The Veritas About Vino

“Where the grapes can suffer” is the motto of Alexis Bailly Vineyards, and, boy, do they ever. In recent seasons, the grapes at this popular winery just south of Hastings have thirsted through drought and fought off infestations of cane borer, a bug that never used to summer so far north. Less-than-average snowfall has offered little insulation, and the wind and cold have taken a painful toll on the thirteen acres of vines planted here. Bailly grapes must surely be among the most miserable fruit grown anywhere in the world.

“See those?” vineyard owner Nan Bailly asks, pointing to a row of withered vines that seem to barely have taken root. “They didn’t make it.” Fortunately, the Foch grapes being clipped from the vines by a team of volunteers are full and ripe. The fruit look like clustered blueberries and taste like table grapes on steroids—sweet and tangy and all grown up.

The roots of Minnesota’s first winery were planted in 1973 by Bailly’s late father, David Bailly, a Minneapolis attorney and enophile who faced an uphill battle trying to get grapes to grow in the rolling river valley that few guidebooks compare to Burgundy. His quixotic pursuit to bring wine to beer country wasn’t entirely without reason. Though Minnesota lies on the same latitude as the Bordeaux region of France, it experiences greater extremes of temperature, sunlight, and precipitation—just the sort of “suffering” needed to create the complex fruit that vintners value most.

The hardship may also create high concentrations of resveratrol, a compound in red wine that has been credited with cutting the risk of coronary heart disease and curbing appetite, among many other health benefits. During this harvest season alone, headlines have trumpeted studies suggesting that resveratrol may extend the lives of lab mice living on high-fat diets, battle the effects of multiple sclerosis, and even fight the flu.

No doubt the promising prophylactic effects help explain why the Bailly parking lot was overflowing on the Saturday I visited, full of health enthusiasts like me eager to decide which dosage would go best with that night’s dinner. The Country Red had a nice hint of spice and seemed to relax my blood vessels after only a few sips. The Frontenac, made with a grape engineered to survive temperatures as low as thirty-five below zero, seemed perfect for flu season—so much tastier than cough syrup. My good cholesterol surged when I tossed back a glass of the full-bodied Voyageur, as did a vaguely stuffy feeling in my sinuses.

But, after sampling six more vintages, I sort of forgot to take notes, noticing only a pleasant light-headedness that made it seem prudent to put the car keys in my husband’s hand. Bailly’s grapes may have suffered, but I was feeling fine.

We humans have always hoped wine could cure at least some of what ails us. Hippocrates found fermented grapes useful for nearly every ailment, and wine has been prescribed by everyone from Saint Paul (“a little wine for thy stomach’s sake”) to Louis Pasteur, who called wine the “most healthful and hygienic of beverages.” Though better known for his apple-a-day approach, Benjamin Franklin recommended wine as “sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

“We are always looking for ways to justify our delights,” says Henry Blackburn, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Though wine was certainly part of the longevity-enhancing Mediterranean Diet studied and promoted by noted U of M scientist Ancel Keys, Blackburn notes that the beverage barely rated a mention in Ancel and Margaret Keys’s 1959 book, Eat Well and Stay Well. “It’s four or five pages, mostly about how not to drink too much,” says Blackburn.

Another forty years passed before Morley Safer filed his seminal 60 Minutes report on the so-called French Paradox. The report concluded that the moderate consumption of red wine explains why the French can eat all that foie gras without suffering significantly higher rates of heart disease than we would—and sent the U.S. wine market surging.

Skeptical of the heart-health claims for wine and other alcoholic beverages, Blackburn once wrote editorials warning against the recommendation of alcohol as a means of improving public health. “But I finally had to come around to the findings that consistently show that low to moderate intake of alcohol is associated with longer life and fewer heart attacks,” he says. “Of course, the findings are somewhat confounded by the fact that people who drink moderately also tend to live moderately.”

