Rich people do the darndest things, from dropping $100,000 on a single truffle to clipping their papers together with gold-plated staples. Now? They're bathing in red wine. Jonathan Alsop, founder of the Boston Wine School, joined us to talk about the latest trend in the world of wine: vinotherapy, the supposedly rejuvenating practice that involves, quite literally, filling a bathtub with wine and hopping in for a splash.
What drives a person to empty out their wine cellar into a foot bath? The answer lies in resveratrol, the antioxidant that some studies suggest may be good for the blood vessels in your heart. Unfortunately, you have to drink exorbitant amounts of it to feel a difference (and the jury is still out on whether that's actually the case.) "The good news is: you're fully antioxidized," Alsop says. "The bad news is: your liver is as big as Montana."
To get around that little loophole, celebrities like basketball player Amar'e Stoudemire have taken to bathing in wine instead. But, as Alsop points out, there's one tiny problem: the only way to reap the benefits of resveratrol is to take it internally (and not, say, by rubbing your feet in it.) In other words, it's mostly just a big waste of wine.
So while he can't vouch for indulging in vinotherapy, Alsop still robustly encourages you to enjoy red wine the old-fashioned way. In that spirit, he brought in one of his new favorites: Marani's "Saperavi," a wine from Georgia (as in the former Soviet republic, he says, not as in "Georgia On My Mind.") In Georgian, "Saperavi" translated roughly to "paint dye" or "pigment" — a nod to how dark, intense, and inky this wine is.
For more from Jonathan Alsop on the latest news from the wine world, tune in to his full interview on Boston Public Radio above.
