When you go to a medical doctor these days, no matter what you’re suffering from, one solution is always offered: cut out alcohol. If you won’t do that, you’ll be told the least harmful number of ounces you should consume a day. Doesn’t matter if you take it in whisky, beer, or wine – it’s all basically poison.
I have no particular brief for whisky or beer, but on wine I beg to differ. Wine is not alcohol. Wine is a complicated chemical substance that contains alcohol. It’s not a drink you take in order to get a buzz. Wine has many components and characteristics that make it an object for appreciation that is as much intellectual as physiological. Moreover, it is nourishing.
Every evening, Tom chooses from our storage one bottle that he thinks will go well with what we’re having for dinner. We drink it slowly and thoughtfully, with the meal of which it is an important component, and we unwind, review the day, babble to each other, and relax.
The above rant is something Diane knocked out on her computer, and then shared with me, after coming home from an annoying medical appointment. My wife, colleague, cook, editor, and web mistress is finding her patience with certain kinds of medical mumbo-jumbo is, as you read, wearing thin. Indeed, it can be no secret that alcohol is the American medical establishment’s great white whale. Whether you’re seeing a doctor for a hangnail or for terminal cancer, you’re always asked – sometimes bluntly: Do you drink? – and sometimes really offensively: Do you use alcohol? As if it were a power drill or a bandsaw.
There is a transparent error in the question itself: No one I know drinks alcohol, just as no one I know questions the danger of the pure spirit. But as the most elementary knowledge of chemistry should tell you, compounds alter their ingredients as surely as frying alters an egg, and wine is a complex compound, of which alcohol is only a part, and far from the greatest one. Compound that yet further with the interplay of a wine with the foods you drink it with, and your dreaded poison has been quite nicely domesticated.
None of this may seem like any big deal, but Diane and I find ourselves these days spending far more time with MDs than we ever thought possible in the carefree days of our callow youth, back when we were in our sixties and seventies. The sheer repetition and persistence of the question grows wearing, and its unintended offensiveness increases every time it’s asked. We aren’t stupid, and we haven’t gotten to be this old by making dramatically bad choices.
That so-called toxin has made and continues to make major contributions to our happiness, to our sense of well-being, and to our well-being itself.
.
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Nobody sits down at a neatly set table to a hearty meal of chemicals and a nice glass of poison, and the sooner medical authorities acknowledge those facts and deal with them responsibly, the sooner one needless point of friction in some old geezers’ lives will be removed. “Be not righteous overmuch, but take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.”
End of sermon. Ite, missa est.
Tom's Wine Line 
The following comment on this post was sent to me personally by reader Joe Calandrino, who has agreed to allow me to add it to the public comments.
“I’ve been retired now from the practice of medicine for almost 2 years so perhaps I’ve gained a modicum of perspective. It used to be that patients drank too much if they drank more than their doctor. That was a small number of people indeed. But after the debunking of the French paradox (perhaps an arbitrary point in time) the medical profession had to do a bit of sobering up, especially in conversations regarding the enjoyment of fine wines and spirits.
“It had always been my practice to encourage moderation in the enjoyment of all things good, not merely beverages that contain ethanol, but even fine cuisine. This certainly seemed like a prudent strategy in the face of the American obesity epidemic. It became apparent that “moderation” is a nice sounding word that generates little or no understanding. America seems to find it difficult to grasp that moderation refers not simply to what one does but by who one is.
“Lately the medical establishment, still reeling from its complicity in the opioid disaster, has adopted a morbid view of any substance that contains the evil molecule ethanol. Certainly I believe Diane was made to bear the brunt of that short-sighted vision and general approach; and of course not just Diane but anyone attending the physician’s office for any reason. Because medical science has not determined a “safe level” of consumption of wine and spirits the whole attitude has shifted to the puritanical.
“Medicine will not say any more than what data supports, and remains silent in the absence of data. No data supports healthy outcomes for younger patients who imbibe. Alas, some data supports good outcomes for older patients who consume fine wine and spirits wisely.
“Medicine is now a bit gun shy, and will remain pusillanimous in its attitude toward what we do and who we are when we are ageing well, with grace and spirit.
“Ite missa est…indeed!”
Funny, when I was put on my diet to reduce my blood sugar, wine was one of the few things that WAS permitted. Apparently, there isn’t enough alcohol in wine to covert into a significant amount of blood sugar,
Auguri ad entrambi Diane e Tom.
Grazie, Angelo.
A brilliant two-hander. Suddenly, everyone seems to have forgotten the well-rehearsed gospel which claimed that the “Mediterranean diet” made you close to immortal. And, of course, they forgotten too that their miracle diet included things like salami, ‘nduja, Iberico ham, rich cheeses and all sort of wonderful red meats and seafood. Not to mention wine, of course. We should never forget that the ancient Greeks claimed that what separated them from barbarians wasn’t art, philosophy, literature or architecture, but the fact that they drank wine and the hordes up north drank beer. That is enough for me. Diane’s definition of wine is as close to perfect as I can think of: a beverage that “has many components and characteristics that make it an object for appreciation that is as much intellectual as physiological.” And for that I thank her. Keep on drinking as you both do and your life will be all the better for it.
Brava Diane
Couldn’t agree more!