Wine brings pleasure. But for some it can also prove a painful experience. Red wine is particularly problematic for a proportion of the population, with just a few mouthfuls bringing on swift and excruciating headaches. Now, scientists think they may finally be on to why.
In lab experiments, they’ve identified a compound in red wine that impedes the breakdown of alcohol by the liver and causes a build-up of toxic acetaldehyde in the bloodstream. Human trials are still needed for confirmation – but these are exciting findings.
In this episode, we discuss these results with the scientists behind them: Professor Andrew Waterhouse and Dr Apramita Devi from the University of California, Davis.
As for the BIG question – which red wines might be safer for sufferers – there’s good news… The experts actually recommend cheap rather than pricey red wines. Yes, you read that right: the boffins are endorsing the bargains!
We explain why as well as providing some top tips for bargain basement reds – we also touch on the tantalising prospect of how this research may help us understand hangovers too.
Wines featured in this episode
Italiano Vino Rosso, 11.5%, Italy (£4.50, Tesco)
Toro Loco Tempranillo-Bobal Utiel-Requena 2022 DOP, 12.5%, Spain (£4.99, Aldi)
Castellore Primitivo di Puglia IGT 2022, 13.5%, Italy (£5.99, Aldi)
Vista Castelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2021, 12.5%, Italy (£5.50, Tesco)
Mimo Moutinho Dão DOC 2021, 13%, Portugal (£6.49, Aldi)
[Music] hello and welcome to Wine blast with me Susie Barry and my husband and fellow master of wine Peter Richards and in this episode we’re going to be speaking very gently and soothingly and trying not to shout because we are touching on the painful and sometimes contentious issue of red wine headaches you now you got me wondering now whether there’s such a thing as wine po podcast headaches probably any podcast does that relate to the quality of the content or the tone of voice or the editing values or the nature of the wines consumed in in said podcast it’s a whole field of potential research right there there we go but that’s not our Focus it’s not today not today uh we want to put the very specific problem of red wine headaches under the microscope uh discussing some fascinating new research with the scientists behind it identifying a potential culprit and digging into some potential implications and solutions it’s true crime meets wine um we have the offense the Heche uh we may have the offender we’ll come on to that uh but the really interesting bit is the fascinating stuff this all throws up his a taster of what’s to come this particular person loved red wine but she said it was so disappointing every time she bought a very expensive Cabernet she had to cook with it because she couldn’t drink it uh she said it’s it’s very sad to be using your very best wine for cooking my recommendation has been that you should look at less expensive red wines when the research came out and we started getting this huge number of emails and I was like oh my God how many people are suffering from this issue and like so like we feel happy when you your research has that impact outside in the outside world and people can relate with it Professor Andrew Waterhouse and Dr aam Dei from the Department of viticulture and anology at the University of California Davis there gosh there’s a long titles and whatnot we’ll be discussing their Research into red wine headaches and touching on intriguing related themes such as uh the implications for wine makers and wine drinkers all around the world the role of food funding challenges and the tantalizing potential for this work to shed new light on hangovers uh plus whisper it but might cheap red wine be the answer can’t wait to dive into that um but read into this what you will we will be tasting and recommending some great value red wines towards the end of the show doctor’s orders for so a lot to be getting on with um let’s start at the beginning sh we good idea good idea so the health implications of wine is a fascinating topic uh put simply we don’t know enough and that’s frustrating uh wine is possibly one of the most complex substances we eat or drink but there’s a lack of ambitious well-funded research in this area what this means is when credible new findings do come along it’s well worth sitting up and taking notice and we do love dipping into this theme don’t we on wine blast we discussed the potential risks of biogenic amines in Wines in The undeserved Hangover back in season 2 and we talked about wine and the gut microbiome with Professor Tim Spectre in SE so do check those out um but then in November 2023 some new research was published in the journal scientific reports proposing a new hypothesis to explain red wine headaches at which point our is pricked up uh we did touch on this briefly on our wines of the year show late last year but the more we looked into this the more we realized we needed to explore this in proper depth didn’t we because the potential implications are quite wide reaching y so I think think we need to tackle this step by step so first up the extent of the problem apparently headaches affect around 16% of the world’s population daily and migraines are actually a major cause of disability alcoholic drinks are the most common dietary component associated with