224 WINE LAW work became known as the “Seven Country Study”. Keys attributed the low incidence of cardiovascular disease in southern European populations to the socalled “Mediterranean diet”, rich in olives, wine, fruits, vegetables and legumes. Later, in the early 1990s, Serge Renaud presented the results of another study in which he claimed that the French lived longer, had less heart disease and lower mortality from heart disease than the American or the English populations – that is, industrialised countries with high saturated fat intake –, even though the French also had a diet rich in saturated fat. It was thus a curious French Paradox. Perhaps these studies would not have come out so strongly to the population if it had not been for the fact that Renaud was invited, in 1991, to the program 60 minutes on the American television network CBS. Renaud argued that the explanation for this paradox lay in the two or three glasses of wine that most French people drank daily with their meals. Renaud then became a celebrity, and, in the United States, the sales of red wine increased significantly. 2. THE HEALTHY COMPONENTS OF WINE Following Renaud’s appearance on this television show, he was asked by the United States Government’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Control to demonstrate, with hard data, what he was stating. In other words, he had to demonstrate that the regular consumption of wine was beneficial to health. Consequently, Renaud published his work in the prestigious Lancet Magazine, in 1992, in which he demonstrated his postulates. The circle was thus closed with the recommendations of the Mediterranean diet proposed by Ancel Keys, with wine as an incidence factor in the reduction of coronary diseases. With these results, scientists set out to find out which components or compounds in the wine were responsible for these beneficial health properties. The healthy components of wine turned out to be the components of the grape itself. In a grape’s structure, we can distinguish, from the inside out, the seeds, the endocarp and the mesocarp (which form the pulp) and the exocarp and the epidermis (which form the skin). The different tissues that form the fruit contribute in a different way to the biochemical composition of the grape. The final composition of the berry depends on the genotype of the variety, the environmental conditions (climate, soil, water and crop management) and the interaction between genotype and environment. Of all these components, the most relevant substances of the grapes and wine, regarding health protection,
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