A drink to your health
In the Bible, Timothy 5:23 says: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”
Over the years, however, the sheer enjoyment of wine has overshadowed any medicinal and health merits it might possess – until now. Local winery Brisbane Vineyard, under the leadership of biochemist Greg Jardine, has introduced a range of wines and liqueurs under the Dr Red label that are high in antioxidants which help the immune system fight off disease.
Some of the wines have been tested at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research for their capacity to destroy cancer cells, with promising initial results.
“Our discovery is that we starve the cancer cells with ginger, making them vulnerable,” Mr Jardine said. “Then we press their self-destruct button by adding selected antioxidants.”
Testing is now taking place on a range of cancers with the long term aim of killing cancer cells with food.
“Nobody else in the world is doing this,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get more results from laboratory tests in the next couple of years.”
Mr Jardine achieved his breakthrough by including all the grape seeds and skins in the wine, something that had never been done before.He’s subsequently gone a step further by blending extracts of foods – olives and lemons from the Mediterranean diet – into the wine.
Mr Jardine selected those foods because Mediterranean people have low incidences of both heart disease and cancer.
Raspberries and ginger have also been added to some of the range of the company’s products. Mr Jardine and his staff have been working with scientists from Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries to optimise the levels of antioxidants in the wine.
And how does the wine taste?
“They’re big, robust reds. They are a bit like a dessert wine, forti. ed with antioxidants.” Mr Jardine has now turned his attention to producing coffee that’s also loaded with antioxidants – but that’s another story.
