matter of some people being doomed to alcohol dependence by their genes while the rest of us drink with impunity. And for any one individual no simple causal explanation is likely to suffice."

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Book Review: Wine Economics by Stefano Castriota

I was sent this book to review in December of 2020, just after one very difficult event in my life and just before another. Needless to say, I never got around to reading it until now.

Wine Economics was originally written in Italian, and later translated into English by and for the use of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 2020, with the addition of bringing the United States' Prohibition into discussion. I'm not sure when the original Italian version was printed, but none of the studies referenced or data given in the book took place after 2016. Being almost 4 years old (or older) there are just a few things that are probably a little out of date now but no big deal as they're still relevant. There is one that will give you a chuckle, though: When it states that there couldn't be a new adult beverage genre that could hurt sales of all other existing adult beverages, it clearly didn't see the canned cocktail craze coming.

Wine Economics covers EVERYTHING in, well, wine economics. From the vineyard, to the winery, to the consumer. It includes important things that need to be understood in the wine world, such as why prices will keep going up as the temperature does from climate change, the profound universal impact of cooperatives in every industry, how rapid increasing of appellations could cause consumer confusion, and even the benefits of local vineyards for people who do not drink.

It is very much a university textbook, so be prepared for reference names and years very, very often. Certain parts of the book were hard for me to get through, with my ADHD, because of this distraction occurring so often. Also, there are a lot of graphs and none of them made a lick of sense to me. Numbers and graphs are not the kind of smart I am.

"For every company that records very heavy losses, there is another that makes huge profits."

What is completely fascinating about this book is that it breaks down things in way that other wine books do not. When it talks about New World vs Old World, it just doesn't talk about style or laws. It breaks down, at length, the differences of production, distribution, company structure, marketing, and consumption, as well.

Because this is Wine Economics book, it isn't trying get you to have an opinion on something or make you believe in one side of something. It's simply stating facts, and it points out a lot of conflicting studies when it needs to be said there is a real reason for not having full evidence of something. Studies are so inconsistent on whether or not heavy investments in quality lead to actual higher profits, that it might not. There is less money invested in making an ocean of swill, and its sold for less, but it sells more. Apparently the only investments consistent for higher profit is aging, advertising, and promotion.

Also, take alcohol abuse, for example. There is no evidence that alcohol abuse is more prevalent with the poor and/or unemployed than the rich and/or employed because studies are always so different. It could be that the rich and/or employed have the means and tools to hide alcohol abuse better. But it also nails down consistent studies that leave no doubt of their accuracy, such as alcohol abuse is much higher in newly legal consumers and the elderly than those aged between.

This book is not for everybody. As I said, it is very much a university textbook with a lot of information and ZERO personality in its narration. But boy, did I learn a lot about things that I didn't even know that I wanted to know with all that information. The amount of research on statistics and studies done to make this book is staggering.

"Building a reputation requires significant short-term investments to obtain long-term returns."

Here's a list of things included in Wine Economics that I thought were worth mentioning:

Chapters 1-2: Costliness of consumption trends to wineries, concentration of varieties due to globalization, wine publicity's focus on higher quality win instead of the more produced and consumed jug and bulk wine, why wine prices will increase as the temperature does with climate change, grape growing contracts with wineries, how prices are established

Chapters 3-4: Porter's five forces of the wine sector (threat of new entrants, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitute products or services, rivalry among existing competitors), the structure of different forms of wine companies and their motivations, the profound universal impact of cooperatives in every industry (and how their existence has been ignored in education since McCarthyism), the innovation boost of industrial clusters

Chapters 5-6: big statistical study break-downs on if investments in wine collecting are are actually worth it, wine auctions, winery stocks, risk insurance for damage and currency, investment theory (there is all sorts of calculus-like formulas here and I have no idea what the heck is going on), collective and individual brand reputation, institutional reputation with explanation of European classification systems, problems with Italy's system, rapid increasing of appellations creating consumer confusion, studies on social capital of communities

Chapters 7-8: externality consequences and solutions for wine producers and consumers, the benefits of vineyards for those who do no drink wine, benefits of moderate consumptions (such as reduction of risk of cardiovascular disease), damage from abuse (physical and mental health, work, suicide, accidents, violence, cost in society), combating and preventing abuse, services like Uber may have increased alcohol abuse and bar employment, taxation of alcohol, USA's three-tiered system, the unlikely team-work of alcohol distributors and anti-alcohol movements (joining together to fight free distribution)

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Book Review: "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" by Edward Slingerland

Just by going back into the articles on this blog, it should be no secret to you that I'm a huge science and history geek. But I'm especially geeky about evolution and the cosmos. I've delved into so much Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Dawkins that it's ridiculous. Clearly, I'm also a wine geek, so when you combine those things together I'M IN!!!

