Flavonoids in Wine

[Raptor99]

I came across an interesting research paper published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that has implications for the health benefits of wine:
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/727/4690182
Flavonoids and other Polyphenols provide anti-oxidants and other helpful micro nutrients. They are present in many fruits and vegetables in varying quantities. A few key points relevant to us as winemakers:

• Polyphenols are present in the highest concentrations in the skins of fruit.
• They are produced in part by exposure to sunlight, so fruit grow in the full sun will have a higher concentration.
• The concentration is highest in fresh fruit, and they degrade over time in storage.
• They are destroyed by heat, so any cooking or pasteurization of juice will destroy these helpful compounds.

My takeaways are:

• Use the freshest fruit possible
• If you use a concentrate, find one that is produced using the minimum amount of heat
• Don't heat or boil any fruit when making wine/cider/mead
• Leave the skins in the primary for several days to extract more of the polyphenols

Regarding the last point, the article has a comment on wine making:

Maceration operations facilitate diffusion of polyphenols in juice, as occurs during vinification of red wine. This maceration accounts for the fact that the polyphenol content of red wines is 10 times as high as that of white wines (63) and is also higher than that of grape juice (64)

That means that red wine has more health benefits than grape juice!

I don't pretend to understand most of the content of this research article. But I was able to scan through it an pull out a few helpful bits regarding making wine. Enjoy!

 

[gabe]

I came across an interesting research paper published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that has implications for the health benefits of wine:
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/727/4690182
Flavonoids and other Polyphenols provide anti-oxidants and other helpful micro nutrients. They are present in many fruits and vegetables in varying quantities. A few key points relevant to us as winemakers:

• Polyphenols are present in the highest concentrations in the skins of fruit.
• They are produced in part by exposure to sunlight, so fruit grow in the full sun will have a higher concentration.
• The concentration is highest in fresh fruit, and they degrade over time in storage.
• They are destroyed by heat, so any cooking or pasteurization of juice will destroy these helpful compounds.

My takeaways are:

• Use the freshest fruit possible
• If you use a concentrate, find one that is produced using the minimum amount of heat
• Don't heat or boil any fruit when making wine/cider/mead
• Leave the skins in the primary for several days to extract more of the polyphenols

Regarding the last point, the article has a comment on wine making:


That means that red wine has more health benefits than grape juice!

I don't pretend to understand most of the content of this research article. But I was able to scan through it an pull out a few helpful bits regarding making wine. Enjoy!

I recall reading an article years back in a wine magazine that PINOT NOIRE delivers the most health benefits of all red wines.
Gabe

 

[Rice_Guy]

* My reaction to this review article is that it is good, it is building off of several hundred references in quality journals, it is not new information.
* the old adage in nutrition class was “for health, eat a variety of foods”
* the health food industry is using some of the data for claims on why their product is superior to main stream/ volume producers. Look at health food folks for arguments on what to eat or what to avoid.
* for the most part, main stream industry ignores micronutrients as well as micro toxins. We don’t really know what to do with the research. For the average US population there isn’t enough consumption that the effects show up, example that soy has compounds which mimic estrogen if you consume tofu every day. ,, There are a lot of “interesting” traits we find, example rice variety CB408 has a starch that mimics wheat starch and could be a useful base for gluten intolerant formulations, but marketing isn’t targeting this segment, again the health food folks have a smaller scale where they could use the information, and if I look at samples made in VietNam I find consumer products which use that starch trait.
* industry is sensitive to flavor effects, example we can measure polyphenols in apple juice and explain why a tannic variety of apple is good in a hard cider and possibly how much of it to use, example I put 1% prairie star crab apple in wines as rhubarb for long flavor notes. Main stream industry can’t do this since there aren’t enough volumes produced and to be really useful we would need a few 1,000 gallon tanks besides the 100,000 gallon tanks.