Wine and health – a response to Dry January
“Give me a bowl of wine. I have not that alacrity of spirit nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.”
– William Shakespeare
The aftermath of sustained revelry, copious feasts and a concomitant consumption of alcohol during the traditional festivities of December has lead to the social phenomenon known as dry January. There is logic in the timing as excess does take its toll on our physical well-being and wintry days are a good time for reflection. The cold is less conducive to going out and the desire to remain warm makes us want to curl up in bed with a book, or couch-potato our way through the day being entertained with flickering images and home-made popcorn… and a cup of mulled wine, a hot toddy, a whisky… or a cup of tea!
But what is this thing we call ‘Dry January’ and what does it really mean? Who chooses to stop drinking in January and why? What is it they normally drink? How much and how often do they drink? Why go cold turkey?
Perhaps we are all prone to excess and controlling that unbridled appetite is for some, a challenge that can only be met by an extreme response. Cutting out alcohol altogether for a month in the hopes the much put-upon liver will recover its optimum functionality is certainly laudable. But do we really need to go that far?
Another response to this quest for organ renewal is ‘Damp January’, “the more lenient cousin of Dry January”, which, as the name might suggest, is a reduction in consumption rather than total abstinence. Among other places around the world, it’s a big hit in India, according to India Today.
As our friend Peter Scowen (a regular presence on Laura Calder’s ‘A Place at My Table’ on Substack) has recently pointed out, 31 days of the year of not drinking works out to less than not drinking one or two days of the week throughout the year. Being abstemious, limiting consumption, and consciously making an effort to consume in moderation is responsible, adult behaviour. But being an adult is not always easy and the child in us, the effusive, reckless, devil-may-care insouciance of youth and the allure of living like there were no tomorrow sometimes gets the upper hand.
When the wine is good and the company better, the pleasures induced put us in a state where living in the moment is fired with enthusiasm, with poetry, and with promise. Being in the warm glow of the now gives us no good reason to ever stop. ‘Ivresse’ takes over and we feel inspired and able to take on the world, wanting to remain in that moment forever.
“The perfect soul is a dry beam of light, but the soul likes to get wet.”
— Heraclitus
What we drink makes a difference and without wanting to labour the point, a measured, judicious and ‘reasonable’ consumption of (real) wine (natural, organic, biodynamic) is not a negative but a positive in terms of health.
From Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder, Archagathus, Asclepiades, Aurelius Cornelius Celsus, Dioscorides, Paracelsus and Galen to Arnauld of Villanova, Thadeus of Florence, Hildegaard Von Bingen, Pasteur and Serge Renaud, the medicinal virtues of wine have been upheld throughout the centuries.
The ancient Egyptians, for example, revered wine for its purported healing properties. They believed that wine possessed the ability to cleanse water and prevent the spread of diseases. Similarly, the Greeks incorporated wine into their daily lives, considering it a vital component of their diet. Hippocrates, the renowned ancient Greek physician, lauded wine for its medicinal value and recommended it for various ailments, while emphasizing moderation.
During the Roman Empire, the consumption of wine became even more widespread. Romans believed that wine could aid digestion, alleviate pain, and act as a general tonic for overall well-being. The Roman author and naturalist, Pliny the Elder claimed that “nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking.”
The link between wine and health persisted through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Monks in medieval European monasteries energetically cultivated vineyards and produced wine for both sacramental and medicinal purposes. Paracelsus, the physician, further propagated the belief that wine, when consumed in moderation, could contribute to a healthy lifestyle.
“Whether wine is a nourishment, medicine or poison is a matter of dosage.”
– Paracelsus
In the modern era, the focus has shifted to compounds like resveratrol, found in grape skins, which has antioxidant properties and has been associated with cardiovascular health. For example, the ‘French Paradox’,1 put forth by Serge Renaud in 1991, a research scientist from Bordeaux University, found that French people in regions (Alsace and the South-West in particular) with a diet rich in saturated fats (foie gras) have a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD), which is in contradiction to the widely held belief that the high consumption of such fats is a risk factor for CHD.
Moderate wine consumption has also been linked to a potential decrease in the risk of certain age-related conditions, such as dementia. The polyphenols in wine, including resveratrol, are believed to play a role in protecting cognitive function.
“If you are not your own doctor, you are a fool.”
— Hippocrates
But the issue around Dry January is not so much medical as it is ideological. Regardless of whatever health benefits might come from drinking wine, everyone has the right to choose their own path and determine what’s best for them, and if joining the Dry January club gives you solace, then go for it I say, and give it your all.