I saw Drunk while browsing Barnes & Noble one day, trying not to lose my six year old and making sure the books my thirteen year old wanted were appropriate. I was like "Cool! A history of our drunk asses! SOLD!" but it was not like what I was expecting. Rather than accounts throughout history on our said drunken asses, this book asks the question:

How has evolution not eliminated our enjoyment of getting drunk? It's clearly harmful to your organs, leaves you with awful hangovers, and is a very common cause of death around the world, so you'd think those who refrained from booze for whatever reason would produce more offspring, and through evolution we'd have some reaction that would stop us from consuming ethanol. 

But this book goes through it all from the very beginning, and it goes deep into who we truly are as a species. How our primate lineage and instincts mixed with our worker-ant mentality and societies butt heads within our heads often, and because of this we need to shut down our prefrontal cortex to open up our creativity and inspirations.

Drinking and dancing together at the ancient ceremony or local pub builds trust and creates friendships. This has made the act of community drinking an important part of the human experience, and lead to the great ideas and progress we have made throughout history.

But the book also goes into a relatively new threat: the rise of ABV in wine (from 5% average to 12% average) and beer (we're seeing it get even bigger now with craft beer), the creation of distilled spirits (allowing you to get sloshed very quickly), and the ability to completely isolate ones self (drinking alone). Is this why evolution hasn't done anything about alcoholism yet? Is this drastic change to the alcohol we consume, the advancement of our technology, and social changes too new? And if we keep going in the direction we are, will evolution react?

At one point he wonders if there should be a different legal age for buying and consuming distilled spirits than wine and beer, and to me that completely makes sense. An earlier age for the lower ABV products of beer and wine would create a greater appreciation and respect for drinking, and there would be less abuse when the brain is developed enough for distilled spirits. For defending this, he uses the drinking cultures of southern Europe vs northern Europe.

Slingerland sticks up for the community pub and believes it's worth a hit to the liver to enjoy yourself, because if you can't enjoy yourself and your friends and be merry, then what do you have? But he takes a step back... well, many steps back and then moves closer and closer to a step back, to really analyze what's going on with us and our love of intoxication. He sees it through the eyes of both Spock and Kirk, and he's great at it.

I recommend this book to all the science, history, and wine geeks out there. It will reel you in and not let go until you're done.

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Book Review: "Fermentation as Metaphor" by Sandor Ellix Katz

"Just as people can project irrational fear of bacteria upon fermentation, people can project any number of irrational fears of contamination by the other upon the race/nation/culture."

Sandor Ellix Katz is obsessed with fermentation. He experiments with it, he writes about it, he takes pictures of it, he teaches about it. In his book "Fermentation as Metaphor" he not only goes into some of the science of fermentation, but sees the act of fermentation in human society and culture.

As he states, and I'm paraphrasing, things don't change effectively by fire. That burns everything down. It takes a slow fermentation, a "bubbling up", to make cultural changes and form social behavior. Actual fermentation breaks down nutrients into more accessible forms. Metaphorical fermentation breaks down the old and creates the new. He connects this to politics, religious beliefs, general ideas, racism, climate change, overuse of sterilization in everyday life, and even the differing ideas of purity. And it's all done in an intricate, detailed way that keeps you reading and doesn't lose you at any point.

This isn't a woo-woo magic/spiritual book, it's based on science, but this might sound just like that to some: One part of this book that I really connected to was the idea of emotional composting. Where you can turn your negative emotions into creating positive ones. Rather than suppressing these terrible things, you embrace and accept them, you cry about them and let them out, and then you use them as motivation to turn it all around. That's what I did to get through something that hit me pretty hard a few years ago, and left me with some pretty effective trauma. I was able to ferment all of that into improving and getting away from it. I now have a term to use for how I got through it all.

