It wouldn't be unlikely to have gone through a couple of bottles of wine this holiday season. What with an incredibly stressful year it has been, many of us have used this time to let loose a little. But has it ever happened that you've felt unreasonably grim after having had just one single glass of wine? Well, one doctor believes there is a very good explanation for this phenomenon.
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The allergy is not in the wine itself
Doctor Rubaiyat Haque, an allergy specialist at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London believes that, contrary to popular belief, alcohol allergies are extremely uncommon. Instead, what people are actually intolerant to when they claim to have an allergy are the things that are found in wine itself.
Case in point: sulphites. These additives are used in wine to preserve it but can cause a variety of different symptoms ranging from flushed skin to itchy eyes, from one drinker to another. He explains that:
Sulphite levels are typically very high in wines. The key here is quantity.
And sulphite levels tend to be higher in white wines than in red ones. Particularly, you'll find double the amount of sulphites in a Pinot Grigio than you would in a most red wines.
But that's not at all that could be messing with your head upon imbibing wine. Dr. Haque explains that:
It could [also] be many other things in wine that spark symptoms–grape proteins or compounds found in plant skins called tannins, enzymes added to help fermentation, or additives. Some people are allergic to the small amount of yeast in wine.
So how can you know for sure if you have an intolerance?
According to the Doctor himself, the simplest way of going about this little experiment is to try your luck drinking wine that has very low sulphite levels and seeing how your body reacts afterwards.
Organic wines have very little to no added sulphites in them so this can be a very option to test your intolerance with.
