THE FACTS

Pairing the right wine with a meal can round out flavors and stimulate conversation. But can it really help digest the meal, as suggested by a host of authorities through the ages, even the Bible? (“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.”)

Millenniums later, scientists are still working on that one. Some have found that alcoholic beverages speed the emptying of food from the stomach and stimulate gastric acid, while others maintain there is little effect. One study by German researchers, in the aptly named journal Gut, may explain the discrepancy: it found an effect from fermented drinks (wine, sherry and beer) but not from drinks that were fermented and distilled, like rum, cognac and whiskey.

Image Credit... Christoph Niemann

“The alcoholic beverage constituents that stimulate gastric acid output and release of gastrin are most probably produced during the process of fermentation and removed during distillation,” they concluded.