Red Wine Headaches - What's the Cause?

A lot of customers have told me over the years that they love red wine but can not drink it because they get terrible headaches. Jen, co-owner and vintner at Wine Necessities is one of those people. She will get a headache instantly within a sip of consuming most red wines produced at large commercial wineries.

Several researchers have identified three primary causes of headaches when drinking red wine: histamines in wine, wines with high tannins and wines with high sulfite levels.

According to Linda Bisson at the Univeristy of California at Davis states, "The largest group of people who get headaches is because they're sensitive to histamines. The main source of histamines in wine is malolactic "fermentation," which isn't a true fermentation but a bacterial process that converts tart malic acid to softer-tasting lactic acid. It's an essential step in the making of all red wines -- without it, they'd taste painfully acidic. Histamines are a byproduct of "malo," as winemakers call it.

So what Are Sulfites?
Sulfites are a naturally occurring compound that nature uses to prevent microbial growth. They are found on grapes, onions, garlic, and on many other growing plants. No wine can ever be "sulfite free", since they come in with the grapes.

Why Add Sulfites to Wine?
Winemakers have been adding additional sulfites to wines for millenia. The Greeks and Romans used sulfur candles to sterilize their wine barrels and amphorae. Sulfur protects damage to the wine by oxygen, and again helps prevent organisms from growing in the wine. This allows the wine to "last longer" too, which lets it age and develop all of those complex flavors we all love and enjoy so much. If you didn't add sulfites, the wine would turn into vinegar in a matter of months.

How might tannins cause headaches?
Tannins tend to bind starches while being digested. These starches are needed by the body to produce serotonin. In some people, who are extremely sensitive to their serotonin levels, it appears the lack of serotonin can lead to a migraine. It sort of "starves" the body for this type of raw material, much as not eating for many hours might lead this person to have the same migraine.

Tannin sensitivity is also now thought to be cumulative - a person who begins life with no tannin sensitivities may yet develop one as he or she ages. People who are sensitive to tannins need to moderate their intake of tannins in all forms, and also be sure to eat a reasonable amount of food while ingesting tannins, so the binding affects of tannins do not cause undue stress.

So what is a person to do who loves red wine but can't drink most red wines?? We recommend that you find wineries that use low levels of all three when producing their wines to minimize the risks. The wines we produce at our winery are low in sulfites, tannins and we do not perform a malo lactic fermentation on our wines. Our wines go through a natural fermentation. Our wines have on average 16-25 ppm (parts per million) of sulfite per bottle compared to most other wines which have approximately 85-100 ppm of sulfite.

Having said all of this, Jen decided to test the researchers theory and indulge liberally by sampling several of our red wines when we first opened the business back in 2006. Several bottles later, no headache! We have also had many customers try our red wines who were "red wine sensitive". To our delight, our customers have repeatedly been surprised that they found a red wine they can enjoy without having to deal with the headaches!