Article on the NBCNews.com site:
Are you allergic to wine?
Here is link: http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/23/12862846-could-you-be-allergic-to-wine?lite
Very happy I don’t have that allergy.
The histamines* in red wine [and, I suspect, in some sort of oak residue] really do me in.
I’m getting to the point where I barely even think about drinking reds anymore [much less actually put them in my mouth and swallow them] - it’s basically just stainless steel whites for me now.
*Although Maureen Nelson once said that the histamines tend to “oxidize” [or whatever] over the course of several decades, and that, by and large, old reds don’t really have histamines anymore.
It’s probably not histamines.
Red Wine Headache: Red wine headache - Wikipedia
Huh.
My symptoms don’t resemble those in the article though - for me, it’s more of a scratchy throat [often leading to a sore throat], lots of sneezing and congestion, and the general feeling of having an infection for several days afterwards [like a virus or maybe even a streptococcus].
[BTW, sorry if that’s just a little too much information.]
If it is histamines, would an antihistamine work? Disclaimer: I am not a doctor!! (not the medical kind, anyway)
If you have allergic reactions, antihistamines prior to drinking would help. So, symptoms like Nathan talks about might be helped that way.
Wine does trigger my migraines, and I have found out thanks to my neurologist that older red wines and younger white wines tend to pose the least risk. In addition, I don’t drink Zin at all anymore, as that seems to be he biggest trigger for me.
“…Meanwhile, white wine is fermented without the grape skins…”
am i having a case of the stupids, or is this not entirely accurate?
From what I learned in molecular immunology you cannot be allergic to alcohol. The ethanol molecule is way too small for your immune system to notice. You need proteins or protein fragments to elicit an immune response.
Kevin, love seeing the divine Eartha Kitt in your avatar!
Unless we are speaking of orange wine, whites are normally fermented without skins. I will let you answer the other part of the question.
BTW, my step father has a stomach/digestive reaction that seems to be a tannin intolerance. Whites don’t bother him. He is ok up to 1-glasses of PN, but more tannic reds get him at one glass. He does have other allergies including fish, shellfish, and avocado as far as I can recall.
Winemaker/fisherman who can’t eat fish or drink red wine. ![[swearing.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8a0d3f3461d40641d294442fc2be78039bf94d19.gif "[swearing.gif]"){kind=small}
I wouldn’t align the ‘allergic to wine’ statement to a lot of the ailments that some posters above have posted about but I’ll share my experience as it could be relative…
When drinking wine (and other alcohol, but shows up more with red wine), I can get flush, itchy, really hot on the skin level, stuffed up nose, and an overall congested feeling in the head. I don’t suffer from normal allergies, so that is not an issue. What I do know is I lack some of this: Alcohol dehydrogenase - Wikipedia. As a result, I don’t breakdown alcohol similarly to your normal lushes (which I’m very jealous of). Instead, my body fights through this process and the above side effects take hold. Some issues more often then others, some influenced by what I’m drinking.
Accordingly, I’ve become very familiar with headaches occurring after a night in which I’ve consumed wine from a certain producer (randomly, from 2006 vintage year). I’m not sure if this is a result of certain additives or sulfites from said producer or not - what I do know is in newer vintages (2007, 2009), I don’t experience the headaches at all no matter how much I drink.
All said, I tend to believe that there are a lot of things ‘in’ the wine that pull out perceived allergies in people. Some are natural elements, some I believe aren’t.
Much more research needed or course, bottle by bottle.
Ah, I should have added that I pop a Pepcid 30-60 mins before drinking and mostly I’m good to go. Except for the random headache thing of course.
If you get similar symptoms, try the Pepcid trick.
A little information can be dangerous and sometimes not very accurate.
The Swiss have done a lot of work on the topic. What they have found is that wines may be infected by bacteria. While the ML bacterium is useful, there are many others that are quite bad. They will produce so called biogenic amines which are quite powerful, such as putrescine, cadaverine, histamine and tyramine . The stomach lining naturally produces an enzyme to neutralize such amines, however when a wine contains biogenic amines they rapidly deplete that enzyme. If now food is added, many foods contain histamines, and absent that beneficial but depleted enzyme, the histamines from the food go directly into the blood stream causing all sorts of reactions. There was talk about requiring Swiss wines to be tested for biogenic amines and if present the wine would not be saleable. I do not know whether this went through.
So some wines can cause this food histamine reactions if biogenic amines develop during wine making. The best antidote to avoid any such bacteria fom reaching a dangerous threshold is to co inocualte ML with yeast. The ML bacteria will tend to dominate and prevent the rogue bacterio from ruining the wine.
This was written about numerous times on such fora. It does not hurt to bring it up again to dispell the misconceptions that we are all too eager to develop because we hunger for answers.