It all started with a hangover

Not the moral kind, but the physical, morning wine hangover. I’d wake up with this awful hangover. One evening, by accident, I drank a bottle of organic wine. I don’t remember if I bought it or received it as a gift, probably the latter. And then, I mean, the next morning, it hit me, or rather, I realized, because I was fully aware that I didn’t have a headache, no hangover at all.

This was the beginning of organic wines.. 

Only later did it occur to me that it was sulfites. Sulfur is a cheap preservative that’s been used forever. Typically, when juice turns into wine at the end of fermentation, the winemaker adds sulfur to protect his creation from oxidation and other nasty things.

The truth is that sulfur is present in all wines, without exception, because sulfur is simply a byproduct of fermentation. So don’t ask if a wine has sulfur, just ask how much? For example, a natural winemaker (as the name suggests) doesn’t add it at all; an organic winemaker adds it in limited amounts, and an industrial winemaker (read: the stuff you find in supermarkets) often adds as much as they can.

And even though science will tell us that what dries out the body and causes a hangover is alcohol, or more precisely ethanol, I dare say that it is sulfur, because how else can you explain that after organic wines my head doesn’t turn into a tunnel for an express train, but I get up and walk happily through the day with a clear perspective on the evening and the next bottle.