It's also fairly delicious, but that's beside the point.

Wine is a decent shout for countless reasons. It's light, it's often cheap, it goes good with most foods including meat, fish, and mass amounts of chocolate. Decent enough. And while wine is often thought of as the catalyst involved in making us sick (the morning after we've drank it, wha?), apparently wine could actually be preventing sore throats and plaque build-up. Surprised? Us too, but the information has come from a credible source so we may as well just go with it. According to the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, both red and white wines contain antibacterial properties than can ward off certain types of germs that cause plaque and sore throats. The study found that both red and white wine contains a number of organic compounds that can help stop a cold in its tracks before it's even begun. In fact, the study showed that these compounds can kill 99.9 percent of bacteria, which is fairly impressive in fairness to it. "Several studies suggest that moderate wine consumption has beneficial effects on human health," said the study authors. "Our findings seem to indicate that wine can act as an effective antimicrobial agent against the tested pathogenic oral streptococci and might be active in caries and upper respiratory tract pathologies prevention. "In conclusion, both red and white wines were proved to exert in vitro antibacterial activity against several oral streptococci." Class. However, let it be known that while wine may prevent against a sore throat, it's not an extremely good idea to start drinking a lot of it on the regular. A recent study showed that drinking one bottle of wine per week has the same health effects as smoking 10 cigarettes. The UK study estimated that consuming one 750ml bottle of wine per week increases the likelihood of developing cancer even in non-smokers. It said that if 2,000 non-smoking men and women drank one bottle a wine a week for the rest of their lives, approximately 10 more of the men and 14 more of the women would go on to develop cancer. So, yeah. Not really worth avoiding a cold, is it?