Why and how does wine make you hungry? I have a library of wine books, some of them written by me, and none of them provides an answer to this engrossing question, even though wine has long been prescribed as an appetite stimulant. I don't think it can simply be the alcohol. In my experience a gin and tonic deadens rather than sharpens the appetite, while beer in any volume seems filling rather than appetising. But almost any quantity of wine seems to stimulate the taste buds and leave me at least increasingly desperate for some solid matter. Why else do I find myself nibbling the dry water biscuits that constitute the food...