Any keen vino drinker will attest to the magical powers of the wonderful beverage that is wine.
Now, there's scientific evidence to back it up from Yale neurologist Gordon Shepherd, who recently presented his findings in Neurology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine.
In this recently published work, he explains that drinking wine can stimulate the brain more effectively than other activities known to be good for our noggins like listening to music and doing maths.
This is the hilarious moment Sophie Turner chugged a glass of wine on MSG Jumbotron:So, in short, if you've ever spent a late night (or three) struggling through a problem in life or at the workplace and indulged in a glass of vino to see you through, you probably did better than you'd have done without it.
Shepard wrote that wine "engages more of our brain than any other human behavior" and in his book, he details why.
If you're super interested in the subject, it's actually an expansion of his previous publication, Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matter.
The neurologist said that unlike maths, drinking wine is an activity which requires us to be completely engaged.
"You don't just put wine in your mouth and leave it there," Shepherd said. "You move it about and then swallow it, which is a very complex motor act."
He explains that we don't actually taste any specific thing from wine, but create this taste for ourselves, which is part of the reason it's so complex neurologically.
"The analogy one can use is color," he explained to NPR. "The objects we see don't have color themselves, light hits them and bounces off. It's when light strikes our eyes that it activates systems in the brain that create color from those different wavelengths. Similarly, the molecules in wine don't have taste or flavor, but when they stimulate our brains, the brain creates flavor the same way it creates color."
So, the next time you fancy a glass of vino, pop open that bottle in the knowledge that it's basically making you smarter.