headaches you know 37% of patients blame booze for triggering them and crucially red wine is one of the worst offenders in this context and provokes headaches in people who can drink other booze without issues now Dr Morris Levan is Professor of Neurology and the director of the headache Center at the University of California San Francisco uh and was the third co-author of This research for discussing alongside Professor Waterhouse and Dr deie um he told me it’s hard to know how many people actually suffer from red wine headache but but about 25% of people who suffer from migraines get red wine headaches um and he said there are probably other non-migraine sufferers who get red wine headaches as well either way we’re not talking insignificant numbers here we’re talking about millions of people who suffer from red wine headaches now what causes this issue and how that works has so far remained elusive you know people have blamed sulfites biogenic amines phenolics and tannins but as the researchers say in their paper and I quote no chemical constituent has been clearly implicated as the primary trigger of red wine headache nor has a mechanism for eliciting the headache been proposed but now we may be on the verge of a breakthrough we may indeed um but before we come on to that though uh we need to talk about alcohol do we we do if I had a penny for every time i’ heard that in my particularly in my schooler anyway let’s talk about alcohol so when we drink alcohol or ethanol to be more precise our body breaks it down okay the liver has two enzymes to do this and it’s a two-step process the first enzyme is alcohol dehydrogenase which converts the ethanol into acet alahh now acet alahh is definitely a name to remember in this context H it’s a key player you could even call it the the villain of the peace but that might be a bit harsh um either way AET alahh is nasty stuff it’s very toxic also carcinogenic it messes with your body and your mind so your body wants to get rid of it yeah and this is where the second enzyme comes in AET alahh dehydrogenase or alh converts the acet alahh into acetate which is non-toxic and much friendlier so disaster averted few um so we can keep calm and carry on or carry on drinking indeed sort of because and this is the problem in some people this process doesn’t work properly for example it says that around 40% 40% of people of East Asian descent so including hand Chinese Japanese and Korean have a defective variant of this alh enzyme this means that second step of this process the breakdown of toxic acet aldhy into harmless acetate is impaired this causes a buildup of acetal dhide in the blood which leads to facial flushing heart palpitations nausea and headaches and this phenomenon Allied to some other interesting research on red wine compounds was the inspiration for the idea behind this study could it be that one compound in red wine was provoking exactly this effect and causing a build up of toxic acet alahh in people who suffer from red wine headaches yeah so to explain you know in other words there’s a lot going on here some people some people for genetic reasons have a defective enzyme which means they can’t process alcohol properly in their bodies but some other people can drink alcohol fine no problems it’s just red wine that causes these issues or headaches so could there be something in red wine they could identify as the culprit a postdoctoral researcher Dr aamet Devi and Professor Andrew waterhous put their heads together and designed some experiments they had initially hoped to do it in in Vivo or human trials but their funding wouldn’t stretch that far and something we’ll come back to so they limited themselves to inv vitro trials lab-based you know test tube stuff and what they found was intriguing yeah so at this point we should bring in Andy Waterhouse a professor emeritus of anology at UC Davis but who describes himself quite humbly as a wine chemist I asked him first about the symptoms we’re talking about here we’re talking about about severe headaches not mild headaches and headaches that occur very shortly after drinking red wine but those headaches don’t occur in these particular people don’t occur after consuming white wine or other alcoholic beverages so the symptoms appear uniquely only after consuming red wine now this is different from a hangover which may occur hours later or even the next morning uh these occur within say half hour of consuming red wine so in terms of quantity I mean is there how much do you have to drink before getting these adverse effects what I’ve heard is about a half a glass of red wine which of course is a very indistinct amount but uh it’s not a large quantity yeah that’s not very much at all is it um so now let’s let’s get on to the why uh why are these things happening these these adverse health effects happening to people well to clarify there’s been many speculative propositions made over the years uh the ones that are most commonly voiced are sulfites uh biogenic amans or tanin and the key is that all those have been proposed without any specific mechanistic explanation so so what we’ve discovered is that there’s something in red wine specifically red wine which inhibits the metabolism of alcohol this leads to the accumulation in the blood of acid aldah and acid alahh is what’s inducing the