With 50 beautiful photographs of fermentation taken using microscopes, this is a beautiful book in both its visuals and its words. It's 108 short pages (many of them photography) and you can finish it easily in one sitting. I highly recommend that you do so.

"Fermentation is a force that cannot be controlled, and the changes it renders are not always desirable."

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Book Review: "The Terroir of Whiskey" by Rob Arnold

"Its origin, its heritage, its history. The identity is inextricable from the people who made it and the place that made them."

Rob Arnold is a master distiller and this is a book about his journey to find terroir in whiskey. We're not just talking about whiskey here though, because the fire that is ignited in his question can be traced back to the source of the idea. To see if there is terroir in whiskey, first Rob must grab the concept of terroir itself. And where does the idea of terroir come from and shine through the best? Wine!

Yes, this book has plenty to do with wine but it is still a whiskey book. So after Rob has experienced what terroir truly means and how it's expressed through grapes and its fermented juice, it's now time to see if terroir can be expressed in whiskey. We were always told that whiskey is about the water from where it's from, but what about grains? Can they have terroir too? And can terroir make it through saccharification, then fermentation, and then still show itself after distillation? Finding these answers is a much taller order than you think it is.

The grain farming industry is very, very different than the grape growing industry. Grapes grown for wine have been all about their place of origin for hundreds of years, where as grains have always just been about getting the most yield. The vast majority of grain are gathered from all over the place and put through grain elevators and then distributed out to all sorts of different businesses, whether they make bread, animal feed, beer, or whiskey. So how do you narrow it down? How do you research whether or not grains like rye, barley, and corn can take in a true sense of place and then express it after distillation?

"Wine and bourbon may look and taste different, but there is an impressive overlap between the chemical compounds that make up their flavors."

Rob has a scientific mind so he uses the scientific approach a lot, which as a man of science I appreciate and respect. For those who are not so much into chemistry but still interested in Rob's experiences and findings, I would certainly do a little research into the chemistry of wine and spirits first. There is going to be plenty of times that big words are going to be confusing and honestly wear you down here. Although I'm a science enthusiast who has done plenty of reading on chemistry, especially in the alcohol industry, this went over my head A LOT!

That said, it's not all about lab work, chemical compounds, and peer reviewed studies. There are plenty of down-to-earth, hit-home moments to go around. The feeling of sense of place, his experiences of actually being there, and taking in terroir through his own human senses are prominent too.

I learned a hell of a lot from this book. For example, it never occurred to me that yeasts create alcohol as an evolutionary trait to protect themselves from harmful microbes. But I'm not going to lie: there were some parts that I impulsively wanted to make corrections when it came to wine. However, the dude is a master distiller and clearly smarter than me when it comes to the sciencing so I'm absolutely taking his word on everything else. It's quite the interesting read and I recommend it.

"Here I was, in the middle of rural Ireland, drinking tea, eating scones with fresh butter, and drinking whiskey made from barley grown not more than a hundred yards from where I was sitting. And I was enjoying it with the farmer himself, basking in his pride. It was the expression of a very specific place."

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The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia

This huuuuuge book by Tom Stevenson and National Geographic is now my new favorite reference book. I'm not even exaggerating a little bit here. I plan to grab this thing first when I need to look something up. And it's not just because I just want an excuse to smell it, because my goodness it does have a GREAT "new book smell" to it.

The whole thing is well written, loaded with great information, and has easy to read maps. It looks like not one subregion is left untouched, and it's done in such a way that you feel like you aren't being overloaded with information.

Even with all those things, being a history nerd my favorite section is the Chronology of wine. Ten pages of a straight-up timeline focusing on important events in wine from all over the world. I still haven't sat down and just read the whole chronology through, but I intend to and can't wait.

This book is awesome, man. It's going to claim the spot for my go-to reference book by my desk for awhile. Go get it, wine geeks! BUY IT HERE!

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Book Review: Wine Folly, The Master Guide (Magnum Edition) by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack

I've been wine blogging for awhile now. I've seen other wine blogs come and go. Many of my favorite ones, with writers who thought so differently and/or offered so much more than the rest of us, faded off within the first six months of their existence. I've even seen my own blog right here go from having original memes and monthly long-read articles about the history and science of wine be reduced to just reviews for almost the entirety of 2018 (hey, it's temporary) because of that pesky thing called "real life".

