VivaVibe

We’ve all been there, the morning after the night before. You know the kind – not a big night involving multiple alcohol varieties and ending in falling into bed in the small hours, but one of those cold November evening nights, that saw the bottle of nice warming red opened before dinner and consumed during it – a little reward for getting through Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday. 

And then, despite only having drunk a couple of glasses, you wake up the next morning with a dry mouth, tight skin and a dreadful, raging headache, and wonder if you simply can’t hold your alcohol any more. I had one such evening only the other week, and concluded that perhaps at the ripe old age of 42 I needed to give up on booze altogether. 

How utterly depressing (not to say impossible, given the general level of rain and gloom we’ve all been experiencing lately). But lo, it appears help may be at hand – or if not help, exactly, then at least an explanation for those previously inexplicable splitting headaches suffered after the mildest of evenings. 

Scientists in California suggest that the key to the infamous red wine headache (a phenomenon first recorded by Aurelius Cornelius Celsus in ancient Rome, and recognised by the International Headache Society as distinct from a normal hangover) could be an otherwise healthy antioxidant substance (it’s sold as a brain-boosting supplement in health food shops) called quercetin, a flavanol naturally found in red wines.

Here’s the science bit…

“When [quercetin] gets in your bloodstream, your body converts it to a different form called quercetin glucuronide,” explains Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist at the University of California, Davis, and a co-author of the research. “In that form, it blocks the metabolism of alcohol.” 

Specifically, quercetin glucuronide is effective at impeding an enzyme that the body uses to break down acetaldehyde, the toxic substance that is formed after alcohol molecules are split apart. 

True science, or just another excuse for people who can’t take their drink? After all, a number of culprits have been blamed for uber-hangovers over the years, from wine containing too many sulfites to an overabundance of polyphenols from the wine skins. 

As one prominent wine writer says of the former baddie, “People love to blame that compound [sulphur dioxide] when things go wrong.” 

What is not often taken into account is the fact that it’s almost impossible to make wine, at least commercially, without using sulphur dioxide, as it’s an antioxidant – even the Romans (them again), used to burn sulphur candles in barrels before they put the wine in them, to kill any nasties – and that low alcohol wines that tend to be higher in sulphur dioxide are also correspondingly high in sugar, which will also give you a stonking headache (meaning drinking white or sparkling wines, which tend to be lower in alcohol than red, is not necessarily going to be a solution). 

Nevertheless, “I think this is a promising avenue of research,” says wine expert Jamie Goode, who likes the fact that the report has been conducted by a serious research institute, and carries with it the weight of both wine chemists and the Headache Centre of the University of California, San Francisco. 

What’s more, the quercetin theory “would support the idea that it’s not sulfites causing the problem”, says Karen Hardwick, a former wine trader and founder of The Wine Academy. 

So what does this mean for your evening bottle?

Well, we know that red wines from sunnier regions – those that need intense heat to ripen properly – are more likely to have higher quantities of quercetin, so avoiding wines like grenache, shiraz and malbec might be a good idea if you tend towards headaches (these wines tend anyway to be heavier and have a higher alcoholic content). 

Instead, look for a lighter red from a cooler climate – a pinot noir, for example, or cabernet franc (although even this is not foolproof: as Goode points out, wines from cooler climates may also be at risk from higher levels of quercetin as it’s common to remove leaves in the area around the bunches of grapes to encourage ripening). 

Checking the vintage is also wise: last year’s intense heat meant that grapes ripened very quickly, increasing the sugar content which made the resulting wine heftier and more alcoholic. 

You can, these days, get good English reds from places like Dorset and Cornwall, the grapes of which are unlikely to have experienced the heat level of a Californian summer, so could be distinctly less headache-inducing. But beware a pinot noir that’s too cheap – as master of wine Dr David Bird explains, “Pinot noir can be a very fussy sort of grape, and if it’s not made well it’s rather rubbishy.” 

There are other factors, too, that can be at play when it comes to wine headaches: how much food you’ve eaten; how tired you are; whether you’re postmenopausal; what your genetic makeup is. 

At the end of the day, though, if you really don’t want a headache the next day there’s only one guaranteed solution: don’t open that bottle. It’s tempting to pin your sore head on any other cause but when it comes to what’s causing that headache, it’s almost certainly the wine. 

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