We’ll keep it short this week as we ship out the remaining Tacana 2018 and prepare for our upcoming collection (very excited about this one!)
That said, in case you missed it, we wanted to update you on the recent lab testing of extreme altitude malbecs from the Calchaqui. We had previously estimated that they contained up to 10 times the resveratrol levels of other mass market wines.
Turns out, we were right!
But first, this week Julien investigates the difference between California’s Napa and Sonoma regions, including Napa’s biggest weakness, and why Julien might be just a bit biased...
Lab Testing Our Wines Cont’d
Our Tacana Reserva came in at 7x the resveratrol levels of a common supermarket wine found on many kitchen counters in the US.
Our Sunal Ilógico malbec (for which we are the only US source) came in at 10x the resveratrol levels!
Speaking of health promoting nutrients, our Tacana Malbec also had more than 2x the levels of anthocyanin. Anthocyanin is the nutrient that gives some vegetables a dark purple or red color. Go figure: extreme altitude malbec grapes are much darker than lower altitude grapes.
Anthocyanin is a bit controversial. Some mainstream sources dismiss its health effects entirely. Yet, anthocyanin has also been extensively studied for its anti-angiogenetic effect, which prevents tumors from forming the new blood vessels needed to grow.
In labs and animal models, anthocyanins have demonstrated a real anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, vision-supporting, heart health and neuro-protective effect. (A great review of these studies was published in the Food & Nutrition Research journal back in 2017. See it for yourself at this link.)
The testing also revealed another benefit of these wines. They had 99% less sugar than that common supermarket red wine (0.1 g/L vs. 13.8 g/L - residual sugar is a dirty little secret of the mass market wine industry; labels are not required to disclose it).
Next week we resume our regularly scheduled programming...
Until then... santé!
The Wine Explorer