But right from the beginning there was something special about WineFolly.com. You could see it clear as day. This was something that was going to shake the foundation of wine education. There was the original art, the phrasing, the ability to connect to the reader. And... the decision-making that readers don't have to think about but bloggers do; release dates, the length of the read, keeping blinders on the topic, and when to hold back certain things for another post in the future. This was the real deal. And it was awesome right from the start.

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Book Review: Adventures with Old Vines, A Beginner's Guide to Being a Wine Connoisseur by Richard L. Chilton Jr.

Richard L. Chilton Jr. is a co-owner of Hourglass Vineyard and he has a strong opinion on the definition of a connoisseurship. He says that it’s “the art of tasting wine: pulling the cork, savoring the delight, recording the experience, and comparing the differences between wines of different regions, varietals, and countries.” Maybe you love wine but you’re really more of a collector instead, where obtaining great wine is your main objective. Maybe you love wine but you’re the average consumer, buying what you already know you like the same day you’re going to drink it.

I guess I wouldn’t be considered a connoisseur because, yeah I love tasting and analyzing wine, but I’m driven by theory, history and being as knowledgeable as I can be for my clients. I’m not all that interested in being able to taste the differences between a 1993 Napa Cab and a 1994 Napa Cab.

With his definition in mind, Chilton began writing this book with the intention of both helping new connoisseurs find their way and helping old connoisseurs remember where they came from. What he ended up writing was 49 pages that every wine lover would truly enjoy reading, and another 219 pages that every wine lover should have on their bookshelf for when they need it.

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Book Review: Wine & War by Don and Petie Kladstrup

"To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine." - André Terrail

The problem with an addictive quick read is that you're done with it that much faster because you couldn't put the damn thing down. Then you're sad when you've finished in just a few days. That's exactly what Wine & War will do to you. And because I really want you to read this quick read (248 pages), I'm making this review a quick read as well. I'll tell you some cool things to perk your interest and then dip out! Get the damn book!

Authors Don and Petie Kladstrup talked to survivors of the World War II Nazi occupation of France and put their stories together in this book. They all went through different experiences and hardships, but the one thing all of these people have in common was wine.

The Hugel's of Alsace, the Drouin's of Burgundy, the Taittinger's of Champagne, and many many more.

Despite the Germans believing that the French had the strongest army in the world, the leaders of France and its military were so scarred from the loss of young men that they experienced in the First World War that they decided on a deal to be occupied rather than go through that horror again. When the Germans rolled in, however, the wine people went to work.

They hid their most prized wines immediately, knowing that the Germans would take them and, more importantly, not appreciate them. They built walls in their cellars, closing in the wines behind them, and had their children collect spiders so they'd spin webs to make the wall look older. Dust from old carpets were collected to put on cheap bottles to make them appear rare.

"Generals rarely have the power to build, they more often have the power to destroy." - Pierre Taittinger to General Dietrich von Choltitz

The first thing that Nazi leader Hermann Goering did in Paris, right at the very beginning of occupation, was drive to a famous restaurant to drink a famous vintage, only to be told they were sold out. After checking their cellar, he found that they were telling the truth. Only they weren't telling the truth, and the vintage was hiding behind a wall only feet away.

Once the occupation was better organized, a system was put into place for winemakers to sell their wine to the Germans. The chapter on the Weinfuhrers, who negotiated with the winemakers, is probably my favorite.

And that's not all. Not by a long shot. Vineyards and houses were taken over by the Germans for their own uses. The famous Haut-Brion in Bordeaux was turned into a rifle range. One vineyard owner spread rat droppings all over her house so the Germans wouldn't take it; and it worked. Other families hid their Jewish friends. With copper being taken by the Nazi's, a young man turned his barn into a chemistry lab to try and create copper sulfate to apply to vineyards.

Their lives were rough, although easier in some places. Goering said that the French could live off of 1,200 calories a day. That's half the calories that you need to survive. For the elderly it was only 850 calories. France was literally starving. And those calories included the wine that had always been so important to the French.

