Below are questions received from customers about wine additives. If you have other questions, please send them to info@monahanestate.com.au

What are wine allergies

As a qualified naturopath and nutritionist, I know patients who suffer from various types of food allergies including those related to wine. The most common symptoms are headaches, hay fever-like symptoms, facial flushing, asthma, heart irregularities, and lowered blood pressure. These can be largely avoided by some basic understanding of what goes into wine.

Fortunately, only a small percentage of the population are affected by these symptoms. However, there is a second group of people who react poorly to wine some of the time. For them, wine is a game of Russian roulette where often there are no problems, but some times they react quite badly.

A solution for these people is to drink more natural wines, that have been made with a minimum of suspected allergens. It is not well known, but there are nearly 60 additives that can be used in winemaking, and some wines contain much more than others.

To draw an analogy, you can buy bread made from flour, water, and yeast; or you can buy bread that contains many ingredients and additives including preservatives and food chemicals. It’s your choice as a consumer to determine what is best for your health. At Monahan we make natural wines using traditional wine-making techniques to achieve maximum purity, and this same process enables us to make low allergy wines.

What are low-allergy wines?

Wine is a complex beverage that contains many different compounds. The problem is that these compounds are aggravating to some people. This can be due to a single compound, but more often it is due to the ‘total load’ of compounds that raises a person’s tolerance above their threshold limit.

At Monahan Wines, we make low allergy wines that contain less of the substances that cause allergies. The more common allergens found in wine tare grape tannins, oak tannins, sulphites, potassium sorbate, ethanol alcohol, salicylates and amines.

One of my areas of research in complementary medicine was food chemicals, and how they affect metabolic function. Everyone is affected by chemicals to some extent, but they respond differently.

In some ways, the people that are ‘highly sensitive’ are the lucky ones, because they avoid the things that cause problems. There are other people ‘as tough as nails’ that do not get reactions to food chemicals, so their body does not signal them to stop. I had a good friend who I enjoyed having many dinners with, some years back.  He could drink 2 bottles of wine with dinner with no ill effects, whereas I had to limit myself to a ½ bottle. My friend had a much stronger constitution. He was also a heavy smoker. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack with diabetic complications in his fifties which was very sad.

I believe that if he had been born with a more delicate constitution, that he might have lived longer. So people who suffer allergies to foods and other things should understand that their body is saying ‘enough is enough’.

Wine contains thousands of compounds. Many are healthy molecules such as resveratrol and flavonoids which are strong anti-oxidants, and some cause allergic reactions.

Can ‘allergy sensitive’ people safely drink Monahan wine?

Not always. Some people are so sensitive that they should not drink any wine, and that includes the Monahan ‘Low Preservative’ range. Whilst we have been able to formulate wines that more people can drink and which are very well tolerated, there will still be some people who will suffer allergies with any wine.
 

Why don’t other wine-makers produce low-allergy wines?

The costs, risks and effort involved in making low allergy wines are difficult to justify for the majority of wine-makers. Most wine consumers are not affected by wine, so there is no reason to employ a difficult wine making process for which few will benefit.

Making low preservative wine requires us at Monahan to ‘sail close to the wind’ during the fermentation process. One small oversight by our winemaker, or some equipment or electrical failure, can risk the entire batch. Fortunately, because we make only 200 to 300 cases of each batch, the risk is manageable.

Making low allergy wines is comparable to sky-diving. The real risk occurs from the time you jump out of the plane until the moment your feet touch the ground. This can be compared to our real risk which occurs from the time we pick the grapes through to the time we bottle. When the sky divers feet touch the ground, that is the equivalent to us getting our wine into the bottle. It means we have landed safely.

Are sulphites (Preservative #220) necessary for winemaking?

Sulphites are the most widely used and controversial additive in winemaking. They are excellent in their ability to inhibit unwanted yeasts and bacteria, and protect wine from oxidation and degradation.

Sulphites are added at several points in the wine-making process, and it begins by a sprinkling of sulphites on freshly harvested grapes to stop any deterioration of those grapes before it gets to the winemaking facility. Thereafter sulphites are used whenever the wine is transferred from one storage container to another, and finally more sulphites at the time of bottling.

All wines contain sulphites in some form, because small amounts are found naturally in wine up to 20ppm as a natural by-product of the fermentation.  These sulphites are always bound, meaning they are married to other molecules and therefore not reactive, so they do not cause any allergy problems.

Sulphites can cause potentially severe allergic reactions and have been linked with numerous health problems, including asthma. Sulphites are dangerous for asthmatics even at very low levels. Fortunately, only a portion of the sulphites in wine are a problem. This gets us to a discussion about free and bound sulphites. The ‘free’ sulphites are highly reactive and will bind with anything in its path, either in the wine, or in your body. The ‘bound’ sulphites have married themselves to other molecules in the wine and are not very reactive.

Do you make Preservative Free wine?

