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In his posting of May 10th VANCE quoted several replies on his inquery
about booze, wine, vodka etc., and states: "These are not my opinions, they
come from others and some of them appear to know what they are thinking
about..." !!!
One of the quotes is: "California wines are OK, because the alcohol is not
grain based. European wines are not safe as they are grain based...."
Vance's spokesman is right!. California wines are made from oranges of
course and  are thus safe by default, and European wines are made from
wheat, rye and barley, and no grapes at all! Hear Hear!
Quite lucky  to have a collection of  European Community Directives about
winemaking at hand. Big surprise: no wheat at all in European wines, just
grapes, (though single grapes are sometimes called "grains" in French). It
is even not allowed to add alcohol distilled from mashed grains to wines
with an elevated alcohol level like sherry and portwine! So even when you'r
on the "halal/haram" side of celiac you can drink European wine without any
danger to your health.
The statement about sulfite is also absolutely incorrect. White wines  in
general have more sulfites than red wines. Big surprise: the more expensive
white wines like Sauternes, Cadillac (not a car), Loupiac, Montbazillac
quite often have much higher sulfite levels than cheaper (non-sweet) ones
with other "appellations".
It is more probable that histamine and other biogenic amines are
responsible for the "gluten like" symptoms (they are certainly responsible
for headaches). Red wines do contain more of these amines then white ones
because they undergo quite often in the end a  so called "malolactic"
fermentation, i.e. the malic acid is converted to lactic acid to get a more
"round" taste. This is best performed by inoculating the wine with a pure
culture of  bacteria e.g. Leuconostoc oenos, which is, as I have been told
frequently practiced in California. Though it is not formally forbidden in
Europe to inoculate with L.o. it is less often done there. Due to other
(naturally occurring) wild type bacteria there is then an increased risk of
formation of these biogenic amines. This might be the putative reason why
some Californian wines are better tolerated than European ones.

Frederik Willem Janssen. Zutphen. The Netherlands.  [log in to unmask]