In the episode (titled "The French Paradox"), Morley Safer attempts to uncover how the French are able to consume an abundance of fatty foods and still have 40% fewer incidences of coronary heart disease than in the US. Safer incredulously rattles off a list of menu items at a restaurant in Lyon (Pig's head pate with parsley! Black pudding! Potatoes in oil! Double fat sliced tripe with onions! Hot sausage with lentils!) and shakes his head at the researcher sitting across from him. "There's something about the French that seems to be protecting them," he replies.
Over the course of the episode, Safer hones in on two frequent habits of the French: drinking wine and eating cheese. An interviewee explains that "wine has a flushing effect - it removes platelets from the artery wall." And cheese isn't as bad for you as everyone thinks! According to an interviewee on the show, the real villain is milk, not cheese. In summary, the episode convinced the American public that red wine was good for their health. The points on moderation were somewhat drowned out by the excitement around the health benefits.
In A Moveable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in Napa Wine Country, the authors write that "the next big step in Napa's, and America's, modern wine progression came all at once, in a single, sudden evolutionary leap. It was a fall night in 1991--November 17, to be exact, because they remember it in Napa and around the wine world." They are, of course, referring to "The French Paradox." The episode sparked publicity from numerous news outlets including the New York Times. Wine drinkers and non-drinkers alike went wild. According to the Wall Street Journal, cab sales at grocery stores spiked 45% in the four weeks after the show aired - an increase of roughly 2.6 million bottles. It's hard to imagine a single episode of 60 Minutes sparking a response of this size in any industry today.
