An article recently found its way to my inbox from Vanguard Magazine. It was titled Women who believe white wine makes them do crazy things! The heading was perfect clickbait, as it immediately raised my blood pressure and I found myself clicking the link to read more.
The article begins with “After guzzling a few glasses of Chablis,” Right there should be an indicator of why this person may have begun to be a blabbering idiot to the other people at the party. If you recall your alcohol education from high school, the liver is capable of detoxing your body of one drink per hour. The amount of one drink is different depending on what the alcohol is. Even the standard is no longer the standard, with beers having different levels of alcohol depending on the type. For example a typical beer has 5% alcohol, while an IPA has about 6% and a double IPA can have as much as 10% alcohol.
Although these are the “standard,” we all know that when we pour ourselves a glass of wine at home or a party, it is more than the 5 ounce pour. So a few glasses, which she swears was no more than three, can most definitely get someone drunk. If people always recognized when they were drunk, we would not have drunk drivers on the road.
Veronica claims her memory of the night in question is very hazy. This means that she had consumed enough alcohol to block the hippocampus from transferring short-term memory into long-term memory. This “fragmentary blackout” is thought to begin when the blood alcohol content is at 0.16% – twice the legal drinking limit for driving.
The article then continues that “theories about the impact of white wine range from its high sugar content – it has up to ten times more than red wine – and levels of sulphite, which are added as a preservative. This is where I may have begun screaming at the article. What research shows that white wine has more sugar than red wine? I’m pretty confident that the sugar level in wine is determined by how much of the sugar the yeast consumed. The yeast do not care if they are eating the sugar in a white grape or a red grape. They will continue to devour the sugar until either the alcohol gets too high, something happens in terms of temperature to prevent them from surviving, or there is no more sugar for them to eat.
Ignoring a stuck fermentation, a sweet red wine is equal to a sweet white wine. A bottle of red wine that has 3% residual sugar is the same as a white wine with the same amount of residual sugar. Although I was happy to see that the article actually claimed that white wine has more sulphites than red wine, because typically red wine gets the bad wrap, there is no evidence that sulphite allergens make people do crazy things.
People that are mostly effected by sulphite allergens are asthmatics. It has been theorized that about 5%-10% of the people with asthma have a sulphite allergy. The typical symptoms include wheezing, chest tightness and coughing. No where in the documentation does it state “rudeness, aggressiveness or shouting” are side effects of a sulphite reaction. However, rambling, rude and offensive behavior, aggressiveness and violence are common indicators of being drunk. 
Here’s my rant/question; Has our society really gotten to the point where no one takes responsibility for their actions. Has it become the norm to do whatever you want, and blame someone or something else for your actions? If someone gets in a car and drives under the influence, is a lawyer going to plea that it is the wine’s fault and not the driver? Will one day, it be the winery’s fault for making a white wine?
Thankfully, there was one sane statement in the article. Professor Corder, author of the Wine Diet. “In my opinion, it’s not about the wine itself but the way in which it’s being drunk and the reasons behind that”.
Thank you for reading my rant and tell me what are your thoughts on blaming white wine on bad behavior. (by the way, Veronica also blamed the white wine for her boyfriend breaking up with her after that evening.)
Slàinte!
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