Florence, Italy – Italian researchers claim that levels of sexual desire were higher in women who had drunk a couple of glasses of red wine than those who preferred other beverages.
Doctors at the University of Florence quizzed 800 women between the ages of 18 and 50 and segregated them into three groups – teetotal, red wine drinkers and those who preferred alternative alcoholic drinks.
The women were asked to complete a questionnaire to assess their interest in sex. The Female Sexual Function Index includes 19 questions giving a result of between two and 36, with higher scores indicating a higher sex drive.
The women who drank one or two glasses of red wine a day scored an average of 27.3 points, compared to 25.9 for other alcoholic drinks and 24.4 for the teetotallers.
The researchers, reporting their results in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, said that their findings need to be interpreted with ‘some caution’, but seem to indicate a potential relationship between red wine consumption and sexual appetite.
Women who drank more than two glasses of wine a day were rejected on the grounds that their appetite for sex might be increased by being drunk and would presumably have scored a maximum of 36 on the sex index.
