New 'White Wine' Has Red's Health Benefits : Study

After red wine, now it’s turn for white wine to contain all the goodness of health. The researchers from Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology have developed white wine with the same health benefits as red.

Israeli scientists revealed that they have developed a white wine with boosted levels of plant chemicals and polyphenols which are believed to fight heart disease.

Various studies have shown that regular drinking of moderate amounts of alcohol helps in combating cardiovascular diseases and some studies have put red wine at the top chart with stronger effects than other beverages.

Red wine, made from the crushed dark colored grapes which remain in contact with the grape skin during fermentation, contains antioxidantsdefine called polyphenols which helps in lowering cholesterol, preventing cancerdefine and fighting heart disease. On the other hand, white wine lacks the properties as it is fermented only from the pressed juice of the grape.

Professor Michael Aviram, a researcher at Technion's Faculty of Medicine said, "There has been an incredible response from those that have heard about the research, with many thinking of taking up drinking white wine more seriously."

The researchers developed an incubation technique i.e. incubating squeezed grapes in the presence of alcohol for 18 hours prior to removing skin, to increase white wine polyphenols six-fold.

This new wine will have same taste, color and aroma just like regular white wine but will also contain the same beneficial substances of red wine.

An Israeli wine manufacture, Binyamina Wine Cellars and Distillers has already started using the recipe to manufacture the healthier white. It is expected to hit the shelves in the United States by the end of the year.

In year 2002, a research was published in the magazine New Scientist and the online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry which showed that scientists at the University of Montpellier in France developed a white wine named as Paradoxe Blanc which they claimed has the same health benefits as that of red wine.

The wine was named after the famous paradox that the French have a remarkably low rate of heart disease despite their rich diet and smoking habits -- possibly because of all the red wine they drink with their meals.

The lead researcher, Pierre-Louis Teissedre and team produced a chardonnay which was 4 times rich in polyphenols as typical white wines.

Called as new generation of wine, Paradoxe Blanc was deliberately enriched with antioxidants and was developed specifically to treat people with juvenile, or type 1 diabetesdefine, whose bodies are less able to mop up spare free radicals. Dr. Teissedre said drinking a glass or two of the wine a day could benefit people with diabetes.

When on one hand many international studies are going ga-ga over health benefits of wines there are few studies which reveal that consumers do not get much protection from wine than they do, from drinking beer and spirits.

Abby Kapoor