Just what does our glass of red wine contain that is causing many of us to feel so ill, asks Haydn Shaughnessy
My first meal in a restaurant and the first time I drank wine was aged 24 in a brasserie off Lincoln's Inn Fields in west central London.
Outside, two teams of girls played netball in gym slips while the bearded cider drinkers of London, bottles hidden in brown bags, stood watching alongside a few wigless barristers. I took a peep also, before boring through a heavy drape into the world of wining and dining.
They were seated at tables close together, generally in groups of four, rarely larger, rarely smaller, people drinking wine and smoking, quaffing before a drag.
Those who did not eat, smoked cigarettes between swigs of wine, or leaned over to talk, leaned back to talk, hung their heads on an open palm to talk, and swigged wine. It seemed to be appearing in their eyes, little pools of swigged wine.
I had seen the future.
My first encounter with the red stuff was a bottle of George Dubouef's Cru Beaujolais Fleurie, a captivating little number that converted me immediately from the pint glass to the tall tinted bottle and the fruity red.
Sadly, George Dubouef is now cradling 50,000 gallons of adulterated Cru Beaujolais.
France is hit periodically by wine adulteration. In 2002 it was the turn of bordeaux, in 2001 burgundy. Poor George, a dealer I've trusted for two and half decades, had been taken by a scurrilous grower who offloaded something cheap and nasty on him.
Talking shame, a lingering wine scandal broke finally this summer in South Africa when the reputable KWV winery conceded publicly that its sauvignon blanc was produced with artificial flavouring.
The scandal had been fermenting since the turn of the millennium when it became apparent that the grassy sauvignon blanc, characteristic of cold climates, was miraculously appearing in the warmer Robertson area of the Cape, renowned for its chardonnay and shiraz.
Prior to the fingering of KWV, the prestigious magazine, Wine International, quoted local winemaker Abie Brouwer as saying: "It's not unique to us. It happens all over the world."
By the time the story did break, KWV stood alone and a national scandal was averted.
Wine drinking is not only a newly acquired habit for a growing number of people, it is coupled to new and more diverse ways of eating. We are blessed with better lifestyles and wine is integral to the sense of greater well-being.
But anecdotal evidence suggests more people are suffering from wine-related illnesses.
Paddy O'Flynn of The Wine Buff, a chain of franchised retailers with outlets in Cork, Ennis, Limerick and Galway, has built a large part of his business from catering for people who've experienced health problems after drinking red wine.
"Sit in one of the shops for a day," he offers, "and see how many people come in and say, 'I love drinking wine but I can't anymore.'"
O'Flynn supplies wines only from growers and producers he knows personally and is able to visit regularly. He claims his wines are sourced only from producers who respect the land and do not use additives or preservatives.
One wine "victim " is Neil Cassidy, a manager in the hospitality trade.
"I was having a glass of wine over dinner one evening, it was a Californian wine, and suddenly my face went purple, my neck was red and I couldn't breathe." Neil happens to be an asthmatic. He is describing anaphylactic shock, a sudden catastrophic allergic reaction.
"I have an emergency inhaler and that didn't work so it was frightening, very frightening. I ended up in hospital on a nebuliser." That's a machine to help you breathe more easily.
Adverse reactions to red wine are not uncommon but the problem was, until recently, assumed to be confined to headaches.
The red wine headache is a universal phenomenon, first noticed when salad bars became the rage in America.
Deli-owners used sulphur sprays to preserve their lettuce leaves, and a minority of customers developed migraine. Sulphur is naturally occurring in wine but winemakers add more depending on how long the wine will sit on a shelf.
Fewer than 1 per cent of people though have a sulphur sensitivity, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, and sulphur is added in greater concentrations to white wine than it is to red, though complaints come mostly from red wine drinkers.
Sulphur, clearly, may not be the problem.
In support of this conclusion, the reactions associated with wine drinking are broadening, according to O'Flynn.
"We often hear from people that they get joint pain after drinking wine and, more often than not, it's after drinking New World wines," he says.
"Many of the New World wines are shipped to Europe in steel containers for bottling and that exposes them to heat amplified by the steel which effectively kills the wine."
The redoubtable wine critic Oz Clarke has also recently come out publicly against the big branded wines that he once promoted, beginning two decades ago on BBC's Food and Drink. "I get blackcurrant, I get plummy juices, I got shiraz."
Now Clarke claims that the big brands are a travesty of winemaking and blames it mostly on the addition of sugar to the wine.
So, I get flavourings, I get low-grade wines added, and I get sugar. I might also get ascorbic acid, a common additive that freshens up Chilean wines, as acknowledged recently by winemaker Felipé Muller at a tasting in Cork.
My own GP, reflecting on the widespread use of ascorbic acid in food, recently told me, as she ordered up a liver function test: "We're seeing more and more people with ascorbic acid problems and they find it very difficult to eliminate it from their diet."
She described its addition to wine as "very worrying" but there is as yet little science on ascorbic acid as an established food intolerance.
Imagine being intolerant to something akin to a vitamin?
O'Flynn argues that our penchant for strong, full-bodied reds has, furthermore, altered winemaking for the worse.
Those intense flavours and the higher alcohol levels typical of New World wines are created by picking the grapes later.
They contain less naturally preserving tannins so that they can be drunk earlier, two factors that force winemakers to use additives like ascorbic acid (and citric acid, another potential allergen) to freshen the taste.
Clarke is beginning to agree and recently commented on an Australian zinfandel: "The Adelaide hills are cool and damp, just right for snappy white grapes like sauvignon blanc. But zinfandel is a big, hot-climate beast. How can it possibly ripen amid the mist and drizzle of the hills? Not that I care, I'm just curious" says Oz, apparently oblivious to the dangers of manipulation.
Something in the mix is not right.