headache so tell me about this substance that that that is causing all the problems so the substance is a metabolite of coratin so coratin in various forms is produced by grapes in response to sunlight we call it like sunscreen for grapes and there’s many now many experiments showing that the amount of coratin is directly related to sun exposure if you carefully keep the grapes in total darkness the levels will in fact be zero and levels can vary in rine uh by fivefold so between your sort of inexpensive wines where the grapes don’t see a lot of sunlight to those that get a lot of sun exposure there’s a huge range and it’s very unusual to have such a large discrepancy between two types of wine of any particular substance so when you consume anything with coratin your body converts it to coratin glucuronide and that seems to be a tremendously effective inhibitor of the enzyme that breaks down acid alide right so you’ve got this quatin coming into your body at the same time as the ethanol right your body converts it to this substance which inhibits the breakdown of alcohol which your body would be doing normally and you get stuck with all this acid alide in your blood which is horrifically inflammatory and horrible exactly it causes inflammation lots of places and one of the things that will do is induce a headache one of the clues that led us to this is that there’s certain population of people who when they consume alcohol flush and that flushing is a result of poor breakdown of acid alahh so those people have an enzyme that’s supposed to break down acid alahh as part of alcohol metabolism but it doesn’t work very well one of the symptoms they experience is in fact headache uh and in general people who are really severely affected by this can’t drink at all they they feel so bad that that they just don’t drink so looking at that and realizing that they experienced headaches I you know investigated is there anything in wine that could inhibit that enzyme and it turns out that coratin does and this this metabolite is even more effective so then the question becomes why does this seem to affect certain people and not others that’s a really good question we don’t we don’t have an answer no I mean I think that you could imagine there’s a couple possible reasons one is that their the the the enzyme that this population has is particularly a sensitive to this metabolite um it could be that they’re more sensitive to acid alide uh but you know it’ll take it’ll take some experimentation to sort through these various [Music] possibilities so just a pause there a second it sounds like we’ve been drinking sunscreen isn’t that the problem I mean you know drinking sunscreen is never good for anybody sunscreen for grapes doesn’t sound the most appetizing does it no yes I age yeah yeah but joking aside though this this this quatin is actually a phenolic compound or flavonoid and flavonoids are generally thought to be quite good for us you know as antioxidants Scavenging harmful free radicals and and all of that but the point is when we ingest quatin our bodies turn it into quatin glucuronide and in some people this quatin glucuronide prevents their body breaking down acid alide and that’s when bad things happen exactly exactly so questin by itself or questin glucuronide isn’t necessarily bad it’s probably quite good for us as you say and the problem comes in some people and as Andy said we don’t really know why some people are more affected yet the problem happens in some people when the body ingests quatin along with alcohol that’s the key Dynamic metric here because questing glucuronide inhibits this specific enzyme that would otherwise break down the toxic byproduct of alcohol I mean that’s quite a complex mechanism I mean how on Earth did they hit upon that in their research that’s a really good question so uh I asked Dr arami to Dey that um she actually conducted all the experiments um she said she was aware of one paper that suggested quatin could inhibit a similar enzyme to the one we’re talking about here so you know given their lab is a phenolics lab she assembled tons of test tubes and enzyme kits and the chemical form of various phenolics and she just went for it you know to see if she could find the compound that was causing the level of enzyme inhibition that would lead to a severe reaction like red wine headache so I started screening every kind of phenolics possible so I started testing testing and then we found that oh postin does but it does not anyit that much so we went to the next step like is it just Fortin or something else is happening so the next step went is uh looking into the metabolism cotin in body to understand what happens to ctin when you drink it or eat it so it doesn’t remain as coratin it changes form into coratin 3 glucoronide so we’re like okay so it’s not just stin it changes so why don’t we pick up this second form and see it and we just took that second form postin three glucuronide boom we got lot of innovation so was it quite a spectacular result I mean was it something that was yeah like when we were doing quatin we were getting like 20% 25% inhibition of the enzyme so we were not sure like is it good enough to do a headache or like accumulate enough acet alide that you end up with might be ending up so we’re not very happy with this 20 25% but then