Short answer: no. A scientist at Anglia-Ruskin university has established – perhaps to the annoyance of wine drinkers – that non-alcoholic wine confers the same benefits for heart health as alcoholic wine. A series of studies demonstrated an ‘undeniably protective beneficial relationship’ between wine, in both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions, and coronary heart disease. The effect is seen in both red and white wine. People in the 450,000 person study who drank a moderate amount of alcohol were shown to have reduced their risk of coronary heart disease by about 40%. The professor commented that the same effects were measurable in those drinking non-alcoholic versions, which suggested that the benefits come from the polyphenols from the grapes – still present in non-alcoholic wines – rather than the alcohol.
Following a report of the study, Jane Macquitty, the Times wine correspondent commented that ‘ The bad news for regular wine drinkers, of course, is that while non-alcoholic wine has improved greatly in recent years, it doesn’t give us the fruit, weight, mouthfeel and sheer trumpet-blowing oomph of the real thing.’ The Light Drinker has a mission to find the ones that that do.
