Red Wine: Why It's a Serious Aphrodisiac for Women..

New research indicates that women who drink one or two glasses of red wine each day have stronger libidos than those who choose alcoholic drinks other than red wine or are teetotal. Naturally the best place for such a study had to be one of the world's best ancient wine-producing countries - Italy or France, where else? - and in fact the researchers are based at the University of Florence. They studied 800 women aged between 18 and 50 who fell into three research groups. One group regularly drank one or two glasses of red wine a day. A second group drank less than one glass a day of any alcoholic drink, and women in the third group were teetotal.

Each of the women answered a questionnaire titled the Female Sexual Function Index. Nineteen questions cover various aspects of sexual desire and response. They were asked, for example, how often they thought about sex, how often they wanted to have sex, how easily they became sexually excited when they did and how satisfied they were with their sexual experiences. The highest score, indicating healthy sexual desires and responses, is 36. The average score of the red wine drinkers was 27.3 points while less frequent drinkers scored 25.9 and the non-drinkers had the lowest scores, at 24.4 points.

The university's researchers conclude that the explanation for the stronger sexual functioning of the red wine drinkers (a horrible non-sensual term 'functioning' but that's social science for you) may be that chemical compounds present in red wine increase blood flow to the erogenous zones - the areas of the body most involved in sexual response.

The findings are all the more significant because the red wine drinkers studied were on average older than the other two groups even though ageing is related to progressive loss of libido.

So either red wine really does has aphrodisiac qualities as many of us have long suspected....or older women have had more time to develop a greater degree of sensuality and more refined sexual responses. Or perhaps both. Either way, pass the red wine would you?