Americans Obsession With Wine

Why have so many Americans bought into the idea that wine is a cure-all?

"Part of it is that we are a nation infatuated with quick-fix diets and painless remedies; the idea that sitting on a couch nursing a syrah could actually be making us thinner and fitter is irresistible. We are also a culture that fears growing old, and the possibility that a glass of red wine could be a fountain of youth is likewise a tantalizing prospect. I suspect the preoccupation with wine's health impact is a reflection, too, of our Puritan heritage and the conflicted attitude that Americans have always had about wine. Although we are consuming it in record quantities, wine is still seen as something effete and vaguely foreign. That's why the wine vs. beer dichotomy continues to be invoked every election season as a way of distinguishing urban elites from other Americans, and it is why candidates favored by those elites are invariably tarred as chardonnay-swilling swells."

A Spoonful of Vino
by Mike Steinberger
http://www.slate.com/id/2211597/pagenum/2