Is a Meal without Wine Good for Health?

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, had said: “Wine is a thing wonderfully appropriate to man if, in health as in disease, it is administered with appropriate and just measure according to the individual constitution.” Wine has always accompanied humanity, for religion or for health. Christians and Jews need wine for the liturgy. For Plato, wine was an indispensable element in society and the most important in the symposium. In this second part of the banquet, mixed with water, the wine gave the word. If the French paradox made a lot of ink flow; it was the wine that was originally responsible for it. Many researchers have tried to study alcohol and polyphenols in wine, in order to solve the mystery. Beyond its cardiovascular effects, there are also effects on longevity, metabolism, cancer prevention, and neuroprotection, and the list goes on. The purpose of this work is to make an analysis of the current knowledge on the subject. Indeed, if the paradigm of antioxidants is seductive, it is perhaps by their prooxidant effect that the polyphenols act, by an epigenetic process mediated by nrf2. Wine is a preserve of antioxidants for the winter and it is by this property that the wine acts, in an alcoholic solution. A wine without alcohol is pure heresy. Wine is the elixir that by design, over millennials, has acted as a pharmacopeia that enabled man to heal and prosper on the planet. From Alvise Cornaro to Serge Renaud, nutrition was the key to health and longevity, whether the Cretan or Okinawa diet, it is the small dose of alcohol (wine or sake) that allows the bioavailability of polyphenols. Moderate drinking gives a protection for diseases and a longevity potential. In conclusion, let us drink fewer, but drink better, to live older.