Talk:Oak (wine)

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Contents 1 Attribution 2 Wish list 3 Unfounded health claim 3.1 Proposed revision 4 Thoughts on assessment

[edit] Attribution

Some of the information in the Barrel alternative section is from the merged Oak chips article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 05:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wish list

Some items that I would like to expand on in the article (but need more sources) is a little more history on the development and use of oak as well as a criticism section on the "over oakiness" of some modern wines. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unfounded health claim

I've deleted the following claim from the page, as I beleive it to be scientifically unsupported:

"Studies have found that there maybe some health benefit from wine that has been in contact with oak. In 2003, scientists at Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie in Pessac, France found that when the oak tannin vescalagin interact with phenols in wine a polyphenol known as acutissimin A is created which has been shown to be 250 times more effective then the pharmaceutical drug Etoposide in stopping the growth of cancerous tumors." (ref: J. Gaffney "French Scientists Find New Anti-Cancer Substance in Red Wine" Wine Spectator Dec. 24th 2003)

While I am not a Wine Spectator member, and thus cannot read the directly referenced article, I believe it is a popular press account of the following scientific paper from scientists at the Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie: Quideau S, Jourdes M, Saucier C, Glories Y, Pardon P, Baudry C (2003). "DNA topoisomerase inhibitor acutissimin a and other flavano-ellagitannins in red wine". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 42 (48): 6012–4. doi:10.1002/anie.200352089. PMID 14679557. 

The authors of this paper did not study the effects of acutissimin A on "the growth of cancerous tumors". Rather, they showed that acutissimin A is formed in red wine aged in oak, and determined the chemical reaction which creates it. They the referred back to a 1992 paper by a Japanese group which compared the ability of acutissimin A to inhibit a test-tube reaction catalysed by DNA topoisomerase A, the target of the chemotherapy drug etoposide. Interestingly, while the Japanese group found that acutissimin A was 250 times more potent than etoposide in inhibiting the test-tube reaction, they also found that this did not create breaks in DNA, the mechanism by which etoposide kills cancer cells. Since neither the Japanese nor French groups seem to have studied cancer cells (let alone cancer patients), these studies give no support to the idea that this chemical found in wine is useful for either the treatment or the prevention of cancer.

• I see your point about the researchers using data from two different studies. We can probably rewrite the section to make that distinction more clear.Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed revision

“

In 2003, scientists at Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie in Pessac, France found that when the oak tannin vescalagin interact with phenols in wine a polyphenol known as acutissimin A is created. In separate studies this polyphenol has been shown to be 250 times more effective then the pharmaceutical drug Etoposide in stopping the growth of cancerous tumors.

”

With this revision, we remove the phrasing "health benefit" and just mention the two studies. The reliable sources mention both tidbits so it is not synthesis on our part but we are making more clear that there are at least two different studies at play. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid that doesn't work either. As I pointed out above, there don't appear to have been any studies on the effects of acutissimin A on "cancerous tumors." The study that produced to "250 times" statistic was studying the effect of acutissimin A on a mix of enzymes and DNA in a test tube. There were no cancer cells involved.

Here's a direct quote from the French paper" "While it would be quite inappropriate to infer from the presence of acutissimin A in red wine that this beverage possesses antitumor properties, our work shows for the first time that wine contains polyphenolic molecules displaying both ellagitannin and flavanoid structural features." -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 04:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, actually, I need to take back some of the above - there is a third paper (which the french paper didn't directly cite) in which the japanese group mixed a whole laundry list of tannin chemicals with several different cancer cell lines and found that many of them, including acutissimin A, killed one type of cancer cell (see Kashiwada Y, Nonaka G, Nishioka I, Chang JJ, Lee KH (1992). "Antitumor agents, 129. Tannins and related compounds as selective cytotoxic agents". J. Nat. Prod. 55 (8): 1033–43. PMID 1431932. ). The abstract I have read makes no mention of etoposide or any other established cancer drug, so it's not clear that a direct comparison was made. In any case, these studies were still done in a test tube, and it is a very long stretch to say that this chemical could prevent or cure tumors in an animal or person. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 04:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts on assessment

This article seems to be a fairly safe B. The one glaring need is a stronger lead summary in accordance to WP:LEAD. I suppose it could go into more details about the different sizes or barrel types used but that info is probably better suited to the aging barrel article. Other thoughts (particularly the French Project which has this rated as start) would be welcomed. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 23:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)