F­rom the time we’re old enough to understand the word “alcoholic,” we learn about the evils of alcohol. They’re myriad: addiction, drunk driving, cirrhosis of the liver, high blood pressure, alcohol poisoning, kidney disease and so on. The strange thing is not that there are endless ways to die from a beverage. The strange thing is that this deadly beverage might actually be good for you under certain circumstances.

Alcohol has for decades been considered bad for your heart. It’s linked to high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and heart attacks, for a start; and people with heart disease, especially heart disease associated with high blood pressure, are almost always counseled to abstain completely. Recent evidence, though, suggests that people with heart disease might benefit considerably from drinking particular types of alcohol in particular dosages.