Rosy days ahead for white wine fans

Published on Saturday 28 June 2008 19:52

IT MAY not be as good as turning water into wine, but it comes close: scientists have discovered a way of making white wine as healthy as red.

Making red wine involves leaving the skins on the grapes while they ferment, which gives the drink both its colour and the medicinal qualities that help to combat heart disease and other conditions. Health-promoting plant chemicals called polyphenols have helped boost sales of red worldwide.

But the reputation of white wines – in which the skins and the polyphenols are removed from the mix straight after pressing – has suffered by comparison.

Scientists in Israel have spent a decade perfecting a white wine that contains similar amounts of polyphenols. They found the polyphenol content of whites could be boosted six-fold by leaving the skins to ferment with the pulp for a relatively short time – about 18 hours – and by the addition of a limited amount of pure alcohol.

The results are expected to be on sale in the UK next year after development work by Israeli vintner Binyamina.

The research was carried out by Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology, which claims the polyphenol-charged wine looks and tastes the same as regular white wine, but has the same antioxidant activity as red. Antioxidants help reduce the formation of fatty plaques that constrict blood vessels and may lead to heart attacks.

Professor Michael Aviram, of Technion's medicine faculty, said:

"We were able to extract the grape polyphenols rapidly during white wine preparation.

"There has been an incredible response from those that have heard about the research with many thinking of taking up drinking white wine more seriously."

The UK is the biggest importer of wine among countries with little or no industry of its own. Average yearly consumption of wine per person of legal drinking age is approaching 30 litres, putting Britain on a par with Australia, but a long way behind Italy and France at 50 litres.