I have had this problem periodically where drinking wine burns the inside of my mouth. I think it could be due to one or more of the health issues that I have. My dentist said it could be from dry mouth because there is not enough saliva to protect the tissues. I thought maybe it was due to the acid in wine but it turns wine has a very low percent of acid so maybe it is the alcohol. I don’t have a problem with beer which is around 5% alcohol. I have not been drinking wine for a months because it’s not pleasant with my mouth burning. We hosted a party recently and somebody brought a bottle of My Favorite Neighbor Cabernet. I decided to taste some and was surprised to only experience a slight burning. I thought maybe I was getting back to normal but opened a different bottle and the burn came back. Today I picked up a bottle of My Favorite Neighbor and I am still getting a slight burn but able to enjoy it. I am assuming the alcohol is causing the burning but not sure why it varies so much with different wines given the alcohol content is similar. could there be something in the wine that is buffering the alcohol?
Thanks for any ideas
I wouldn’t rule out acid v. alcohol, but there are ways to test it for yourself. You could seek out low alcohol wines, although the labels are not all that accurate. You could try some German Rieslings, which can be fairly low alcohol but high acid. Or you could take a red wine that you know causes your mouth to burn and try adulterating it with various amounts of baking soda which will lower the acidity without changing the ABV.
The reason I was not suspecting acid is that vinegar is 6% acidity.
My wife makes our salad dressing with 3 TBS vinegar to one cup of dressing which works out to 1.125% acidity. Wine is typically 0.6 to 0.8 acidity. The salad dressing doesn’t cause much burn, maybe because of oil?
The wine and the vinegar will have very different kinds of acids, with acetic dominating the vinegar. There should be close to no acetic acid in wine.
I doubt if it has much to do with wine acid or with alcohol. You certainly could experiment, though. Do you get burning with acid things like orange juice or lemonade? Do you get burning with mouth wash? (typically about 20% alcohol). I suspect your mouth is irritated by another condition (a long list–dry mouth, acid reflux,etc) and you get burning from wine because of this. (one not uncommon one to consider, if you haven’t already, is that some folks develop a sensitivity to sodium lauryl sulfate that’s in most toothpastes. You can try switching to a “natural” toothpaste like Tom’s of Maine.) The frustrating thing unfortunately is that, if you cross out some of the common things on the list, you end up with “burning mouth syndrome”, which can be a very difficult thing to figure out.
Man, I don’t have anything helpful (or even unhelpful) to add, other than just to say I’m so sorry that’s happening to you, and I hope you can figure something out to make the condition go away.
Not fun, double check for candidiasis. Often a cause of burning mouth syndrome with alcohol, common with dryness or taking certain medications. Nystatin rinses are easy and work well.
Can you be a little more specific about how the wine “burns the inside of your mouth”? Is it primarily your tongue? Or is it primarily the tissue at the top of your mouth and cheeks? I occasionally get tongue burn from some combination of too much wine, dry mouth, dehydration, any amount of smoke at all (even a few puffs on a cigar), food with too much salt/sodium, or loads of garlic. The only remedy is to take a few days off. In some cases, mouthwash seems to help. But for me, the issue is entirely the sides of my tongue get red and burn.
I have suffered from this— hyper sensitivity/ dry mouth syndrome is scary. I’ve had bad cases and couldn’t enjoy many foods, let alone wine. My most recent episode, after a consultation with my dentist who recommended over the counter dry mouth rinse aids, I ran out of patience (I was quickly approaching barrel tasting/cuvée decision time!). The rinses didn’t help much and so I went to my clinic’s immediate care facility. They prescribed a steroid based rinse which healed everything within a few weeks. (Previous episodes —20 years ago—turned out to be an allergic reaction to Aleve, by the way. It took a few years to figure that out! Basically whenever I had back pain and took Aleve, I noticed a short-lived dry mouth episode.)