I think Paul is right – people tend to see it advertised positively that products are free of Compound X (Paba, gluten, sulfites, etc.), and that causes them to believe that Compound X must be bad for them. I’ll believe Roberto’s version the day I see a proprer clinical trial with a placebo / control group arrive at that conclusion.
Most people are not aware of this, but the whole “sugar makes kids hyper” is another myth. Most experts have concluded that sugar doesn’t have any short term effect on children’s behavior. The reason I bring it up is that, when people assume something like this to be true, they look at events with that in mind and essentially create evidence to reinforce the truth of it. “My kids are acting crazy this afternoon – wait, I remember now that they had cookies after lunch, that must be what is causing it.”
I think the same thing happens with sulfites and wine. A coworker explained to me the other day that she and her husband were vacationing in France, and she discovered that she wasn’t getting headaches or hangovers from the wine, and so she was certain that the reason is that they don’t use sulfites in wine there. It wasn’t the place to argue about the subject, but I’m thinking to myself that (a) who knows if the wines she was drinking in France were, in fact, any lower in sulfites, and (b) when you’re vacationing in France, you’re probably in a better mood, with lower stress, getting more sleep, and a bunch of other factors that probably affect how your body is feeling. But because she had gone into it with the belief in the “facts” that French wines don’t have sulfites and sulfites cause headaches and hangovers, she viewed it through that lens and came out more convinced.
Chris, we have exactly that conversation re “When I was in Europe I didn’t get this reaction, the wines they send here must have additives they don’t have there…” many times each week. In addition to the factors you cited we also note that they were probably eating more (and fattier) food than they do here and, perhaps most importantly, drinking a lot more water as Euro joints tend to force feed you the mineral water. A lot of Americans stop drinking water the minute they start drinking adult beverages and dehydration results.
Chris - that’s a very common report. UC Davis has studied this thing a great deal and one of the things about it is the ‘field reports’ are almost exactly opposite of reality. Some common trends in the self reporting:
Red not white - > white wine almost always has more sulfites
Cheap not expensive → no real sulfite related link
US not European → European wine is almost always bottled at higher sulfite levels than US.
Basically the self reporting ‘field reports’ make no sense. At a molecular level wine does not contain histamines. They can get into a wine, but they are not coming from the grapes. When I was working with Bradley at Big Basin he shared some German research that pointed to bees as the likely culprit in the field reports.
Red not white - > white wine is processed in a more or less closed system (crusher to press to tank) and has minimal exposure. Red wine is processed in an open system (crusher to bin) and is then opened 2-3 times per day allowing more bee exposure.
Cheap not expensive → Most of the processes we do to make expensive wine involve things that also happen to reduce bee exposure. We harvest when it is cool, before bees are active, we process in small lots limiting exposure and we used closed or semi closed fermentation systems. In large bulk plants crush pad workers are often required to wear bee protection at crush.
US not European → Bees are only active above 70F. Generally in the US we are harvesting in weather that reaches +70 by 10 or 11am. In Europe harvest is later and cooler and bees are less active at the crush pad.
The theory is that even a single bee dieing in a fermentation tank releases a significant amount of histamine. As I’ve quizzed people who self report to me, roughly 30% will confirm they have severe reactions to bee stings. That’s a significantly higher rate than any other explanation outside of hypocondria. My advice is usually “Drink better wine”.
Stefania and I have been taking extreme anti bee steps since 2008 when we learned of this. We cover every fermentation bin in plastic wrap in addition to its regular cover. We leave no bins open turning punch downs other than the one we are working in and we cover and seal things as soon as possible. We also remove any bees that do get in the must without panicking or killing them so they don’t sting. I don’t know that there has been any additional research on this but it made sense to me and the things we’re doing are just good practice anyway so we did it.
Are you pulling our legs the way Ed Pagor used to answer questions about why his wine was so good with “It’s special bees!” or is this serious info? I love it either way!
Roberto - I don’t think you could say it’s scientific at this point, there was a single study that I’m aware of, but it fits the field reports much better than anything else. UC Davis still thinks dehydration is the main and most likely cause of the field reports and I’d agree. Most of the people who self report to me are infrequent alcohol drinkers and drink low quality wine so it may be a combination of dehydration and histamine.
In any case winemaking is mostly trial and error not true science. I prune with the moon phase. Nothing scientific, I tried it one year, that was a good year, and I’ve done it ever since. Same with the bees, it makes logical sense so I try and keep the bees out. I like the people who buy my wine so I see no sense in exposing them to bees if I can avoid it.
Reading this (as opposed to seeing it) doesn’t do it justice, but I always remember this classic exchange between George and Jerry as they arrive at their seats for the tennis US Open:
Jerry: Are these seats unbelievable or what?
George: Where’s the sunblock?
Jerry: Here.
