Wine, Alcohol levels, and Health
Jane Brody’s “Personal Health” column in today’s New York Times, “You are also what you drink,” got me thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with food and wine journalist Gerry Dawes about rising alcohol levels in contemporary wines.
“Alcohol,” Ms. Brody writes, summarizing a recent study on beverages and health conducted by a panel of nutritionists and health experts, “is a classic case of ‘a little may be better than none but a lot is worse than a little.’ Moderate consumption — one drink a day for women and two for men — has been linked in many large, long-term studies to lower mortality rates, especially from heart attacks and strokes, and may also lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and gallstones.” Moderate-to-heavy drinking, unsurprisingly, is a different thing altogether.
Gerry Dawes, as charming a man as you’ll ever meet, is also the bête noire of Spain’s modern wine-making elite, even as he is one of the country’s most eloquent and enthusiastic American champions. His tirades against French oak-aged, super-extracted, high-alcohol Spanish wines - in other words, the kind of wines now winning high scores and commanding high prices - are legendary.
Yesterday, at a lunch hosted by the Spanish Trade Commission honoring four Spanish wine “Superstars” at New York City’s Per Se, Mr. Dawes, who was seated next to me, took friendly exception to my praise for the 2004 Grattallops “Cuvee Ariadna” Priorat, made by husband and wife team Sara Perez and Rene Barbier. Jr. and named, appropriately enough, for their daughter.
Dense, minerally, yet unmistakably Spanish (Priorat, with soils unique to the region, is Spain’s most readily identifiable red wine), the wine harmonized beautifully with the cheese course, which consisted of a silver-dollar sized disk of “La Peral” Spanish blue cheese sitting atop an identically-shaped pear section that had been poached in red wine. Although it was obvious to me that the wine was higher in alcohol than those I know Mr. Dawes to prefer (probably around 14.5% by volume versus 11.5%), I suggested that it would be an ideal bottle to share with friends over cheese at the end of the meal.
“Yeah, but would you share a bottle with your wife over dinner? [A hypothetical question, I should add, since I am not married.] “And imagine she’s pregnant,” he went on. “You’ll end up drinking two thirds of the bottle yourself, and the next morning, you wake up feeling groggy, and you’re wondering why you’re a little slow off the mark.”
The practicalities of wine consumption. Something I haven’t given much thought to until recently, as my life gets busier and my body older.
Most of the conversations I have had with people about the rise of the so-called international style in winemaking have revolved around food compatibility issues–how dense wines with abundant fruit and low acidity might bully delicate flavors found in certain foods–or worries about the undifferentiated homogenization of taste at the cost of identifiable regional expression.
How high alcohol wines might affect my performace the next day, that’s something that has not really occurred to me a whole hell of a lot. Or how, in the long run, rising alcohol levels in wine could eventually turn light-to-moderate drinkers into to moderate-to-heavy drinkers, turning a potential health benefit into a potential health risk.
Rioja, like Burgundy, Loire, Germany, and Western Australia, to name a few, enjoys a relatively cool climate. With high elevations and a moderating Atlantic influence, Rioja vineyards on the whole do not reach levels of ripeness–and therefore potential alcohol–found in other regions in Spain and in much of the New World. Although there is no scientific evidence to support this claim, my guess is that alcohol percentages in Rioja are, on the whole, are about one or two points below the Spanish national average, good news for the expecting Papas of the world who favor Rioja.
The question is, will this average go up in the years to come, as winemakers yield to market demand and gain mastery of viticultural and vinification techniques that boost ripeness and extraction? Does it really matter? Can’t we just drink less of a wine we know to be higher in alcohol than we’re used to drinking?
As long as the wines remain good values to me, as long as there are plenty of things I would want to eat with them, and as long as the diversity of styles prevail, I suspect that I would let my palate be the judge when it comes to purchasing Rioja, or any wine for that matter, not necessarily a close inspection of a given wine’s ABV percentage.
Still, it is food for thought.