Cheap v. Good wine...

[JonoB]

I use cheap to mean badly made, high in sulfites, unbalanced sweet wines, good to mean what we usually drink.

When we go out to a restaurant where the wines are cheap but included in the menu, I try them to see if there are gems. Invariably they are not but Mayuko tries them as well. And inevitably she feels I'll after not a lot to drink. However, if the wines are at worst good and at best fantastic (a mix of what we have at home), she normally drinks me under the table.

I have tried to put this down to experience of trade tastings, but then I never go to trade tastings of seriously awful wines although we have together tried these similar wines with no problems at poor wineries. Regardless, I just can't understand why she gets ill from these sort of wines when I don't and we drink the same amount when when the wines are of a decent quality she can drink until the cows come home!! ??

Could she have a sulphur allergy? As I know that quality wine makers think about how much sulfites they will need to stop fermentation as oppose to just dumping a bucket into a Vat!!

Advice would be nice!! Or thoughts!

Many thanks.

[stefan]

It is similar for me, Jono. I never have a hangover after drinking up to two bottles of good wine, but two glasses of a bad one gives me a bad headache. I thought that maybe it was the lead or methyl alcohol the bad winemakers use.

[DavidG]

Sulfur? Sulphites? Sulfates? Lots of misconceptions about these. Unlikely she is allergic to sulfites, which is what often gets blamed for headaches, etc. When you say she feels ill, is it a headache? Nausea? It could be anything else in the wine, or perhaps even in the food that is served at these restaurants that have crummy wine lists.

[oldwinenut]

I have been hearing and seeing a few tidbits about additives in wine. What do we really know?? It is one food where the ingredients are not listed. We know that the alcohol level printed on the label can be taken with a grain of salt. No one talks about dyes in wines, flavorings, the use of wood chips, reverse osmosis, spinning cones etc.
I think it is about time that we as consumers start to demand that the wineries list ALL the ingredients.
I think that the above practices happen with ALL wine not just the less expensive ones.

[DavidG]

I don't care to know what ingredients are in my wine as long as they don't put anything more poisonous than ethanol in there. I have enough other crap to obsess over, and if it means the winemaker has to divert time and money from the vineyard and winemaking to satisfy government labeling requirements, I'm against it.

[alchemeus]

I use cheap to mean badly made, high in sulfites, unbalanced sweet wines, good to mean what we usually drink.

When we go out to a restaurant where the wines are cheap but included in the menu, I try them to see if there are gems. Invariably they are not but Mayuko tries them as well. And inevitably she feels I'll after not a lot to drink. However, if the wines are at worst good and at best fantastic (a mix of what we have at home), she normally drinks me under the table.

I have tried to put this down to experience of trade tastings, but then I never go to trade tastings of seriously awful wines although we have together tried these similar wines with no problems at poor wineries. Regardless, I just can't understand why she gets ill from these sort of wines when I don't and we drink the same amount when when the wines are of a decent quality she can drink until the cows come home!! ??

Could she have a sulphur allergy? As I know that quality wine makers think about how much sulfites they will need to stop fermentation as oppose to just dumping a bucket into a Vat!!

Advice would be nice!! Or thoughts!

Many thanks.

Kathryn has an allergy to the tannins in red wine. She calls it 'suede tongue'. Red wine gives her headaches while white wine does not. Maybe something along this line?

[JonoB]

When she feels I'll, it is not alcohol poisoning, she suddenly even after a little bit of the wine feels ill and projectile vomits the entire contents of her stomach.

She thinks it has something to do with her egg allergy (only slight she has to be careful of how much egg she eats) and the mix of what is in various alcohols. The previous time this happened, she ate a pizza with egg on it, and had only drunk about 1 pint of beer and then threw up all over the toilet! So that may be it...

[DavidG]

It could be an allergic-type reaction (not true classic allergy, but that's a medical distinction without a practical difference) or a migraine triggered by something specific in the wine or food. Does she get a headache, perhaps on one side of her head or pulsatile in nature, visual symptoms, light or sound sensitivity, sudden nasal or sinus congestion, also perhaps on one side of her head, and does she have a history of carsickness or other symptoms suggestive of migraine? There are a lot of naturally occurring things as well as additives that can trigger these sorts of reactions, and the reaction can sometimes be very narrowly specific (for example, I get a reaction like hers from clams but not other shellfish). If they happen infrequently, it can be devilishly difficult to find a common thread, if there even is one. But you can try by keeping a log of what was ingested and any other circumstances that precede the episodes. A visit to the doctor with a copy of the logs would be a good place to start.

[JonoB]

No headache, no migraine, no sinus issues... Just a queasy stomach...

When the wines are good and the eggs are fully cooked, she has no issues whatsoever.
A log of incidents might be a very good idea!

Thank you.

[DavidG]

If it turns out she's just sensitive to bad wine and runny eggs, those should be pretty easy to avoid.