Giving the liver a rest from alcohol is most certainly a good thing, while anyone who continues to consume ‘a bowl of wine to maintain that alacrity of spirit and cheer of mind they are wont to have’ should feel no regret. Moderation is of course always key, as is the quality of the wine. Living wines from living soils that are free of pesticide, insecticide, fungicide and herbicide residues, without additives and without artifice are essential if one values one’s health. In other words, only natural, organic (but 100% organic and not the compromised misuse of the term that prevails in some parts of the world) and biodynamic wines.
Wine is generally lumped in with every other kind of alcohol, but that’s a mistake. It should be remembered that alcoholism is very rarely due to the consumption of wine. That was the case 40-50 years ago in France, but statistically this is no longer the case. Obviously it’s always a question of measure, as repeatedly stated herein. But wine is very different from ‘hard’ alcohol as it is comprised essentially of water and contains a broad range of beneficial elements comprised of anti-oxidants – polyphenols – that include resveratrol, anthocyanins, and catechins along with flavinoids, vitamins and minerals. “In general, the average concentrations of the major components of wine are water, 86%; ethanol, 12%; glycerol and polysaccharides or other trace elements, 1%; different types of acids, 0.5%; and volatile compounds, 0.5%.”2
But all of this is of course of no real consequence in terms of choosing to dry January and entirely abstain, or contrariwise, maintain a healthy, moderate consumption of ‘real’ wine, as the January sobriety crowd are attached to a virtuous ideology that is backed by a now well-established social convention and their own personal choice to participate in that convention. To each their own and ‘vive la différence’!
“I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!”
— Charles Bukowski
To end, we offer an amusing glimpse into the world of ‘la vielle France’, the virtues of wine and the cultural and ethical aspects of wine consumption. The link below is to a series of ‘person in the street’ interviews (in French) conducted in 1973 entitled ‘Les Francais et l’Alcoolisme’ (The French and Alcoholism) with a series of colourful characters affirming that wine is an essential part of their lives and very much a ‘given’, a daily accompaniment and omnipresent:
– Wine is not alcohol… wine is good!
“I don’t think we’re alcoholics in France… we drink wine, that’s a fact, but that doesn’t mean we’re completely alcoholic.”
“There are alcoholics who live to be very old, often a hundred years old.”
“We drink coffee at home but as soon as I leave home, the first bistro I come to I start with a glass of white wine. Going to work, it’s 7 or 8 bistros, and it’s white wine and not little glasses but ‘ballons’ and sometimes I’ll drink 8 or 9 before going to work. And after I switch to red.”
“Wine isn’t really alcohol, it’s food if you like.”
“In France you know there are so many occasions to drink, whether it’s for a birth, a funeral or whatever, you go to work at someone’s house and the first thing they ask you is ‘do you want a glass of wine’?”
“Wine is not alcohol. Wine is good for you.”
“That’s France. There’s always a good bottle of wine on the table. It’s a given. And we’re not alcoholic for all that.”
You have to wonder what kind of work the fellow was able to do hitting 8 or 9 bistros on the way to work and drinking as many glasses of white wine. Never mind carrying on after work with red wine. But that was 1973. It would be interesting to conduct a similar interview today to see what the responses would be as we can be sure they’d be different.
“Wine is an appropriate article for mankind, both for the healthy body and for the ailing man.”
— Hippocrates
On a personal note, as someone who makes a living with wine, and who has a very high appreciation for the organoleptic experience of wine tasting, I know that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. And so I try to make a point of taking advantage of every occasion there is not to drink, as I also know that a healthy body is essential for being able to fully appreciate the complex characteristics of wine. I value wine too much to not be able to properly enjoy it, and so controlled abstinence enables aesthetic appreciation while also maintaining health. Despite appearances and the impressions my lifestyle inspires, this happens more often than most people would think, although the opposite is, in those highly social periods of the year when the child in me runs rampant, kind of unavoidable.
Here’s to all the dry Januaryans coming through the month refreshed, renewed, revived, reinvigorated and ready to revel with Paris Wine Walks!
Santé!
I met Serge Renaud soon after the publication of the ‘French Paradox’ while working as a ‘fixer’ on a documentary film with a crew from the US. The official line of his research recommended 3 glasses of wine per day for men and 2 for women. He confided in me that in truth it was 5 glasses for men and 3 for women (a question of metabolism), but because of the anti-alcohol lobbies, they were obliged to reduce those quantities.