We looked at producing Preservative Free wine, but there were some shortcomings that consumers should understand. Problem # 1 is that Preservative free wine (also known as No Preservative wine) can be unstable and have a short shelf life.  And with no sulphites to protect the wine from oxidation, these wines need to be higher in alcohol (alcohol is a great preservative) and higher in tannins which are also a preservative. So effectively we are swapping one type of preservative allergen for another. As a Clinical Nutritionist, I was trained to find a healthy balance.  So the Monahan ‘Low Preservative’ wines with a very low 10-15 ppm of free sulphites, also low in tannins, and low-moderate alcohol levels, is a more balanced wine, than a Preservative Free wine with high alcohol, high tannins, and high polyphenols.

There is a another way to make Preservative Free wine that some vineyards have used.  This involves pasteurising the grape juice (i.e. heating the grape juice) to sterilise the wine. However, this is a bad idea, because wine is a living food, and part of its therapeutic value is that it’s a living food. If you sterilise wine then its no longer wine.

At Monahan, our overall aim is to retain the living qualities of the wine, yet reducing the allergen load across the board to meet the needs of the broadest range of wine consumers.

What are total, bound and free sulphites?

Sulphites are added at varying stages of the winemaking process to protect the wine. They are usually added whenever the wine is transferred from one storage container to another, and thereby exposed to air or possible contaminants.  These are called total sulphites.

The total sulphites can be sub-divided into two groups, which are bound and free sulphites. The bound sulphites are those sulphites that have combined with other compounds in the wine via a chemical reaction and these become inactive (inert). Bound sulphites are very stable, and rarely a problem for people suffering allergies.

Free sulphites on the other hand are highly volatile molecules and very reactive, and this attribute enables them to act as a preservative and disinfectant to protect the wine. These same ‘reactive’ properties make them highly problematic to sensitive people who suffer allergies. However, we need free sulphites, otherwise the life of the wine would be short, possibly just a few months.

The easiest way to understand the difference between these two forms of sulphites is with an example.

Our Chardonnay 2008 wine finished fermentation with 54ppm of total sulphites, consisting of 48ppm bound and 6ppm free.  The difficulty in making low preservative wines, is that 6ppm free  is insufficient to safely transfer the wine from the bulk storage containers to the bottling facility and into the bottle.  So we added a further 18ppm of total sulphites. The final result for this newly bottled Chardonnay, was 72ppm of total sulphites, of which 13ppm is free.

You would only aim for these minimum levels to produce low allergy wines, otherwise it is difficult to justify the risks. These very low levels of free sulphites prior to bottling, does not allow any room for human error, production delays, equipment failure, or electrical failure. The good news is that once the wine is in the bottle, the wine is absolutely safe and will keep as long as any other wine.  Hence why we like to use the analogy of the skydiver, where the risk is from the time they jump out of the plane until the time their feet tough the ground. The skydivers’ feet safely touching the ground is analogous to us bottling the wine.

What is important here is that total sulphites are not the primary issue for people suffering allergies.  The primary issue is free sulphites, as they cause the reactions such as facial flushing, asthma etc. 

It would be wonderful if we could display the sulphite levels on our wine bottles, but this is not possible. That’s because we don’t know the sulphites levels until bottling, and the labels are printed weeks before bottling. That’s why we publish the free sulphites on this website.

For example in the “Our Wines” section of this website, the Chardonnay 2008 shows the following information to assist you: Free sulphites: 13ppm   Total sulphites: 72ppm

Are Monahan wines lower in alcohol?

We aim for a sensible level of alcohol of 12% or less. As a naturopath, let me explain the issues.  The main metabolic pathway for the breakdown of alcohol is the liver. The liver is also responsible for detoxifying the majority of chemicals that besiege the body, including medications and food chemicals, and it has a major role in many of the complex processes that determine your well-being.

The liver is programmed to break down alcohol in preference to other toxic substances, in other words, it gives alcohol preferred treatment, and any other compounds needing detoxification are largely delayed. This is a problem, because it means that other toxic substances can stay in your body much longer when alcohol is present, and these toxic substances can damage cells if it happens too often.

So, the amount of alcohol in the wine is important. Monahan wines are similar to the Europeans styles with low to moderate levels of alcohol. Some of our Semillon wines are only 10.5% alcohol.  In addition to being more liver friendly, they also have fewer calories. Our wines average around 12% which we believe is the right level, but at the end of the day we get a variation of 10% up or down.

Why does the alcohol content in different wines vary so much?

When we pick grapes we know that if they contain 12% sugar then the wine produced will have around 12% alcohol. But picking grapes at an exact level of sugar is not easy. For example, the sugar in the grapes on the vines may be 12% one day, and after rainfall these grapes can ‘plump up’ with water and the sugar level in the grape can reduce to below 11%. Picking grapes requires considerable resources and it’s not something you can do immediately.  In a perfect world, we believe the alcohol level in wine should average 12%.

