According to the WHO (and others), alcohol-and consequently wine-causes cancer; it is a real killer. This indiscriminate accusation raises the doubt that wine producers, and we who talk about it, are all “killers.” Daniele Cernilli reasons about this paradox.
If, as Professors Garattini and Viola, and WHO as a whole, claim, there is no safe dose of alcohol and therefore the moderate drinking story is untenable. If, as should be written on the labels of wines exported to Ireland, “Alcohol and deadly cancers are directly linked.”. If all this is true, then all of us, those who make wine, those who write about it, those who sell it, are we complicit in a massacre?
Associations that run courses on approaching wine are criminal associations? Producers are equivalent to drug dealers And of death? Is this what someone is trying to get across?
The anti-alcohol crusade
They may sound like paradoxes, exaggerations, extreme talk, but this media storm that is being unloaded on the consumption of alcoholic beverages, wine in primis (because in television reports it is always wine in the dock), has never been seen before.
Indeed, alcohol is a psychotropic substance, like drugs. It is legal and controlled, though. There are read that determine how it is produced and also how it is consumed. Those on levels in the blood if you drive, for example. Then, if I buy a bottle of wine, I get a receipt or an invoice and I’m not financing organized crime or even tax evasion. Quite a difference, isn’t it? So much so that in San Patrignano, where they try to wrest thousands of people out of drug addiction, they produce wine instead.
But no, no doubt: alcohol, and wine as a result, are health-damaging drinks, so they should be avoided. So much so that somewhere a pull is made on so-called “dealcoholic wines”. Produced with heavy invasive oenological interventions, using seven liters of water per liter of wine, and thus really unsustainable. But in order to dispose of surpluses, to sell very expensive equipment that is unattainable for medium and small producers, and to ride the anti-alcoholic crusade those are fine, too.
A lifetime of talking about wine
Finally, if wine is really so bad for you, so much so that you should discourage its consumption, even in moderate amounts, all the time, then I plead complicit and guilty to having written a great deal about it. Of having taught in the courses of many associations, of having done thousands of masterclasses halfway around the world, of telling the story for over forty years. For some I have played an almost criminal role, although perfectly legal, at least for now. I have also met and introduced people who are fantastic and contributed to the knowledge, and thus also to the risks, related to wine consumption.
I never argued that drinking alcohol is good for you, only that drinking responsibly was a reasonable compromise. After all, this is how it has been done for about five thousand years, and Humanity has not become extinct.
