White wine made to be as healthy as red

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White wine with the health benefits of red is the

promise of a new wine coming from Isreal, with the

expectation that the wine will be sold in the United

State by year's end.

Researchers at the Technion-Isreal Institute of

Technology in Haifa have developed a method that

boosts the antioxidant content of white wine so that

it mimics the putative health benefits of its red

cousin. The report of their achievement will be

reported in the July 16 issue of the Journal of

Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

“This is good news for white wine lovers,” says

Aviram, D.Sc., lead investigator.

Red wine provokes headaches in some wine drinkers, and

certainly the taste is different. The wine looks,

tastes, and smells just like an ordinary white wine.

The technique to boost the antioxidant content turns

out to be fairly simple. Ordinary white wine is made

from grapes whose skins have been removed. Red wine

is made from grapes whose skin is fermented along with

the juice. By adding alcohol to whole squeezed

grapes, and then removing the skins, researchers were

able to extract many more grape skin polyphenols,

which then remained in the white wine. The process

boosted polyphenols by up to a factor of six.

Although this is just one-quarter of the levels found

in red wine, the antioxidant activity is on a par with

the darker wine.

Aviram, D.Sc., says that his research shows

that atherosclerosis in mice can be reversed to some

extent by drinking red wine.

Binyamina Winecellars and Distillers has already begun

manufacturing the healthier white wine.

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