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I posted earlier this week about nonalcoholic wines. I had been getting
headaches from some of them and wondered about their gluten status.

I heard from several listmembers who said they either got sick or felt
unwell drinking NA wines, as did some of their non-celiac friends and
relatives. I didn't hear from anyone who knew about making these wines,
HOWEVER!...I learned a lot about wines, generally, having been given some
tips from 2 listmembers and then doing some research on the Net.

One listmember said she had read that inferior grapes are used in the
making of NA wines (saving the "good" ones for regular wine) and that they
might cause a problem. Another person suggested a problem with the
naturally occurring histamines in wine. She said she has a problem even
eating red grapes.

White wines have few histamines, red wines have a lot...the "heavier" the
wine, the more histamines, as the skins stay in the wine longer. It was
the red NA wine that gave me the most insistent headache, then the pink.
The white doesn't seem to.

I never got headaches drinking "real" red wine, and rarely consumed any
"real" white, always choosing red. However, I wonder if there is something
in the alcohol that masked the effect of the histamines, something that
isn't happening in the NA wine?

Sulfites are another problem. From what I've read, however, there are MORE
sulfites in white wine than in red, and MUCH more in items like tuna and
shrimp...so if you can eat those and not keel over, you're not allergic to
sulfites!

The final interesting tidbit I learned in my research is that the French
get headaches from white wine and Americans get them from red!

Anne Washburn
North Carolina