If you’ve ever had a raging hangover from drinking red wine, know that you’re not alone.
A glass of red, or a few, sounds like the perfect idea when you’re having a nice dinner with friends or you’re chilling with your go-to TV show after a long day. But will you wake up with a splitting headache come morning? Only a few hours before you find out.
As many will be upping their alcohol intake this festive season— and red wine seems like a good option when enjoying a Christmas meal, right? — it’s worth looking into why exactly a couple of glass of full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon might have you regretting all of your life choices the next day.
Science has identified the reason why downing one too many glasses of red may make you feel miserable in the morning, and it has mostly to do with the grape skins.
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Tannins and sulfites contained in red wine have been long blamed for the morning-after migraines, but this myth has been busted, as two scientists at the University of California confirmed.
Andrew Waterhouse, an enology professor, and Apramita Devi, a postdoctoral researcher in food science and technology, clarified which wine component is truly responsible for making you hungover, and why whites and rosés don’t seem to have the same effect.
They told The Conversation that red wines contain a lot of quercetin, an inhibitor of the body process to break down alcohol properly.
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A phenolic compound found in grape skins, quercetin is found more in red wines than white wines because red grape skins are left in longer during the fermentation stage of the winemaking.
Waterhouse and Devi have observed how quercetin slows down the process of the enzyme ALDH breaking down acetaldehyde, which is produced in the liver when the body breaks down alcohol molecules to eliminate them from the body.
Their tests confirmed that quercetin inhibited the process and disrupted the body’s metabolism of alcohol by creating extra acetaldehyde to circulate, in turn causing inflammation and headaches.
The headache, as well as other reactions like getting red, flushed skin, are a consequence of a lagging metabolic step as the body is processing the alcohol slower than normal.
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Lastly, the usual suspects — sulfites and tannins — have been partly exonerated.
The study proved that the amount of milligrams of sulfites in red wine is too low to be linked to hangovers.
Meanwhile, tannins, that are another grape-skin constituents, are often blamed for our brutal hangovers because they’re found in large quantities of red wine.
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However, the reaction to tannins, which are also contained in tea and chocolate, isn’t as strong as the one to quercetin, leading the two scientists to elect the latter as the main culprit behind the hangovers.
Stefania Sarrubba