It is hard to part from a habit, especially one as delicious as wine. It is the ideal accompaniment to a fancy meal, and a perfect way to help you relax after a long and stressful day. But is it healthy?

With the pandemic looming over our heads, and health and wellness taking over our lives (for the better) we might be tempted to ditch our bottles of wine. But the fruit of the vine has untapped potential, and if you follow these guidelines, with a little help from experts, you should be able not just to avoid harm, but actually benefit.

A Paradox resolved: Wine actually has documented health benefits!

This will not come as news to the older generations who followed the ideas behind the french paradox and the decades of research which followed, but wine contains key ingredients for supporting a healthy body, especially the heart. While the idea is hardly new, the research backing it up continues to emerge.

Just last year Italian researchers came out with a review of the benefits of wine “consumption for cardiovascular health”. The 2019 study reminded us that a range of benefits have been “widely supported by the scientific literature” from cognitive and mental support to anti inflammatory and ageing properties of some of the key molecules in wine.

So clearly it is more than just safe to drink some wine, but actually beneficial. But how much, and which wines, those are questions just as key to building wine into a healthy lifestyle. And that is why the following tips are essential, and services like Palate Club which help deliver healthy wines are a blessing.

Drink Responsibly – This cannot be stressed enough, in large quantities alcohol starts taxing the body more than it helps, not to mention leading to poor choices! While a couple glasses at a party are probably fine, it should not become a habit to drink more than one a day! A few bottles a month is all you need to build wine into your healthy living patterns, and that’s what Palate club delivers.

Drink Quality Wine – This is crucial. Poorly made wine, especially the large scale industrial stuff you find hidden behind fancy labels that dominate the wine industry, is not nearly as likely to contain the macronutrients that can benefit your heart and mind. Instead you should be drinking artisanal wines, sourced from winemakers who work the land and the wine, and respect both.

Drink Sustainable Wine – While you might not feel the immediate effects, living a health and wellness conscious life also requires thinking about others, and the planet. These are not easy impacts to control, especially without good information. And the wine industry is one that can take quite a heavy toll on the environment, between significant water, pesticide and land use. Here again, the key to responsible wine drinking is working with small scale producers who respect the land, and can afford to take the time and care, and cost, to work sustainably. The kinds of producers Palate Club works to connect with consumers.

Look past the label (or ignore it) – Wine marketing is a huge business, and more of then than not it is misleading you in one way or another. An attractive label says nothing about the quality of the wine inside, except that the company spent more money on the label. You can bet they cut costs somewhere to do so. Even the medals, rankings and ratings are unreliable; either paid for empty marketing, or unhelpful vague or tailored for someone else’s taste. You want wine suited for your palate, which is what Palate Club is all about.

Palate club helps us tackle these, and more. They put the time and effort, and most importantly expertise, into selecting the wines, and we benefit. In addition to picking bottles better suited for a healthy lifestyle, they also take our taste into account. Learning with each bottle a bit more about what we like so they can help us select which ones to buy, or which ones to have delivered to our door.