About Sulfites

There are some myths about sulfite in the wine culture so wrong that they must be busted.

Sulfite makes you sick, gives you a hangover, and leaves you with a bad headache. Sulfite harms your health. Natural wine is, only, a sulfite-free wine.

These are lies or half-true. I will try to show you why.

What are sulfites? Not to be confused with sulfide, are several compounds with an ion sulfate V (often noted SO2-). It’s a natural product, the human body produces sulfites, and some food contains sulfites naturally (ripe grapes naturally contain sulfites).

The food industry uses sulfites as preservatives and antioxidants in many products, baked goods, juices, cereal, and many others. They can be found in large quantities in some food, dried fruits for example. It is E223, Sodium metabisulfite, E220, or E221, they are used to inhibit fungi and bacterial growth.

Is E223 and other sulfites bad for your health? Mostly not, there is no strong evidence of that in the scientific literature. You can have up 0.7 mg per kilogram. For an 80 kg person, it’s 56 mg. But, sulfite-sensitive people may react to sulfites with allergy-like symptoms like asthma and anaphylaxis.

Some people said that sulfites give them headaches. That may be not the true cause, people will have the same headaches after eating a pack of dried apricots as it contains 10 times more sulfite than a glass of wine.

However, wine can trigger some headaches in some individuals if the wine contains a high level of histamine. Histamine is an organic compound naturally produced during fermentation. Some wines may have a high level of histamine. Some people can suffer from headaches after drinking wine, especially red wine (Red wine may contain more histamine).

If your headache appears the morning after drinking, then alcohol is the principal cause of it. Drinking alcohol triggers dehydration of the body, among other things. Ethanol disables hormones that balance water in your body, so you lose water and some electrolytes. Dehydration is the primary cause of headache and dry mouth (one remedy is to drink water with electrolytes, or salt)

Sulfite is often seen as usual suspect; it may not play the role you think. Unless you are a sulfite-sensitive person, which will cause rash and asthma symptoms. For everyone else, you will not suffer from it in normal conditions.

But why adding sulfite to wine is so controversial and natural wine movement ban its usage most of the time?

You need to see how wine is made in the conventional world. When winemaker produce their must, they generally put one or more Campden tablet in the must (other methods exists, gas, solution, but the result is the same). They want to kill every rogue bacterium and wild yeast. They sterilize the wine! Without yeast, producers will need to add industrial yeasts to start the fermentation. The fermentation will naturally add some sulfite as it is a fermentation by-product. During the bottling process, the winemaker adds a final dose of sulfite to stabilize the wine. Thereby, a bottle of conventional wine may contain between 135 mg per liter to 235 mg per liter of sulfite (the rules for European wine).

In the natural wine movement, adding sulfite is only “allowed” during the bottling process. And it is not an obligation. Natural wine contains less than 30 mg per liter of sulfite. Under 10 mg per liter, Europe rules allow the wine maker to add “contains sulfite” on the label (but in the USA, wine containing more than 1 mg must indicate contains sulfite on the label).

And don’t be confused, not adding sulfite to the must or the wine doesn’t mean it is a natural wine. There are some very aggressive industrial processes that has nothing to do with the natural wine movement that let the winemaker to not use sulfite. No-added sulfite is not always a good indicator for natural wine.

Sulfite is a controversial topic, for some, not adding sulfite is the natural wine symbol, and I think it is not the only one. For others, sulfite is dangerous, it is for allergic people. But it may not trigger headaches, make the test, eat five to six dried apricots, and see the results, there is 10 times more sulfite in this small amount of fruit than in a bottle of conventional wine.