Titanarum

I may be digressing into food and drink but I want to share with you some very good news on drinking red wine, courtesy of an article in the Guardian. Don’t just drink any old red, mind. The ones to go for are full of polyphenol, a substance believed to help prevent heart disease. Wines with the biggest doses usually use Tannat or Malbec grapes and come from South West France and to a lesser degree Argentina and Uruguya. Grape juice is no good as the polyphenols won’t dissolve unless fermentation takes places.

And if you don’t like red wine, cloudy unfiltered cider or dark chocolate should do a good job too. It isn’t completely clear how these polyphenols help people live longer and free of heart disease but several studies have shown that they do. The men of South west France, whose inhabitants regularly indulge in saturated fats from foie gras, cassoulet and full fat cheeses have double the French average of men aged 90 plus. One theory, presented by Roger Corder who wrote The Wine Diet, is that polyphenols bind to a surface protein on artery walls creating a non-stick surface helping blood to flow better.

Expect a stampede in the South American section of the wine aisles.