when we started looking into this cotin 3 glucoronide it went almost up to 80% which is like almost 80% of your enzyme at that point of time is not working and you are accumulating lot of AET alide so it’s a obviously it’s a in a test tube in a body it will be very different because you have lot of other things going on but 80% in test tube is a good starting point I [Music] feel we’re going to come back to human trials in a bit but that’s quite a Eureka moment she’s describing isn’t it so it’s not really the quatin that’s inhibiting this enzyme it’s the quirin glucuronide or cortin 3 glucuronide that your body produces and if it’s stopping the enzyme working to the tune of 80% that really is significant it’s a proper blocker 80% that’s a lot that’s the majority you and it’s a very significant finding as you say you know obviously uh the mechanism still needs to be studied in human trials because things are very different in the body to in the test Tu but you know if this is proven then it opens up a whole new field of understanding and hopefully it will be a big help for people who suffer from this you know really painful issue okay so on that Eureka moment I think we should take a breath um coming up we have some rather juicy material including a major justification for buying cheap red wine music to everyone’s ears when money seems to be shorter than ever right now and our top tips for the kind of cheap red wines to buy to recap so far sign ssts have identified a substance in red wine that may be causing red wine headaches namely quatin or more accurately its metabolite quatin glucoronide quatin is a flavonoid a phenolic compound that’s produced when grapes are exposed to sunlight and its concentrations in wine can vary significantly and this opens up another line of questioning precisely uh one we definitely wanted to get into so uh Andy Waterhouse Professor Andrew waterous mentioned that wines can vary significantly in their quatin levels you know some wines can have up to five times as much as others and one of the key drivers here is sun exposure because grapes produce quatin in response to sunlight so I asked Andy waterhous if someone does suffer from these red wine headaches but they really want to drink some red wine which wines would be safest to drink yes that’s a very good question uh fortunately for wine consumers there’s not ready data about the level of these substances in wine um in fact I’ve made inquiries with number of people and many of the wine companies don’t track this data either it just hasn’t been an issue up till now um if I suppose if some consumers clamor for the information it will be made available and it’s easy to measure I mean relatively easy to measure it’s it’s fairly expensive in terms of analysis but the the methodology is very well known and any any good laboratory could do it but uh that information is is just not available in general what we can say from a general perspective is that uh inexpensive red wines generally come from very large grape Vines so in order to make an inexpensive wine you have to have a productive Vineyard so for instance you might make uh you might Harvest about 10 to 15 Tons of GRA grapes from a productive Vineyard to achieve that level of production you have to have a very large grape vine which means that the grapes themselves will be heavily shaded by the vine itself whereas if you’re making very expensive wine and typically this is what happens you might notice this when you visit famous Vineyards that the vines are fairly small and you can see the grapes they’re sitting there right in front of you and that if you can see them then they’re getting more much more sun exposure so given that general rule uh my recommendation has been that you should look at less expensive red wines which for wine lovers may be somewhat um disappointing or you could see it the other way and say it’s great you’re recommending cheaper Reds you know good value Reds is a way of avoiding red white headaches yes so they can try that that might might be successful some a few people have mentioned to me that they that this does work for them that’s really interesting I suppose you know alternatively you could look at areas which it maybe get less sunlight less Sun less aggressive sun exposure or where wine makers or viticulturists tend to leave the grapes a bit more shaded yeah so one one person contacted me I mean I got many people contacting me and and they you know they were asking for advice and I gave them that advice and they said yes they had in fact knew that already and this particular person loved red wine but she said it was so disappointing every time she bought a very expensive Cabernet she had to cook with it because she couldn’t drink it uh she said it’s it’s very sad to be using your very best wine for cooking but but you make good gravy I suppose um that’s that’s great so so yes so the answer is is is cheap red in in some in some instances alternatively I say I suppose you could say it’s safer to drink white it’s perfectly safe to drink white because the level of these substances would be very low The Only Exception would be a skin contact white it could be levels of course there’s no data on this but in theory if you made an orange wine or sometimes they’re referred to as skin contact whites there would be an opportunity