Some of us love to savor a glass of red wine — or two — with dinner every once in a while. The catch is that this velvety drink often leaves the teeth stained, so maybe it’s not such a good idea to order it on your first date or while out on a business dinner. That being the case, it’s certainly not intuitive to infer that red wine could do anything for your oral health — the contrary, rather. Still, this is precisely what a study conducted by researchers from Spain suggests. The research was led by M. Victoria Moreno-Arribas and colleagues from Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación in Madrid, and the Department of Health and Genomics at the Center for Advanced Research in Public Health in Valencia. Moreno-Arribas and team have now published their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. There had plenty of reasons to be partial to a glass of Merlot or Cabernet, even beyond their deep flavors and the way they make even a frugal meal seem richer and more sophisticated. This drink has actually been found to bring a lot of health benefits. A recent study said that it could help to keep the brain young, and previous research has tied it to hormonal health as well as heart disease prevention. Many of the health benefits of red wine come from its content of polyphenols, which are a series of micronutrients with antioxidant properties. But polyphenols are nutritional superheroes with many secret weapons, and one of these is their impact on our gut bacteria. Some polyphenols can be absorbed into the small intestine, there to interact with the gut microbiota and fend off some of the bacterial “bad guys” that might threaten our health. Picking up on this thread, Moreno-Arribas and colleagues hypothesized that polyphenols found in red wine and grapes could have a similar, protective effect in the mouth, fending off harmful oral bacteria that cause cavities and gum disease.