kewp, obviously you are looking for high resveritrol, region is as important as grape variety. Pinot is not a magic bullet, california pinots have very low resveratrol compared to european wines (spanish and french are the highest0. Oregon, New York and Florida reds are much higher than california. If you are looking specifically for health, high resveratrol and price (as opposed to taste), then go to trader joes and get $3-5 anything red from france or spain, they have the highest levels (tj’s has cheap malbecs and they are high in it). It is those countries that are the reason science has been searching for answers to the french paradox. Ultimately they will isolate it and sell it as a supplement, the current supplements are irradic and unregulated (plus pills never really work as good as food). The reason scientists have been trying to figure this out is that the average french person who smokes, eats a high fat diet and drinks a bottle of wine a day is healthier than an american who doesn’t smoke, excercises and eats a healthy diet. Most of our wines are very low in resveratrol because it isn’t so much the varietal but the exposure of the living grapes to bacteria. The grapes produce the resveritrol to fight off the invader and the skins are fermented in red wine (not much with whites). The amount needed, which wines have the most (recently they found extremely high levels in muscadine grown in florida and n. carolina) are changing with each study. A study just released showed that mice started on it late in life didn’t live longer like mice raised on it from a young age (which may explain the french paradox as they start much younger as wino’s than we do, our teenagers drink beer). To be safe, just in case they find out it is another component, experiment with the french and spanish wines and dont drink the same wine every night for a year, mix it up a little, just in case you find out later the one you picked didn’t have in it what worked. For $7, you can get a bottle of mouton cadet at trader joes, it is the budweiser of france. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol#cite_note-PNS-77
As far as boxes go, I’m not ready yet so I can’t make a reccomendation. I have recently accepted synthetic corks and screw caps, so I am making strides, but mylar packaging and i haven’t come to an understanding just yet, perhaps in time we will. I also think the market for pinot in boxes is too small for many producers to do it. Pinot is a pain in the ass to make, after all that work, winemakers will be reluctant to box and dump it unless it is bad.
One other thing to worry about, if they box it, then they probably ferment in steel. Go old school until the research narrows it down, because those healthy 80 year old smokers in france didn’t drink steel fermented boxed wine. It may end up being the naps anyway, just drink what you like.
