Author: Andrew Waterhouse, Professor of Enology, University of California, Davis

Medical accounts of red wine headaches go back to Roman times, but the experience is likely as old as winemaking – something like 10,000 years. As chemists specializing in winemaking, we wanted to try to figure out the source of these headaches. Many components of red wine have been accused of causing this misery – sulfites, biogenic amines and tannin are the most popular. Our research suggests the most likely culprit is one you may not have considered. The common suspects Sulfites have been a popular scapegoat for all sorts of ailments since it became mandatory in the 1990s to…