I have often been asked whether organic wines give hangovers or not!! My reply is usually that drinking enough of anything will give a hangover, organic, biodynamic, cheap, expensive….
However it is often found that organic wines do not give the painful headache in the middle of the forehead as this comes from excessive use of sulphur and spraying pesticides onto the vines. The sulphur allowed for organic wines is half that of conventional wines. What I find particularly interesting is that those who suffer headaches from drinking wine are able to drink cheap beer with apparently no ill affect. Also, to my knowledge, they have not had an ill effect from eating non-organic dried apricots or drinking fresh orange juice, both of which contain high levels of sulphur.
So is sulphur the dastardly culprit that we all think it is?? Actually it is often the naturally occurring histamines that cause the headaches. These are found on the skins of the grapes, hence a general feeling that red wines give more headaches than whites.Produced by wild yeasts and bacteria they are also common in food stuffs where some fermentation has taken place.
So if you suffer from a ‘wine headache’ take note whether the following foods also give you a headache: cheese, charcuterie, chocolate and oriental foods.
Organic wines will definitely have less sulphur and no traces of chemical sprays but they cannot prevent a hangover!
Cheers!