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Eh. ConsumerLab calls the claims "exaggerated" and "even contradictory." Resveratrol activates the SIRT1 "longevity gene" associated with cellular metabolism, cellular repair, and lifespan. That's where the hype comes from.

The German study they cite re: longevity was small and involved obese mice "on an extremely high fat diet. Whether normally fed mice also show life extension by resveratrol remains unanswered." The high-fat diet mice had a 15% longer lifespan.

A 2017 Denmark study with humans is where the contradictory part comes in. High doses of resveratrol can lead to high total and "bad" LDL cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis. It inhibits an enzyme that metabolizes statins (which affect heart health). Low doses didn't have this effect, but no positive effect was found, either.

The website notes that many clinical studies are currently underway, but their comprehensive examination convinced me not to bother with it right now.

There’s no evidence that it does anything. David Sinclair is the the one that discovered that altering a protein class called sirtuins can limit aging in yeast. Resveratol works on those proteins. I don’t know of any negative effects to taking it (I don’t think there are but I don’t want to mislead) but there is literally no evidence after a ton of trials that it actually has any effect on anything in humans. The thing is that there are some scientists that are incredibly smart, even among other researchers, and incredibly gifted at designing creative experiments but then draw insane unsupported conclusions from the results.

So basically if you want to take it fine and personally I wouldn’t say I’m completely convinced it’s useless (though it sure looks like it is), but expect it to just do nothing and understand his claims are not backed by his own data.

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It's also important to know, that in the case of resveratrol, you can't just look up the literature and get an understanding of how effective it is. There was a fairly large scandal in the field around 2012 which was closely followed by the watchdog site retractionwatch. Now while one researcher publishing fraudulent data does not mean the entire field of research is wrong, it does mean each and every paper needs to be carefully scrutinized to see how heavily it relied on background assumptions made by papers that were later shown to be false. In this case in particular, with the researcher publishing over a hundred of papers a year some highly sited that left a pretty big impact. I can't say for sure how strongly this was felt in the longevity research community, but in the field of cardioprotection, which I was in at the time, it was a big deal.

Even a fairly recent review, which is by in large well and fairly balanced regarding the literature still cites papers from this researcher' publications and doesn't mention that aspect of the field's history at all.

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That scandal is fascinating and sad at the same time. The lengths some academics will go to to get grant funding and beat their colleagues is insane. You have to wonder how widespread it is. Also, crazy that he had a massive lawsuit brewing and then died in 2013... one has to wonder if it was self-harm, stress, or some other related thing. Das would have us to believe it was an assassination by the pharma industry...