to extract some of this coratin into the wine yeah and I suppose Rosé similar sort of to Orange wine in that sense perhaps no not unless it’s a very dark Rosé roses are made with very very limited skin contact so the tiny amount of pink color is the easiest so that substance is the easiest thing to remove from the skin the coratin would come later so Ros is actually if you if you like red but you do get these headaches Rosé might actually be a good option then oh yes yes [Music] definitely yet another reason why drinking Rosé is a good idea do we need any more I mean we’ve already got many so many keich being one of them but you know for the gravy I think that sounds like pretty tasty gravy doesn’t it it oh I tell you what but anyway no to be serious what Professor Waterhouse is saying as far as I can understand it is that for those who suffer from red wine headaches white and Rosé are good options but if you really can’t do without red then the best option is a cheap red because it will likely have been made from high yielding Vines cheap red it’s a Way Forward yeah H and to to ripen a big crop off each Vine you’ll need a lot of grapes so some will evitably be shaded in the bunches you know plus you need a lot of photosynthesis going on so lots of Leaf cover also means further shading which in turn means less sunlight exposure for the grapes hence less quatin meaning less enzymatic inhibition meaning less acet aldhy buildup Bingo yeah absolutely spot on uh you know whereas uh to draw the comparison your fancy pants big money Reds you know will tend to have very neat trimmed canopies and and small amounts of grapes which are often exposed to the sun uh very photogenically of course this isn’t always the case these are all generalizations but it’s an interesting point probably and these these you know premium grapes also tend to be mated for longer in the juice again upping the The Quon content um on that note actually as he said orange wines or skin contact whites uh often have considerably more phenolic extracted from them than whites or Rosé because they tend to spend longer in contact with the skin nor exactly you uh but equally some orange wines have much more skin contact than others so it’s really hard to generalize and this is a really important point this is all relative I think I’m hearing a qualifier coming on here well you know I did want to say you know Professor W house was quite clear that you know while lots of red wine headache sufferers told him that cheaper wines were less Troublesome for them it’s hard to generalize about which wines would be safer for people who do do get these headaches you know for example one producer of cheap breads May expose his grapes to sunlight more than his neighbor um because he has a very specific type of training or trellising for his grapes or whatever yeah um or the wine making methods may you know favor higher levels of quatin because the length of time he leaves his red wines masting on the skins or the way the wines are stabilized or fined or aged or whatever all this has an impact so there are so many variables and and and I should add it’s hard to predict from color as well isn’t it you know for instance i’ I’ve heard grapes like pinoir and Neola which tend to produce fairly pale wines can be quite high in quatin whereas naturally more deeply colored grapes like tanet and cabinet sovon can be quite low it’s quite c yeah anyway but anyway I I guess the one thing that would help us is is having some sort of reliable measurement of cortin levels in the wines themselves and as antin mentioned this is pretty straightforward to do you know it doesn’t sound cheap but if people start asking for it and it became a selling point yeah but I think you know we we then get into all kinds of legal and and Regulatory issues though we you know it’s generally not allowed for wines to make Health claims so you know how could that be done but you know I do agree you know you get the sense there is something that can be done both by researchers but also you know more importantly by proactive wine producers in this space particularly given it’s such a major issue for so many people yeah I mean I guess I guess it’s important to see what comes out of the human trials and go from there because all of this is still subject to confirmation in that sense yeah yeah absolutely so so just to finish off on that point um Andy and a prometer had hoped to do human trials but couldn’t get the funding um they actually raised the money for their research by crowdfunding Andy’s logic was that if the government and wine companies aren’t Keen to fund this kind of research which apparently they aren’t which is a massive scandal in my view you know I think it’s crazy maybe then it should be funded by those who stood to benefit the most from it you know I wi drinkers um but they only managed to get a fraction of what they were hoping for I think it was about $5,000 than 50,000 um so you know they just opted to do the invitro trial uh in the first instance but there are human trials following on from their initial findings now aren’t there yeah yeah absolutely so so I asked Andy about this and he said the funding for these is coming from a foundation affiliated with the wine spectator uh publishing group and know I I don’t know if the funding is materialized