I much prefer drinking wine to writing about it. I was prompted to write about it by an experience I often have when I offer a good wine to a novice. They will say something like, “Don’t waste that on me. I don’t know anything about wine,” implying that they will not be able to enjoy the wine. This raises the obvious question of whether and, if so, to what extent, knowing about wine is necessar...

As China’s economy has grown rapidly during the last few decades, the size of its market and the purchasing power of the Chinese consumers have greatly expanded. In addition, since China has entered the WTO, the barriers and cost of trading with companies in China have been substantially reduced. More and more foreign companies are now considering the Chinese market as their key developing mark...

Background Many studies investigated the association between alcohol drinking and gastric cancer risk, but the results were controversial. We performed a meta-analysis of observational studies to explore the association. Materials and Methods We searched PubMed to identify the relevant studies that reported the association between alcohol drinking and gastric cancer risk up to December 31, 20...

OBJECTIVE Wine has been the focus in the prevention of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) development because resveratrol abundant in wine has anti-carcinogenic properties. However, epidemiologic results have been heterogenous in the chemopreventive effect of wine on the development of EOC. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis for comparing EOC risk between wine and never drinkers using previous rel...

Volatile compounds are responsible for the wine "bouquet", which is perceived by sniffing the headspace of a glass, and of the aroma component (palate-aroma) of the overall flavor, which is perceived on drinking. Grape aroma compounds are transferred to the wine and undergo minimal alteration during fermentation (e.g., monoterpenes and methoxypyrazines); others are precursors of aroma compounds...

The term “Mediterranean diet” is widely employed to indicate the typical diet of the Countries located on the Mediterranean sea coast. A growing body of scientific literature pointed out the healthy effects of this diet. In recent years we investigated about the protective effects of a regular and moderate wine consumption. As we know, alcoholic and non alcoholic wine constituents are responsib...

The recent debate on alcohol tax reform and recommendations from the Henry Tax Review in Australia have highlighted the need for quantifying externalities of excessive alcohol consumption by beverage types. This paper presents micro-level information from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys to examine the association between risky drinking behaviour, drinker characteristics,...

BACKGROUND Many epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies suggest that chronic and moderate consumption of red wine benefits cardiovascular health, because of the alcoholic content or the polyphenols/flavonoids. AIMS The antioxidant and cardioprotective properties of a French red wine (cabernet sauvignon, 12% alcohol by volume) were compared with those of the same wine subjected to rev...

This study examined relationships between wine preference and selected health determinants in a U.S. national sample of young adults to improve understanding of the association between light-moderate wine consumption and long-term morbidity and mortality risk. Interview data collected from 12,958 young adults who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed...

AIMS It has been reported that alcohol has multiple effects on appetite. To elucidate potential mechanisms we measured the levels of plasma leptin and the vasoactive factors after red wine intake. METHODS We conducted a randomized crossover trial to study the effect of red wine on the levels of leptin, TNF-alpha, TGF- beta(1), IL-6, ICAM-1, and VCAM-1 in healthy, non-smoking individuals. The ...