"What helped a lot was the wine. As the food grew scarcer, we drank more and more of it. Occasionally on Saturday evenings, we would buy ten or twelve bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Hermitage, Mercurey, Moulin-à-Vent, Julienas, Chambertin, Bonnes Mares or Musigny and have an evening of drinking and singing." - Verian Fry

One of the greatest stories here is about a Prisoner of War concentration camp for French officers that blackmailed their Nazi captors into allowing them to have a wine dinner. The wine dinner turned into a two week celebration of the wines of France, leading up to everybody getting just a few ounces of wine at the main event dinner. That story in itself is worth picking this book up.

I could go on and on about all the great moments in the book but I'm going to stop right there before I even get to the liberation.

The Kladstrup's did an amazing job in telling these people's stories, and organizing them in a way to form one overall successive one. It's simply an amazing read. If you're any fan of wine, or if you're any fan of history, you absolutely must read Wine & War.

BUY WINE & WAR HERE!

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Book Review: "PROOF: The Science of Booze" by Adam Rogers

Good morning, sunshine! You are so screwed.

The light coming in through the window is so... there. You'd kill for a glass of water and die if it came with food. Your guts are in full rebellion; whatever happens next is going to happen in the bathroom. And for some reason you can't remember how to read the clock next to your bed, even though you used to be able to do it relatively easily, you're sure.

You have at least a couple of the following symptoms: headache, malaise, diarrhea, loss of appetite, the shakes, fatique, and nausea. You might also be dehydrated, and feel generally slow - a little stupider, a little less coordinated. You, my friend, have a hangover.

Scientists have a more inscrutable name for it: veisalgia, from the Greek word for "pain", algia, and kveis, a Norwegian word meaning "uneasiness following debauchery". That sounds about right.

Adam Rogers, PROOF: The Science of Booze

During the summer we went on a family trip to the Museum of Science in Boston. My daughter had a blast. She loved the butterfly room and all the activities that they have there to get kids interested in how the world works. She loved watching a scene from one of the Ice Age movies in 3D. (Although I think it's a load of crap that it's from the one where dinosaurs were still alive. I know it's a kids movie where animals talk, but c'mon. You're the Museum of Science! Make it from the one where they save the little human, not dinosaurs.)

Nobody had more fun than me. There's so much cool stuff from the Apollo missions that I was in awe. I need to go back, preferably by myself, so I can take it all in without feeling rushed. When we hit the gift shop at the end I poked around. I picked up a t-shirt with Albert Einstein's quote “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”, which I wear regularly on my YouTube channel.

Then I saw this book called PROOF: The Science of Booze. I had to have it. It turns out it was one of the best purchases I've ever made in alcohol education literature.

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Book Review: Age Gets Better With Wine by Richard A. Baxter, M.D.

In 1974, after the Framingham Heart Study had been in progress for more than 25 years, a report on the factors related to deaths from coronary disease was prepared. Few were expecting the data to reveal a strong reduction in the odds of dying from heart disease with moderate alcohol consumption. Prevailing wisdom was that the reverse would be the case. The American psyche just wasn't ready, and in many quarters there is still resistance to the concept of alcohol as a good thing. Unlike the tradition of wine as a food in Europe, in America the underpinnings of crime and corruption of the prohibition era defined the alcohol legacy.

In fact, the findings came as such an unwelcome guest that when the senior staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reviewed the data, they demanded that the authors remove it!

Richard A. Baxter, M.D., Age Gets Better With Wine

You see it all the time: wine is beneficial to your health. Well, it is. It's been scientifically proven that alcoholic beverages in general are good for you as long as you drink them in moderation and with food. That's 12-24 ounces of beer, 5-10 ounces of wine, or 1.5 to 2 ounces of spirits a night, almost every night with dinner. The polyphenols in red wine make it the option with the most benefits.

You're more likely to get heart disease or cancer if you don't drink at all. And if you abuse alcohol by going above moderation and get drunk on a regular basis then you're increasing the chance of cancer and a million of other issues even more. It's actually more harmful to not drink all week and binge on weekends, what the average American seems to think is the best option, than to have a glass or two of wine every night.

Most of these people saying that wine is good for you are in the industry or are wine drinkers. So when somebody, like myself, says what I just said then most people think "well, he's just looking for excuses to drink". I really can't blame them because that's exactly what it looks like.

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