because of how promising the results of the initial study were um maybe maybe but either way you know I also asked a promer uh about the nature of these human trials apparently they will be overseen by Morris Levan he of the headache Center at the University of California San Francisco uh who we’ve already name checked uh and this is what she said about the trials so it’s done by our our collaborator in UC uh San Francisco in a headache Center so we have lot these patients who come often to him with this complaint of red wine headache so he’ll be selecting people who know what red wine headache is or who have experienced a red wine headache so our initial study will be be uh about like providing them with two wines uh which have one of them will be high in quatin and other will be like low in quatin and then we give them these Wines in a controlled setup and then they have to just report that which wine gave them headache so first step is just to know the response of them with a particular kind of wine so so that’s the first trial um and so the these are people who already experience issues with red wine headaches you know that they have an issue so but that that’s not going to be I imagine that might be quite hard getting the volunteers now because that’s going to be potentially quite a painful experience for them yeah but those who already getting that pain uh they want to know like what is causing them so it’s kind of a give them information like okay this is the reason so they can have more informed choices about what kind of wine they take what not not so they are anyway they are getting when they that pain so they want to kind of sort it out so so yeah so they are ready to be part of this I think to sort that problem out yeah that’s altruism for you isn’t it and sacrificing yourself for the good of Humanity’s drinkers yeah I mean you know we don’t we’re lucky we don’t suffer from red wine headache do we but you know no you know if we did would we be first in line to volunteer I think we’d have to be surely I’d like to think we would be in our interest frankly but still you know the big point is for those people who are going to volunteer who are volunteering good on you yeah good on you that’s fantastic anyway so Andy water house said the plan is to start trials this summer uh I also asked Dr Levan uh who who confirmed the trials will be starting soon uh with the results being published ideally mid 2025 something like that so we’ got time so I guess we’ll need a follow-up episode then won’t we we absolutely will good that’s future promotion of the podcast yes that’s I love where you are with that anyway um Dr L also confirmed that the aim of the trials was to see whether wines with high questin levels predictably led to headache and people prone to red wine headaches uh we’ve got the theory now we need the real world proof that’s the key thing so uh they’re also hoping to shed light on what makes certain people susceptible to this issue and not others and they want to learn a bit more about the the nature of these headaches particularly migraines I mean there are still quite a lot of questions to be answered aren’t there you know like why some people suffer and others not is is a key one as you said but then there are questions like you know can people develop this issue as they get older you know or do other factors play a part like medication or home hormonal fluctuations or or state of gut or or your liver Health yeah we get asked I mean I’m sure every wi person does but we get asked this by so many people on so many different levels there’s so many questions out there so you know everyone’s different everyone’s different I think they’re going to need a bigger research budget aren’t they I think they I’m coming to this you know actually on that note preter did say a couple of things that are relevant uh in this regard firstly there’s a possibility that biogenic amines may be responsible for some adverse reactions in wine but the mechanism isn’t very clear so that would be worth studying separately I think we Budd just went up further didn’t it did it did we’re adding we’re very good at adding to budget then a also dangled a big carrot by mentioning in part ing that they’re hoping their further research might shed some light on hangovers you mean their Research into things like Quon yeah absolutely um you know they don’t know but I think they have a hunch these things might be linked to to Hangovers sort of makes sense the promet said there there’s a huge line of research possibly in this thing the only issue is funding where do we sign up um I mean if they can help us avoid hangovers you know we may not get red wine headaches but a hangover yep we definitely and that’s that’s a Holy Grail isn’t it sting that one out you know I am so there and it’s funny you said you be sign up because you know a parameter did send me a link to their crowdfunding page she can put your money where your mouth is uh so is she paying you the the opportunity is there if you want to support proper wine research that could help change things you know for the better U I’ll put that link in the show notes but that’s a big thing hangovers is it yeah though I should add that the prometer was very keen to stress they don’t want to make big claims at such an early stage you know they might find things