Cheaper Red Wines Might Give You Fewer Headaches María Luisa Paúl - Washington Post
go to original November 25, 2023

Red wine is a welcome addition to most holiday dinners — that is, unless you’re one of the unlucky drinkers who gets a throbbing headache after just a glass or two.

Red wine headaches have almost certainly been around since humans discovered how to make booze out of fermented fruit. Scientists have long tried — to no avail — to understand why even a small glass of wine can make some feel like they need a pain reliever within 30 minutes of taking a sip.

In the past, tannins, sulfites and histamines have been blamed. Now, after testing about a dozen compounds found in red wine, findings from a team of researchers point to another culprit: quercetin, a compound found in grape skins.

“Quercetin absorbs ultraviolet light, so it’s sunscreen for the grapes,” said Andrew Waterhouse, a professor emeritus of oenology — also known as wine chemistry — at the University of California at Davis. Waterhouse, who co-authored the study that was published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, said the amount of quercetin found in wine is directly related to the grapes’ sun exposure. “So, if you grow your grapes with a lot of shade, they don’t make much of this. But if you grow them where they get a lot of sun, then they make more quercetin.”

Quercetin doesn’t only help prevent grapes from scorching in the sun. In humans, it’s a powerful antioxidant that may help protect against heart disease and cancer. But when alcohol is added to the mix, quercetin can cause headaches, Waterhouse said.

“Your body has this system in place to get rid of the alcohol you drink, and the quercetin, it turns out, gums up the works,” he said. “Essentially, the quercetin from red wine stops the process halfway through.”

But Waterhouse said there’s a “workaround, sort of” for red wine lovers who want to avoid headaches — that is, going for cheaper wine.

“As a general rule, cheaper wines have less quercetin,” Waterhouse said. “Usually it’s because the grapes get less sunlight than those in, say, the really expensive cabernet they make in the Napa Valley.”

But be warned: Less quercetin can mean the wine’s tannins might taste less silky.

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