Jun 12 2001
French paradox again
My brother finally called me at 4:00 pm yesterday, after he got back home. It’s amazing how I can never be mad at him when I’m actually talking to him. But he is a number one groover on life, and it’s hard to be grumpy around him.
In yesterday’s mail (which was, amazingly, already there when we got home yesterday) were a couple of clippings from my father. One of them was about how some wine producers in the Rhone valley have gotten together to produce powdered wine, which will be sold in capsules. Studies have shown that two glasses of red wine a day may prevent or reduce the occurrence of heart attacks and even Alzheimer’s disease.
The thing that amazes me is this. We all know that most of the things that are good for you and supposed to stave off heart attacks and other horrible diseases range from the mildly unpleasant to the deeply dreary. I count diet and exercise among the deeply dreary myself, particularly since you can never finish with them — you just have to keep doing it, day after day. I would think that people would welcome the fact that something as delightful as a glass or two of good red wine is actually good for you. And, as Thomas Jefferson put it, wine has the ability to banish care. TJ himself had an enviable wine cellar and lived well into his 80’s, a particularly impressive accomplishment in the early 1800’s. Maybe he already knew that wine was good for you. He knew everything else that was worth knowing.
It amazes me that people would forego the pleasure of drinking wine, from choosing the bottle, admiring the label, enjoying the color and bouquet and drinking it out of a nice glass PLUS the ability to banish care, in favor of a pill. The only thing I can think of is that these gym-obsessed folks are too worried about the sugar content of actual wine to risk drinking it, but would prefer to get the health benefits in pill form. They are missing out on one of the pleasures of life — but they are probably not only used to that, but consider themselves superior because of it. I will laugh at them over a glass of ’82 Bordeaux.