New white wine has health benefits of red wine
( 2001-06-08 13:40 ) (7 )

Aficionados of white wine can take heart. Israeli scientists have devised a way to make white wine that boasts health benefits similar to red wine, which may help ward off heart disease.

Research published on Wednesday in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society, details a process that yields white wine rich in so-called antioxidants, much like red wine already is.

White wine traditionally is made without the use of grape skins. Red wine is made by fermenting the juice from grapes along with the skins. The skins provide red wine with its color and contain the highest concentration of polyphenols, which are potent antioxidants.

Researchers led by biochemist Michael Aviram of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, developed a method to make white wine that exploited the grape skins.

Aviram said oxidized cholesterol in the blood is deposited in the arteries and can cause blockages and heart attacks.

"In order to prevent this oxidation of cholesterol, we need to consume antioxidants, preferably natural antioxidants that you get from fruits and vegetables," he said in an interview.

Aviram cited what he called the "French paradox."

"The people in southern France, even though they eat fatty food, they get almost one-fifth the rate of heart attacks as, let's say, the Finnish people who also eat fatty food. Studies demonstrated that it has to do with the consumption of red wine in southern France," Aviram said.

Some researchers argue that the link between wine consumption and reduced risk of heart disease remains unproven in the absence of long-term human clinical trials.

THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A GRAPE

"Many people, including me, like white wine. So I said, 'How can I prepare white wine ... with this beneficial health effect on cardiovascular diseases?'"

Aviram felt he could increase antioxidants in white wine by extracting more grape skin polyphenols during processing.

His research team used whole squeezed grapes and incubated them for up to 18 hours in the presence of alcohol before removing the skins. This resulted in a significant increase of white wine polyphenols up to six times the normal level and exhibited antioxidant activity similar to that of red wine.

The polyphenol content of the white wine still was just a quarter of the amount in red wine. But Aviram said the similar antioxidant activities between the two wines suggested that white wine contains varieties of polyphenols with higher antioxidant activity than those found in the red wine.

There was one interesting side effect of the process. The wine has the same color and aroma of regular white wine. But the addition of alcohol to the fermentation process produced an increase in the sugar level of the wine, yielding a sweet, dessert-type white wine.

"I like this dessert white wine, but I'd like to get dry white wine which also will have a red wine-like health property," Aviram said.

At least one wine manufacturer in Israel has begun making the white wine using the technique developed by Aviram's laboratory. Aviram said he expected the new white wine to be sold in the United States by the end of the year.