A study of 340,924 British adults followed for an average of 13.4 years has found a sharp divide in how different alcoholic drinks relate to mortality: moderate wine drinking tracked a 21 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death, while even low-level consumption of beer, cider or spirits tracked a 9 percent higher risk. Heavy drinking, by contrast, raised the risk of death across the board, regardless of what was in the glass.
The findings, presented at the American College of Cardiology’s ACC.26 annual scientific session in New Orleans, come from an observational analysis of UK Biobank data covering 2006 to 2022, with 22,381 deaths recorded during follow-up. They were publicized again this week in a ScienceDaily release. The study exists only as a conference abstract and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
What the numbers show
Compared with people who never drank or drank only occasionally, the heaviest drinkers faced a 24 percent higher risk of dying from any cause, a 36 percent higher risk of dying from cancer, and a 14 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. These elevations appeared regardless of beverage type.
The surprise came at lower intake levels, where the type of alcohol mattered. Among low and moderate drinkers, wine was consistently associated with lower mortality. The abstract reports hazard ratios between 0.79 and 0.92 across mortality outcomes for low and moderate wine intake. Beer, cider and spirits showed the opposite pattern, with hazard ratios from 1.07 to 1.83 across outcomes, including the 9 percent higher cardiovascular death risk even at low levels. There is a limit to wine’s apparent benefit, however: at high intake, wine flipped to harmful for cancer mortality, with a hazard ratio of 1.10.
The study defined the drinking categories using a standard drink as about 14 grams of pure alcohol. For men, low intake ran from 20 grams per week up to 20 grams per day, moderate from 20 to 40 grams per day, and high above 40 grams per day. For women, the moderate band was 10 to 20 grams per day, and high was above 20 grams per day.
Why wine might look different
The researchers, led by senior author Zhangling Chen, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in China, with first author Ziyue Li, offered several explanations for the beverage divide. Red wine contains polyphenols and antioxidants that may confer cardiovascular benefits. Wine is more often consumed with meals, which slows absorption. And wine drinkers in the UK Biobank tended to have higher-quality diets and healthier behaviors overall, while beer, cider and spirits drinkers were more likely to report poorer diet quality and other lifestyle risk factors.
Chen’s presentation also reported that drinking on an empty stomach was associated with higher mortality, a finding that points to how alcohol is consumed, not just what is consumed. The combination suggests the observed differences reflect a mix of the drink’s chemistry, the context of consumption, and the lifestyle patterns of the people who choose each beverage.
The confounding question
The study’s own limitations frame how much weight the wine finding should carry. This is an observational analysis: it cannot establish causation, and the authors called for high-quality randomized trials. Alcohol intake was self-reported at a single time point, so changes in drinking habits over the 13-year follow-up were not captured. And UK Biobank participants are on average healthier than the general population, which limits how far the results generalize.
The deeper problem is confounding, the epidemiological version of the chicken-and-egg question. If the people who drink wine also happen to eat better, exercise more, and have higher incomes, all of which correlate with lower mortality, then the wine itself may be a marker rather than a cause. The researchers adjusted for demographics, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, cardiometabolic factors and family history, and the wine association survived those adjustments. But residual confounding by unmeasured factors cannot be excluded, and the authors themselves said the wine benefit may be partly explained by the healthier lifestyle patterns of wine drinkers.
A conference result, not yet a consensus
The result also carries a disclosure that matters for how it should be read: it is a conference abstract, not a peer-reviewed publication. The ACC.26 abstract, titled “Alcohol Use at Mid-Life and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality,” appears in the conference’s abstracts supplement to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The industry-funded International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, commenting on the findings, noted that the results are early and have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
None of this makes the beverage divide trivial. A 340,000-person cohort with 22,381 deaths is one of the largest datasets ever brought to this question, and the consistency of the pattern, wine lower across outcomes and beer, cider and spirits higher, is striking. But the responsible reading is the cautious one: the type of alcohol, how it is consumed, and the lifestyle around it all appear to contribute, and disentangling them will require better studies than even this one.
For the reader deciding what to pour, the heaviest-drinking result is the most robust: heavy drinking raised death risk across every category and every beverage. Whatever the wine signal turns out to be, it does not rescue the high-intake group, not even for wine.
Conference disclosure: This study was presented at the American College of Cardiology’s ACC.26 Annual Scientific Session (March 28-30, 2026, New Orleans) as abstract 1350-059, published in the JACC abstracts supplement (Vol. 87, No. 13_Supplement, p. A292, DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2026.02.725). It has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Sources:
- ScienceDaily, “Wine, beer, or spirits? Massive study finds a surprising health divide” (Aug 9, 2026): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260808235008.htm
- JACC conference abstract (ACC.26): https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2026.02.725
- Healio, “Beer, wine, spirits mortality risk varies by alcohol type” (Mar 26, 2026): https://www.healio.com/news/cardiology/20260326/beer-wine-spirits-mortality-risk-varies-by-alcohol-type
- Medscape, “Even low or moderate levels of some types of alcohol linked to more…” (Mar 30, 2026): https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/even-low-or-moderate-levels-some-types-alcohol-linked-more-2026a10009mp
- Medical Xpress (ACC release version): https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-wine-beer-spirits-major.html