**10. Wine**

The last two decades have seen renewed interest in the health benefits of wine, as documented by increasing research and several epidemiologic observations showing that moderate wine drinkers have lower cardiovascular mortality rates than heavy drinkers or teetotalers. Most of the beneficial effects of wine against CVDs have been attributed to the presence in red wine of resveratrol and other polyphenols. Wines contain polyphenolic compounds that can be rough‐ ly classified in flavonoid and non flavonoid compounds; both classes of compounds have been implicated in the protective effects of wine on the cardiovascular system. Resveratrol is one of the most biologically active polyphenols contained in wine.

Moderate wine intake reduces cardiovascular risk [51]. In addition, it is known that alcohol favourably modifies the lipid pattern by decreasing total plasma cholesterol, in particular LDL, and by increasing HDL. Cardiovascular risk reduction seems to be linked largely to the effect of non-alcoholic components, mainly resveratrol and other polyphenols, on the vascular wall and blood cells and a great part of the beneficial effects of resveratrol on vas‐ cular function are due to its anti-oxidant effects.

The effect of resveratrol and other wine polyphenols on oxidative stress has been scarcely explored in humans and only a few studies have analyzed the effects of wine supplementa‐ tion on indexes of oxidation *in vivo* [36].

**Figure 8.** Main polyphenols in wine. \* Polyphenols contained only in white wine. Modified from [36].
