Here’s a little bit of Grape Thinking for you — it was just announced last week that University of Rochester medical researchers have showed for the first time that Resveratrol, the powerful antioxidant found in grape skins, helps destroy pancreatic cancer cells - Read more here. There is a lot of controversy over this topic and the researchers are calling it a very ’seductive’ area of study right now.

We love this because it’s one of the main influences in our brand name — we’re all about a healthy lifestyle and we think that wine is a vital component to healthy living. Read the rest of this entry »

This is such an important idea, that I thought it should be followed up with another post, especially just now seeing the cover of the most recent Wine Spectator.

Renewable energies, recyclable supply chains, organic growing methods, and healthy lifestyles are the wave of the future. We won’t just be driving hydrogen powered cars and have our electricity generated from photovoltaic solar panels and off-shore wind farms. Every aspect of human nature is going to change… our habits, our routines, and even our thought processes… systematic instead of linear. Waste management and recyclables will be integrated into every imaginable human system to promote efficiency and productivity, foods will be organic and healthy lifestyles will be promoted, and most importantly, our planet will be cherished instead of cut down, polluted, and destroyed.

And what’s a better place to help start this movement than wineries? They’re some of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing locations in the world (just look at the rise in wine tourism) and they create a product that is doctor recommended as good for your health, with red wine having the magical anti-aging component Resveratrol. Check out an old post about this: The Human Elixir

Aside from just being a Green evangelist, (although this revolution will absolutely make the world a healthier, happier, and wealthier place), green technologies and green marketing is something that wineries should certainly partake in. Not only will investment in green energy sources and eco-friendly farming methods make your winery more profitable and your product that much more natural and tasty, but having the ability to market yourselves as a Green winery will make you more attractive to your consumers.

When Al Gore released his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” last year, the trend tipped, making it more than a movement for treehugging hippies and Greenpeace activists. It’s now a movement that everybody is starting to get behind (other than Exxon and other special interested oil companies) all because of the overwhelmingly positive potential of its impact on our world. We’re hopefully about to enter another Golden Age of human civilization and wineries can help lead the way. It makes sense.

So lately I’ve been infatuated with the whole idea of wine’s health benefits. It just seems so righteous. Wine is consumed by all nationalities, ethnicities, races, and religions and has been around since the roots of civilization. It’s not surprising that it gives us a little more than a buzz.

In the Fortune article pictured left, it was discussed that wine, more specifically red wine, has a double attack on aging. It works right at the core of our life force… the energy producing components of our cells known as mitochondria, which convert sugars into energy and ultimately power the human body. However, just like a coal plant produces energy and pollutes greenhouse gases that harm our planet, mitochondria also pollute in the form of free radicals that cause damage to our cells and our bodies. These free radicals also harm other mitochondria, causing them to become more inefficient and give off more free radicals, thus sparking the cell-degrading snowball effect that is thought to be a major cause of aging.

We may have an answer, however. We now know that wine has not one, but two ways to combat free radicals. First, it has antioxidants, which most people are familiar with. Antioxidants are also found in green tea and orange juice and they serve to soak up the free radicals produced in the body, thus eliminating their harmful potential. Secondly, and more importantly, red wine possesses a compound known as Resveratrol (topic of Fortune article), which activates an enzyme that creates new and increasingly efficient mitochondria. To put this in perspective: Whereas antioxidants will just make you feel better, new efficient mitochondria can lead to weight loss, increased endurance, and even disease prevention, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimers!

Could wine become the human elixir?… More on this later