Natural wine, boozy kombucha,
cannabis gin: the way we drink is
the next frontier for wellness. But,
writesMAX ALLEN, alcohol and
wellbeing have a long history.
TO YOUR
T
he winemaker hands me a glass of cloudy amber-
coloured fluid. He tells me it was made from
organically-grown grapes, no chemicals, wild-
fermented on skins, and bottled without filtration
or any added preservatives. Natural wine, in other
words. And then he says something I’ve heard from other
natural winemakers.
“You know, wines made like this have betterdigestibility.
You taste the vitality in them. You can drink natural wines
and not feel any bad effects the next day.”
In the late 19th and early 20th century it was common to
spruik wines – and other drinks, from beer to spirits to cider- by talking up their health benefits. But as social attitudes
shifted and advertising codes became stricter over the ensuing
decades, the idea of therapeutic drinking disappeared from
booze marketing.
Today, though, as the wellness trend continues to grow at
a staggering rate in the world of food, winemakers, brewers
and distillers are beginning to dabble once again in semi-
medical language, even making new, allegedly therapeutic
products. And they often sound uncannily similar to their
19th-century predecessors.
Take our natural winemaker’s talk of “digestibility”. This
was a common claim in the 19th century: Australian wine
companies such as Seppelt, Penfolds and Hardys produced all
sorts of drinks, from vermouth to bitters to tonic wine, that were
said to be beneficial to digestive health. One vermouth, made
by Melbourne wine merchant Alexander and Paterson in 1895,
promised to “possess the properties of a bitter stomachic that
acts like a charm, and frees the bowels from flatulency and pain”.
Angaston Bitters, produced around the turn of the 20th century,
was “recommended as an unfailing, quick and effective remedy
for weak digestion”.
It wasn’t just the marketing copywriters who were prone to
such colourful language. In 1906, no less a figure than Dr Thomas
Fiaschi, one of Sydney’s most respected surgeons and the owner
of Tizzana vineyard and winery on the Hawkesbury River, gave a
HEALTH
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