Who drinks a glass of wine as a health supplement?

There is an ongoing buzz about this. :drunken:

[align=right]It isn’t necessarily vegan though. :pottytrain3:[/align]

Funny, I decided to skip the alcoholic beverage and have a mix of grape juices (in a wine glass for something fancy), but now this juice is magically turning into sparkling wine on me. It didn’t tend to do this until recently, so maybe the coincidence was that lately I’ve had an open pitcher of beets being pickled next to the open pitcher of juice, and supposedly fermenting bacteria are present in vinegar. I don’t know for sure yet, as I haven’t tried it on purpose, but this might be a way of making the bubbly vegan wine juice: add a little vinegar to the pitcher and see if it carbonates itself (in a few days… or that was because I didn’t rinse the pitcher out between batches). I’m pretty sure the alcohol content is lower than most wines, whatever happened there (oh, I know, it was the champagne fairy). :drunken:

Hmm, well I didn’t have to do anything for the next batch to follow suit (even though the pickled beets are now covered in there). I just left what might be the “mother of vinegar” sprouting in the bottom of the pitcher and mixed the juice like normal. In two days the whole thing was carbonated again. What I could confirm more directly was that grape juice can absorb things around it in the fridge. I had just added a bunch of fresh green peppers that were sitting around it on a shelf, and after a day in there I could taste a hint of them in the juice too. Well it doesn’t taste like vinegar… I guess that process takes longer than me drinking a pitcher (and think it goes from being more like sparkling juice to something of a dessert wine by then). :cherry:

However strange that is (if not a wild yeast in the grape juice), at least it doesn’t seem as mysterious to me as wines that may not be vegan, and I like wine mixed with juice anyway. I think this counts as less than moderate drinking too, as some of the health risks include having one glass a day (other than that from the champagne fairy methinks). Your mileage may vary, so I wouldn’t want to recommend that anyone else make something like this, in case of food poisoning, but that usually occurs in less acidic and/or unrefrigerated produce. One glass doesn’t seem to affect me, even like drinking too much fresh juice could. Anecdotally I feel less healthy when I wake up hours after drinking a glass of wine than this, which doesn’t seem to hang over. Good stuff, is a toast in order?
Here’s to a champagne taste on a beer budget or something like that (when beer used to be cheap). :occasion5:

PS, now I’m thinking that a wild yeast most likely caused this, since I rinsed the pitcher out once, and then after a couple of batches where I didn’t rinse it again, the juice started to ferment for the last couple glasses. That, and an Encyclopedia of Food Safety says “There are millions of yeast cells on the skins of grapes, which can ferment the natural sugars in the grapes”. It works its way up the whole pitcher faster, the longer it has to develop on the bottom (not that it appears to crawl up the side, but there is a residue where its liquid volume decreases as the sugar is consumed by yeast). I’ll probably just rinse it out every time, because I like the flavor to be consistent that way, but the other flavors were interesting to note, as a food that spoils gracefully.

Speaking of which, a book about Microbial Food Safety and Preservation Techniques says that “In fermented foods and beverages, the limit between beneficial and spoilage activities is not clear”. Although it elsewhere implies that yeast activity in fruit juice is considered to be spoilage, simply because it isn’t supposed to be fermenting. I think there’s a semantical difference between those for the most part (if it tastes good, it isn’t spoiled). Actually when mine fermented there was an in between phase where it didn’t taste as good as juice or champagne for a day or two, but tasted better later, so like they said, it isn’t always clear whether that would be beneficial over time. Same goes for its health effects.

I don’t drink wine for health - Alcohol is Group 1 carcinogen.

I don’t even drink it for entertainment - I teach myself to have fun without alcohol.

Yeah, hard liquor is said to be especially risky for that. I was also reading that grape juice had the highest average concentration of both total and inorganic arsenic from beverage samples analyzed, and it is detectable in wine as well. I’m more into making frozen sorbet than refrigerating juice lately, so that should be enough alchemy for me.

I personally don’t drink at all as I don’t enjoy it. I don’t like the taste nor the buzz or after feeling. This is interesting though, however I would just eat grapes, fruits and other foods to supplement.

The findings about the effects of moderate and infrequent consumption of alcohol are inconclusive. The trouble I think lies in ascertaining what amounts to “moderate” and “infrequent” for different people. There isn’t a certain quantity we can point to as “acceptable” or “healthy.”

I drink beer quite often, about 5 times a week, and I don’t have diabetes, I’m not obese, or otherwise unhealthy. May not be the case for everyone.

Not wine, I prefer to drink grape juice instead! Especially black grape, either raw or make juice of it. Depends on my mood! :slight_smile:

I prefer not to drink at all. There were some problems with it in my family. Alcoholism is a real disease and it starts as a casual drink here and there. Though there’s a thing that made me feel better: there’s a lot of free rehab centers, mostly Christian ones https://addictionresource.com/addiction-and-rehab-hotlines/ this list for example. I thought treatment costs a lot and it’s great there’s a way out for people with salaries below average.

Does alcohol works as a supplement? I never heard of it. Well to have the nutrients equivalent to grapes, vegan can take it directly. Why wine?