George: 25? You don’t have anything higher?
Jerry: What, are you on Mercury?
George: I need higher. This has paba in it, I need paba-free.
Uh, Paul. I believe the warning is put on wine for the people who get a brochospastic attack with elevated sulfite levels (ie, asthma attack) In thsi sense people can be allergic to (elevated) sulfites.
Paul - thanks for the interesting info. Bees are full of histamines and when they die in the tank that causes elevated levels? Never heard it before but we know ladybugs have an effect.
Besides, covering the vats gets you a story either way - to protect from the bees or to protect the bees. As my neighbor said, “There’s a bee shortage. I read about it.”
You and Roberto might be comforted to know that people in NYC are just as allergic to things as anyone else. Nuts, wheat, manners, dairy, fish, meat, you name it.
How interesting! It seems like a study on this could be conducted fairly easily if someone could get the funding. Have you pointed out the German research to UC Davis? I hope someone can figure out what is going on with the people who are genuinely intolerant to some wines so I will have something that it might be to suggest to the MANY people who falsely believe they have an intolerance to sulfites. Most of them probably still won’t believe me when I tell them it’s not the sulfites, but at least my success rate might go up a bit if I can also tell them what it might be more specifically then “it might be histamines, but we don’t know.”
Yeah. That’s kind of what I figured. That’s not to say I haven’t seem some crazy “allergies” where I am now, including a detailed list of dietary restrictions that included “any fried food” and “merlot wine.” Any dish that was made using even a drop of Merlot would send her into shock and require hospitalization if it passed her lips. Failure to give her an injection of whatever in time would lead to death. I’m sure she believed it, too.
The red wine gives me headaches thing always reminds me of people who claim that they can’t drink say, tequila, because it makes them act crazy or scotch because it makes them hostile. They believe it enough, so it becomes true.
Myths like this self-propagate, because there’s only so much research time to go around, and I wouldn’t expect a lot of time devoted to debunking this kind of pseudo-science.
The sulfur allergy thing is maddening. Some people will listen, but I’ve had people cut me off with “I know what the Internet and those scientists say! You’re not the first to tell me that!” Wanting to believe in the face of contrary evidence is very human.
I was allergic to bees as a child, and do not have any reaction to red wine. It seems to me that you would also have to ask people allergic to bee stings how they react to red wine as well.
I can report that the one or two wine headaches I’ve had over the past few years have happened on nights where there wasn’t enough water flowing, and too much wine.
There is a persistent rumor in the wine business that a certain very large Central Valley winery was behind the ‘contains sulfites’ label, as it protected them from lawsuits and ‘leveled the playing field.’
As Roberto says, there must be more misinformation about this issue than any other in the wine business.
This squares with what I’ve been told by someone who has done a lot of research in this area. Not about the reason for the label, but for the specific asthamatic connection. She states that only a small % of people actually suffer a truly allergic reaction to sulfites in wine, and that it is those with a specific type of asthma.
Paul, in your statement “US not European → European wine is almost always bottled at higher sulfite levels than US.” … are you saying the natural sulfite levels are higher at bottling? I’ve had lots of “experts” tell me that Europeans tend to ADD LESS sulfites but never considered what ppm the wine is already at.
Roberto and Chris, I agree 100%. If I had $100 for every customer who’s said they don’t get their usual ‘wine headaches’ when vacationing in Europe… I’d be posting from a villa in Italy.
I thought it was the Center for Science in the Public Interest who lobbied for the labeling. Their avowed goal is prohibition of alcohol and tobacco and things like this are just tactical moves.
And what I’d heard was that it came about because of a lawsuit involving an asthmatic customer in a restaurant where the salad bar was hit hard with SO2 to keep things looking fresh. Customer also had a glass of wine with his meal, and there was some attempt to make the winery liable for the reaction as well. The wine industry decided it made more sense regarding future liability to label the wines. The reason you don’t see it in Europe (or didn’t before) was because they tend to be a less lawsuit happy culture, stereotypically-speaking - hence the myth that there’s no sulfites in wines you buy in Europe.
That story may or may not be apocryphal - I went looking online and couldn’t find any reference to such a case, but that’s what I overheard somewhere…
I don’t know how you can generalize about US versus European:
When I first began making my own vinegar, I found that California chardonnays would not turn, but the French whites (Alsatians, as I recall) would. I assume this was due to sulfur levels.
On the other hand, the only wine that consistently gave me headaches was German rieslings in the 80s, when they wreaked of sulfur. They’re much less smelly today.
A lot of cheap American wine is made with the assumption that people will leave it out open on their kitchen counter for many days. Is that true of cheap European wine? I don’t know.
A lot of cheap European wine comes in box now, so, in a sense, yes. According to Jamie Goode, those boxes tend to get an elevated dose of SO2 to help prevent oxidation as the bag deflates.
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