they might not and you don’t want to say to people crowdfund us we’ll eliminate hangovers forever you know that’s not going to happen and and people may get disappointed and before we know it you know there’ll be angry Mobs with pitchforks and flamethrowers at the lake Gates of theb of forks one thing that has been going around in my mind is gravy you knowy the way my mind works yeah because there is a link with food and all of this isn’t that yeah this is interesting isn’t it yeah so so quatin isn’t just found in grapes it’s found in all kinds of fruit and veg and herbs and spices from berries to broccoli cherries citrus fruits onions Capers Green Tea Cocoa powder kale Dill coriander lettuce tomatoes I could go on you could shall I stop you and just say it’s it’s sold as a food food supplement isn’t it that we we just probably combine everything yeah yeah absolutely so you know if you eat these Foods you know all the supplement you get the questin and that’s all good you know because and this is the important bit there’s no alcohol to cause the adverse reaction when you’re talking about food remember qu and glucuronide inhibits the breakdown of acet alahh which comes from alcohol that’s when the headaches occur yeah so in the gravy example that’s okay because the alcohol would presumably be boiled off in the gravy exactly but there’s another Dynamic to bear in mind here uh that’s worth throwing in remember we said white wine or rosé wine would be okay for red wine headache sufferers yeah well that’s not totally true uh because if you’re drinking and this is this is hypothesis but if you’re drinking white wine you’ve got alcohol right yeah the white wine might not have the quatin in but you see where I’m going here I do if you’re drinking it with a plate of food full of course exactly so you know a fresh kale and tomato salad with onions and capers and broccoli that kind of thing I it’s not something I would ever recipe myself I have to say but let’s just for the sake of argument let’s say I’ve gone on a health kit that’s what I’m eating it wouldn’t be particular nice but I get red wine headaches and I was drinking with white wine you could still get the red wine headache except it’s not really a red wine headache is it exactly or is it precisely anyway before my head starts to spin or even ache um I think we should come on to our recommendations shouldn’t we let’s just yeah okay let’s get things spinning in another way uh so um given we have it on very good authority that a less expensive red wine might be the best option for red wine headache sufferers we decided to hunt around with some very inexpensive Reds that that punched well above their weight uh and so we went to two of the UK’s biggest supermarkets and we found some pretty interesting things we also wanted to look at areas or regions which maybe get slightly less sun exposure you know I think given this research was done in California their frames of reference to a certain extent were Napa Valley at the top end for cabinet and then maybe big volume Central Valley Blends for the inexpensive stuff we want to look a bit more to Europe to look at at the the cheaper end of the spectrum here don’t yes it’s not super easy because you know most of the sort of cheap cheap and cheerful Blends from from uh Europe are in the warmer areas but you know anyway we lined up a selection of of cheap Reds uh some of which it has to be said were pretty diabolical uh we are talking mentioning no names thin weedy dilute uh sickly cling in some instances you know Life’s Too Short kind of wines yeah yeah I me just that unbalanced basically um and bad but then there were some that really impressed us even if we didn’t always agree which I’m sure everybody would would expect from us um and I have to say many of these wines did leave us wondering if anyone was actually making any money on them after tax and basic costs um but uh but anyway putting such reservations temporarily to one side my first pick was the cheapest wasn’t it who’d have ever thought that um it was the Italian no oroso at £450 from Tesco you make it sound so romantic for a second um it it’s so basic it doesn’t even have a vintage no and just look at it now I mean yeah yeah I mean it’s a blend of sanesi in Monte poano and Merlo apparently you can glamorize it all you I mean you said it looked like cooking one well it does it absolutely does the bottle and in the glass um you know it’s pale and you think it’s going to taste of nothing but actually it’s a deal I was so surprised I mean maybe you know the fact it looked so so sort of unpromising was you know a good thing but it had lovely Aromas of red fruit and wild herbs and then you know a refreshing kind of slightly crunchy palette feel with some cherry flavors what it’s not it’s not chewy or drying or sickly like so many wines at this price you know it’s just upbeat and simple definitely light bodied but it’s sort of unpretentious in a way that inexpensive Italian wines can be you know I’d rather have this than so many of those sort of overcooked Blockbuster Reds out there you know you could just knock this back yeah actually actually you know Italiano uh a PR did mention that Italian wines had come up in the correspondence U that they’d received you know about which wines did work for some red wine headache sufferers so