I am told that the histamines in wine affect me?

It is a commonly held belief that wine contains histamines which cause allergies. This is not an entirely accurate statement. Histamines are molecules released by the human body when exposed to some types of allergens which might be pollen, dust, or sulphites. When the human body reacts to an allergen like sulphites, the immune system triggers a cascade of events, and one of those is the release of histamines by the cells and tissues, which causes the familiar redness to the skin or headaches. Histamines are a part of your immune system. Some wines may contain small amounts of ‘amines’ but these are different from histamines. 

Wine does contain other phytochemicals such as salicylates, and there are some people who may have heightened sensitivity to this compound. It should be emphasised that there is a very small percentage of the population who suffer from life-threatening reactions to certain foods and chemicals, and we are well aware of the dangers of peanuts to some people. Anyone suffering from these sorts of severe reactions should avoid wine altogether.

Can I drink alcohol whilst taking medications?

I am always concerned about people mixing alcohol with medications. You should always consult with your primary healthcare provider about whether you can drink with medications.

One particular concern is the over-the-counter drug paracetamol (called acetaminophen in USA) . Most people are not aware that the #1 cause of liver failure in Australia is due to paracetamol poisoning. This ’gentle to the stomach’ pain medication is deadly to the liver if taken in excess of the recommend dosage. In fact, there is no other drug that has such a narrow margin between a safe dose and the toxic dose. If taken exactly as prescribed, paracetamol has a good safety record. But if taken beyond those guidelines, then liver damage occurs.

Paracetamol affects the detoxification pathways used by the human body to breakdown alcohol, and therefore anyone concurrently drinking alcohol and taking paracetamol will be over-dosing on paracetamol.  This can cause serious damage and ultimately liver failure. If painkillers are required then I would recommend the herbal painkillers. In short, if you are taking paracetamol, do not drink.

Is your wine suitable for vegetarians?

Our wine is clarified with egg albumin which is a protein derived from eggs, or we use casein which is a protein derived from milk. These are used in small amounts as clarifying agents to remove yeasts and other solids suspended in the fermented wine, that would give the wine a cloudy appearance if it is not removed. We fine filter the wine down to 0.45um or less, and this is called sterile filtering which removes any bacteria and yeasts.  There is unlikely to be any detectable egg albumin or casein remaining in the wine after filtration of 0.45um.

What additives are allowed in wine?

Food Standards Australia allows a range of additives and processing aids for wine. Many are safe to use, whilst others are known allergens. Whenever wine is made using simple and traditional techniques, the use of additives can be kept to a minimum which we believe is how it should be. Unfortunately, there is no way the consumer can determine whether a wine is very pure, or loaded with additives.

This is a laudable position because wine is perceived by consumers as a natural product, and this is part of its appeal. There is also the question of integrity, if we are to believe that wine is special and not the same as man-made beverages like soft drinks. At Monahan we believe a sensible approach to winemaking is to only add something - if not adding it - will compromise the wine quality, and then only add as little as possible.

And this raises the question, should wine be judged purely on taste? Some people argue that this is the case, and if so, then there are no real reasons to prohibit additives to achieve this taste perception.

The big question is, where do you ‘draw the line’ on additives. Monahan’s view is that when these additives are used to cover up off-flavours and off-odours from poor grape quality, or used to change the taste or characteristics of the wine, then winemaking becomes more like soft drink manufacturing, and the living elements of the wine are foregone.

OK, enough on that. Let’s look at the list of additives and processing aids that are permissible to make wine:

• Agar
• Alginates, calcium and potassium salts
• Ammonium phosphates
• Argon
• Ascorbic acid
• Bentonite
• Calcium carbonate
• Calcium tartrate
• Carbon dioxide
• Carbon dioxide
• Cellulose
• Citric acid
• Collagen
• Copper sulphate
• Cultures of micro-organisms
• Cupric citrate
• Diatomaceous earth
• Dimethyl dicarbonate
• Dimethylpolysiloxane
• Egg white
• Enzymes
• Erythorbic acid
• Gelatine
• Grape juice including concentrated grape juice
• Grape skin extract
• Gum Arabic
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Ion exchange resins
• Isinglass
• Lactic acid
• Lysozyme
• Malic acid
• Metatartaric acid
• Milk and milk products
• Mistelle
• Nitrogen
• Oak
• Oxygen
• Perlite
• Phytates
• Plant proteins perm
• Polyvinyl polypyrrolidone
• Potassium carbonate
• Potassium ferrocyanide
• Potassium hydrogen carbonate
• Potassium hydrogen tartrate
• Potassium sorbate
• Potassium sulphites
• Silicon dioxide
• Sorbic acid
• Sulphur dioxide
• Tannins
• Tartaric acid
• Thiamin chloride
• Thiamin hydrochloride
• Yeast mannoproteins