Studies have shown that the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds found particularly in red wine may help lower heart attack risk, inhibit the development of certain types of cancer, and cut brain damage following a stroke. But the research also suggests that quantity matters. Those who have fewer than three glasses of wine a week or more than three glasses a day don’t seem to soak up as many of the benefits as those who drink moderately—a dosage most often defined as one to two glasses a day for women and one to three for men. Needless to say, those who drink immoderately are at risk of addiction, liver damage, and traffic fatalities, among other calamities.

“That’s part of what makes wine so fascinating—that a substance that can be harmful in some quantities can also be healthful in others,” says Leo Sioris, a professor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and senior clinical toxicologist with SafetyCall International, a medical and safety hot line. A career in toxicology afforded Sioris a close-up view of what he calls the “dark side of alcohol,” but he began to see a brighter side while on a 1994 trip with his family to their native Greece. In his mother’s village, Niata (Greek for “youth”), he noticed an impressive number of residents who had reached their nineties and beyond. He also noticed that wine was served wherever he went. He began to wonder whether wine and longevity were connected.

His subsequent investigations eventually inspired him to become Minnesota’s first member of The Renaud Society, an international fellowship of physicians named in honor of French Paradox physician Serge Renaud. Sioris has amassed his own wine collection, which he says now includes many “elegantly packaged dosage forms” from Australia and California and plenty of Oregon pinot noir.

The university class Sioris teaches on the medicinal effects of wine is subtitled “Hey Doc, Should I Start Drinking?” He answers that question with several caveats: Not if you have a medical condition made worse by alcohol or are taking medications that don’t mix with it. Not if you have a personal or family history of alcoholism. Not on an empty stomach (benefits are greatest with food). Not if you’re driving or operating heavy machinery. Maybe not if you get migraines. Definitely not if you are pregnant.

Women are so familiar with the warnings on wine bottles that many now worry about what they drank before they were aware they were expecting. “Wine has become a source of anxiety for many women,” acknowledges Charles Haislet, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Diamond Women’s Center in south Minneapolis, who assures his patients that “the glass of chardonnay you had [early in your pregnancy] is generally not going to be an issue.” Haislet began studying wine and health more than thirty years ago when the first reports of fetal alcohol syndrome struck fear in his patients. His interest was further kindled when his son Sam married Nan Bailly and opened a wine shop near downtown Minneapolis.

In spite of his expertise (he served as cellar master and chevalier du tastevin for the International Wine and Food Society), Haislet confines his recommendations to public health issues. Lately, he says, his patients have been concerned about another paradox. On the one hand, the studies suggest that moderate wine consumption can cut the risk of coronary heart disease by 30 to 50 percent. On the other, a study released last spring found that one or two drinks a day of wine, beer, or other alcohol could raise the risk of the most common type of breast tumors—those fueled by the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

“It’s a difficult question for women,” Haislet says. While heart disease takes nearly ten times as many lives as breast cancer, “if you have a family history of breast cancer, why push your luck?” Haislet advises women to weigh their health risks against the pleasure they take from wine, consulting their own physicians or pharmacists about options. White wines may be less threatening (their skin and seeds where resveratrol is concentrated have been strained out) to women worried about breast cancer. Those women may be heartened to know that Concord grape juice has been shown to have many of the same blood-clot-reducing properties of red wine.

What else do the doctors know?

If you’re interested mainly in the health properties of wine, Sioris suggests choosing younger wines because the antioxidants in red wine dissipate over time. Haislet recommends wines that come from thicker-skinned grapes such as malbec, merlot, and cabernet. Both caution that wine has about 100 calories per five-ounce serving, so if your New Year’s resolution is to drink more frequently to your health, you’ll have to cut calories from other sources to make room—otherwise you could face the next year several pounds heavier.

Whatever wine you choose, the docs recommend that you sit down and truly savor it. “You can quantify the dilation of the vessels of the heart so much better than you can quantify what wine does to relieve stress at the end of the day,” says Haislet, noting that the pleasure that pours forth from a bottle of wine may be its least appreciated health property.

Contact columnist Laura Billings at edit@mspmag.com.