that did guide our sort of selection slightly uh anyway I see your Veno Cheapo Italiano and I raise you a a Toro a mad bll tempano Bal 2022 from uel Raa in Spain this is all of £499 at Aldi H and it pack a how expensive is that well you know it’s it’s it’s a proper little fruit bomb um bursting with berries and cherries it’s it’s juicy and it’s fruity and you know yeah it’s a bit simple but it’s not confected or stewed like you were saying it’s just fun and refreshing it’s it’s you know it’s a perfect quer he’s got a bit of Spanish Swagger to it but I’m going to stick with Italy actually um and I’m going to go up a a tiny bit in price with our next wine and I’ve got the castore Primitivo deulia 2022 which is a whole whopping 599 at Aldi BL the budget here I really am um you’re worth it D um it’s it’s in a very smart bottle actually which is quite surprising and there’s so much wine for the price you know lots of headyy raisined blackberry fruit it’s it’s rich and and ripe and succulent I mean maybe not the most subtle or elegant but you know at this price really impressive it’s got some fine chalky Tannon i’ definitely recommend this for anyone who wants to sort of impress their friends on on a budget um the only the only thing I would say is that we are obviously down in pulia in southern Italy so perhaps a bit more Sunshine actually here than is absolutely ideal for those lower Quan levels but it does look very smart um it does it does as you say you know um I’ve another Italian here the Vista castelli multiple chano duto 2021 which is550 at Tesco it’s you know it’s just classic Italian stuff really red cherries and herbal notes I think multiple channel so generally speaking it’s a good value option to get time from from a trusted retailer you know like I say a juicy sort of Tangy palette that works really well probably works best with food um to offset you know it’s quite sort of firm I don’t know spag ball whatever yeah and one final recommendation then that’s not from Spain not from Italy it’s from Portugal it’s the mimo muo 2021 and that is 649 at Aldi and you’ve got a lot of wine here lots of fruit bit of spice a bit of florality um it’s looking a bit mature now but again lots of wine for the price and and something a bit different I think you know to have with your Tuesday night bangers and mash so there we have it uh some great value inexpensive red wines for you uh whether you’re a red wine headache sufferer or not all great ammunition for that perfect Tuesday night in by way of closing summary red wine headaches are a serious issue for many people but as a result of some exciting Recent research at UC Davis in California we may be closer to identifying a cause quatin a natural flavonoid found in grapes may be preventing the breakdown of alcohol in the body and causing a toxic acet aldhy buildup resulting in headaches as well as other painful symptoms human trials are needed to confirm this hypothesis with results expected mid 2025 in the meantime experts suggest inexpensive red wines may offer the best chance of avoiding headaches that’s if you don’t fancy white or Rosé though you may also need to be wary of the food you’re eating there’s also the potential for This research to shed light on hangovers which is a tantalizing Prospect um but funding is a perennial challenge so so it would be good to see more supports in that regard um this is you know really important work in terms of getting to grips with an issue that has been a thorn in the side of humanity for thousands of years and on that note I know we’re nearly out of time but you did ask both Andy and aoma how they felt about their exciting findings didn’t you how well remembered yeah I I I most certainly did um and here’s what they said well that’s the real excitement of science is discovering making a Discovery finding out what makes something tick um so really that’s the fun part when I started this work I was not that I didn’t know that the like this will be a problem for lot so many of PE like lot of people I started like okay maybe a fraction of people getting affected with these like people have much bigger issues so but when the research came out and we started getting this huge number of emails people asking which wine to drink what to drink and I was like oh my God how many people are suffering from this issue and like how many people and then I realized okay we like I know it’s a test tube study but like it has a impact and we were get more excited about so till then we were like how to do clinical trial and we were trying kind of thinking but after that we got that push like okay we need to do it whether it starts with a small clinical trial it’s okay but we need to do that so like we feel happy when you your research has that impact outside in the outside world and people can relate with it so that’s the real research we feel well it’s absolutely fantastic congratulations on your excellent work uh you know here’s raising a glass to you but aita thank you very much indeed thank you Peter thank you for making us part of this show and put like bringing the research to more people out there so there we go here’s to the power of research and making new discoveries our thanks to Professor Andrew Waterhouse Dr aoma deie and Dr Morris Levan and thanks to you for listening until next time cheers [Music]