@ The Straight Dope: Is drinking alcohol a good cold cure?

That said, while there's no evidence that alcohol will help fight colds that've already been caught, moderate drinking may keep colds away. A Carnegie Mellon study from 1993 found that smokers were at greater risk of coming down with something no matter their drinking habits, but nonsmokers' resistance to colds increased with consumption of alcohol (up to three or four drinks daily). And after surveying almost 4,300 Spanish university employees, researchers reported that those who drank 14 or more glasses of wine a week were only 56 percent as likely to catch a bug

Hmm...