Fun fact in Port History

[g-man]

Formerly, port wine was sweetened with litharge, causing lead poisoning, of which gout is a complication

[JacobH]

Formerly, port wine was sweetened with litharge, causing lead poisoning, of which gout is a complication

There were a few newspaper articles about gout last year, saying that some new research had shown that it was not caused by an excessive consumption of Port but by drinking too much sugared and sweetened drinks. I rather got the impression that the authors were not acquainted with the essentially qualities of Port!

[uncle tom]

Gout is primarily caused by over-consumption of protein and/or foods and drinks that have a high fructose content.

I am not sure when litharge was used to sweeten wine (or for how long), but the resultant poisoning is said to cause symptoms that resemble gout, although this seems to be slightly at odds with the textbook symptoms of lead poisoning.

Red wine is believed to counter the causal factors of gout, and as the residual sugar in port is primarily glucose, not fructose, it should also be beneficial.

- so keep taking the medicine!

Tom

[JacobH]

Gout is primarily caused by over-consumption of protein and/or foods and drinks that have a high fructose content.

I am not sure when litharge was used to sweeten wine (or for how long), but the resultant poisoning is said to cause symptoms that resemble gout, although this seems to be slightly at odds with the textbook symptoms of lead poisoning.

Red wine is believed to counter the causal factors of gout, and as the residual sugar in port is primarily glucose, not fructose, it should also be beneficial.

- so keep taking the medicine!

Tom

That’s interesting. I would have assumed that sugared drinks contained more glucose than fructose. It shows how little I know about these things! For anyone who is interested, I found the BBC Article about gout again.

Do you know why the sugar in Port is mostly glucose? A look on the internet suggests both non-fortifed wines and grapes contain, very roughly speaking, equal quantities of both.

[jdaw1]

Do you know why the sugar in Port is mostly glucose? A look on the internet suggests both non-fortifed wines and grapes contain, very roughly speaking, equal quantities of both.

An explanation, that I am inventing and for which I have no independent evidence, could be that fructose decays slowly into glucose. A half life of, say, a decade, would make most of the sugar in port glucose, but not significantly affect most dry reds.

Maybe.

[g-man]

Apparently it depends on the yeast used for fermentation.

http://www.biochemj.org/bj/026/0531/0260531.pdf

interesting to note that sauternes uses yeast that go after the fructose and leaves behind the glucose.

[angeleyes]

A rather fun article from an 1885 edition of the New York Times:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-fr ... 94649FD7CF