Resveratrol: The Anti-Inflammatory and Antioxidant in Grape Skins

Resveratrol: the powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant found in grape skins. How much is in our wine?

Popular belief tells us that red wine “makes good blood,” but how much truth is there in all this?

Grapes are a fruit rich in polyphenols and antioxidants that counteract the effects of free radicals and cellular aging.

First of all we find resveratrol, which is included in the list of the Ministry of Health "Other nutrients and other substances with nutritional or physiological effect".

Resveratrol is the phenol with the greatest antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, it protects blood vessels and is able to stimulate a series of processes involved in the regulation of the cell cycle. We then asked ourselves how much resveratrol is present in our wines.

Let's start our research with grapes: some varieties naturally contain more resveratrol than others.

This depends on the chemical composition of the skin. For example, red grapes contain almost eight times more resveratrol than white grapes.

Furthermore, the same red grapes have different quantities depending on the variety, but also on the climate, soil, vintage and finally on the winemaking techniques.

The harvest time certainly plays an important role, since once the grapes have reached the peak of ripeness, resveratrol tends to decrease in concentration as the grapes dry.

Subsequently, in the cellar, we can increase the extraction of antioxidants proportionally to the length of the maceration, that is, the longer the contact times between the must and the skins, the more resveratrol we will have in the wine.

The genetic component means that on average the varieties richest in antioxidants are for example Merlot and Malbec (up to 14 mg/l). But with short macerations and early harvests, in wines derived from these grapes we can find less concentration of resveratrol than in wines produced from mature Syrah and subjected to long macerations.

At this point we had our wines analyzed and discovered that, although wines derived from Cabernet grapes, both Franc and Sauvignon, do not have a particularly high concentration of resveratrol, our Agapanto is around 10 mg/l (average for the 2018/2019 vintages).

A more than encouraging value to drink a glass of our Bolgheri DOC and protect your health!

by Silvia Cirri and Linda Franceschi