March 12: President Emmanuel Macron who arrived in India on March 9 to inaugurate the International Solar Alliance yesterday and leaves today after a 4-day successful visit might not have discussed with Prime Minister Narinder Modi the benefits of wine, but he is q connoisseur who drinks a couple of glasses daily and even knows his wines in a blind tasting, but currently faces an anti-wine campaign lead by his health minister Agnès Buzyn, writes Subhash Arora
Macron has come out openly in support of wine and admits he enjoys a glass of wine every day with lunch and dinner and that there is a difference between wine and other types of liquor. "There is public health scourge when young people get drunk at an accelerated speed with alcohol or beer, but that's not the case with wine," Macron said last month.
He added that he did not support any increased regulations that industry leaders feared his health minister Agnès Buzyn would pursue. She said the “French population is led to believe that wine protects them and that it offers benefits that other alcohol does not”, but added, “It’s false. Scientifically, wine is an alcohol like any other (hard liquor)”.
Nine doctors have also supported her and offered the same view in the French newspaper Le Figaro. But Macron seems to take the view that wine’s a cut above other hard liquor. They also took Macron to task for disseminating what they see as false information and bad advice, citing alcohol as the leading cause for 50,000 deaths in France. "Alcohol, especially wine, is the source of domestic violence, marital violence and street violence, binge drinking, a significant proportion of mental illnesses, suicides and accidental road deaths," they add.
Last year French magazine Terre de Vins filmed a series of videos in which Macron shows off his blind tasting skills and declares that “wine is an ambassador” for the country. He told people how “I adopt the philosophy that red wine is an antioxidant”, adding that he would ideally have “at least one glass at noon and one in the evening”.
In the tasting he correctly identified a Bordeaux Blanc (from Château Lauduc) and a Côteaux d’Aix en Provence (from Château Vignelaure). He slipped up a little when he thought a 2005 Château Pape-Clément was a Pauillac, when it was actually from Pessac-Léognan in the Graves- both are of course from the Left Bank.
French people over the age of 15 consume 12.2 liters of pure alcohol per capita each year on average, according to the latest statistics from the World Health Organization. In Germany, the average rate is 11.8 liters In Britain, it's 11.6 liters and in Sweden and the US, the rate is 9.2 liters. On the upper end, the Russian average is 15.1 liters. "Pure alcohol" refers to the portion of a beverage that is 100 percent ethanol, according to a report in Miami Herald.
"A large majority of French people drink wine for pleasure, but we must remember that alcohol is the most dangerous psychotropic," Michel Reynaud, a signatory of the Figaro letter and an addiction expert in France, said last Monday on French radio.
Refuting their claim, the wine industry also published an open letter in the same Le Figaro, where several members of Académie du Vin voiced their displeasure about the earlier report. (The Académie is an institution devoted to the defence of French wines and the fostering of their understanding, the fight against frauds, deceptions and even ignorance, which could harm the esteem of these wines.)
The title of their letter: "Stop Demonizing Wine, which is Part of French Civilization!"
Our Viewpoint
As several studies have pointed out in the last 27 years and many have been reported in delWine, red wine indeed has a compound called resveratrol that is an anti-oxidant. Undoubtedly, excess amount of wine (beyond 2 glasses a day for men and a glass a day for women) causes problems with blood pressure, diabetes and other problematic diseases, these moderate levels are good for heart and damage through alcohol is not observed in any study.
The French have been leaders in wine production and consumption for decades and have had a healthier life in general-as was pointed out by a phenomenon called The French Paradox in 1991. What the health minister and the doctors ought to do is caution people about binge drinking and excess drinking. Two glasses of wine when taken with food, break up the alcohol as it passes through the system and thus is not as harmful as two glasses of hard liquor. It’s important to emphasise that it’s the excess that causes the damage. It’s better to have 2 glasses daily rather than have none on a day and 4 the next day.
President Macron is correct in his assessment but the problem of alcoholism seems to exist in France as in many other countries and continuous education is the key.
Subhash Arora
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