To maintain your security you have have been logged out from Waitrose Cellar due to no activity. Order by phone 0800 188881 Save up to 25% on our most stylish Sauvignon Blancs > Your selected range: 22 bottlesWhy do I feel like I already have a hangover the same night that I've been drinking? All I had was two glasses of red wine. It wasn't the first time I'd been stricken with a red wine headache; I tend to identify as a red drinker, but as a red drinker, headaches are a frustratingly common occurrence. Why do some people sometimes get headaches from drinking red wine?"People come into the store citing red wine headaches all the time," Mike Johnson of Bottlerocket, a wine shop in New York City's Flatiron District, told me over the phone. "And typically, we believe that these headaches are a result of the drinker's sensitivity to sulfites." Brian Larky, a winemaker and the founder of Dalla Terra, said the same.Sulfites are sulfuric compounds that occur naturally in wine, Mike told me--and they're also added to help preserve the wine.

Some natural, biodynamic, or organic winemakers will add as little additional sulfites as possible (hence their "natural" labels), but "sulfites are necessary to stabilize the wine," Mike said. wine and beer shop nearby meThey stop the wine from refermenting once it's been bottled. buy wine worldwide shipping(The legal sulfite addition is 350 parts per million, or ppm; most wines have about 120 ppm, and low-sulfite wines have between 0 and 20 ppm. best red wine for 10 dollarsAnd sulfites can naturally occur up to 40 ppm!)best white organic wineStill, wine writer Alice Feiring says that if you get red wine headaches consistently, you should try a natural or biodynamic wine that has lower amounts of sulfites added, or at least uses only "molecular, elemental sulphur" rather than commercial, petrochemical sulphur. buy buena vista wine

Alice maintains that there's a big difference between the two, and that she "immediately feels a pressure behind [her] eyes" when drinking conventional, rather than natural, low- or no-sulphur wines.best wine shipping ratesI was still stumped by a few things: White wines actually have higher levels of naturally occuring sulfites than red wines--as do dried apricots. local beer and wine store(Beer and cider also contain added sulfites.) best wine for winter in indiaSo why don't people experience white wine headaches? glass of wine compared to shot"I think it has to do with the perception of the strength of things," said Mike. "People often talk about red wine as being stronger than white wine."

But Meg McNeill of Dandelion Wine in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, said she thinks sulfites get blamed too often for our red wine headaches. "I'm not a doctor, but I believe that [the cause is] the histamines in the skins of the grapes," she told me. Because red wines spend more time in contact with the skins--that's how red wine gets its color--they have higher levels of histamines than white wines, and are therefore much more likely to give you a headache than whites or rosés, especially if you're sensitive to histamines.Meg wasn't sure if certain reds are more prone to cause headaches than others, but she posits that, in the vein of histamine contact, wines made with thicker-skinned grapes would be more likely to give you a headache than wines made with thinner-skinned grapes.Additionally, "Thicker skinned grapes have to ripen on the vine for a longer amount of time," said Laura Mooney, a wine and spirits consultant for Astor Wines & Spirits in New York City, "which makes for more sugar in the grape--which also usually makes for a higher alcohol content."

Of course, a hangover is more significant than the red wine headache (which you get while you're drinking), but as Laura said, "If you have two glasses of zinfandel--at 14 or 15% ABV per glass, that's heavy-duty stuff."If you know red wine often gives you a headache, consider steering clear of wines made from thick-skinned grapes (like Zinfandel, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon) and choose a wine made from a thin-skinned grape (like Pinot Noir, Sémillon, and Merlot) instead. Or go for my favorite red, the Malbec: Even though Malbec grapes produce a very dark red wine, their skins are thin--and they don't give me a headache. While the definitive cause is inconclusive, you can take a few steps to avoid the dreaded red wine headache: Look for low-or-no-sulfite wines, especially biodynamic ones; and lean towards wine made from thinner-skinned grapes. But perhaps most effectively, as the wine director at Eli's Table, Randall Restiano, told me, the most effective thing you can do is to make sure you eat plenty and drink lots of water before moving on to wine.

Salmon Lovers Beware: 4 Ways to Avoid Getting Duped by Mislabeling19 Clever Ways to Eat Healthy on a Tight BudgetHealth Threat of Sugar Is Vastly Underestimated, Study Claims7 Nutrient Deficiencies That Are Incredibly CommonIs Cheese the New Crack? Study Finds Pizza as Addictive as Some DrugsDid Your Tuna Sandwich Kill a Sea Turtle?Keep up to date with the latest food news and sustainable, healthy eating tips; sign up to receive AlterNet's weekly food newsletter.Stay Connected With Dr. Weil - Get Free Newsletters Right In Your InboxWhen's the last time you rolled up to a dinner party with a tray of hummus and a box of wine? The answer is probably never. (Well, except for maybe the hummus. Can we talk about why you're still buying that?) But that's all about to change. "The perception that wine is bad because it comes in a box just isn't true anymore," says Meg McNeill, the wine buyer at Brooklyn's Dandelion Wine. Meg and her staff have been excited about boxed wines for years, and have grown the store's roster of boxed vino to over a dozen selections.

Because once McNeill sells a customer on boxed wine, the customer gets hooked. Here's what she tells them.Prices vary, of course, but most boxes retail in the $30 range for 3L of wine—the equivalent of 4 regular-sized bottles. How can non-swill wine be available for prices like that? "The combined savings that we’re getting on shipping and the producers are getting for not having to package things in bottles are being passed onto you," explains McNeill. We've all opened a bottle of wine for a quick glass, only to come back to the bottle a week later and find it ruined. That will never happen with the boxed stuff. "Wine's biggest enemies are light and air," says McNeill. " Both of those things are negated by the box—no cork, no light pollution." So go ahead and crack open that box even when you just want one glass—the wine will last for about a month.All of those shipping and packaging savings you're getting also reduce carbon emissions. "Take a case of bottled wine that gets shipped to us," says McNeill.

"Not only is everything made of glass, but there’s the cardboard box the wine comes in, and all of the paper dividers and filler material to keep the glass from breaking." All that packaging adds up to heavy loads for trucks to carry, which is why bottles have twice as big a carbon footprint as boxes. By now you've no doubt realized that boxed wine has moved beyond the mass-produced Franzia in your grandmother's refrigerator. So, who, exactly, is making all of this cheap, delicious wine? The same producers that make wine in bottles. In fact, "in some cases, the exact same wines are available in bottles," says McNeill. This means you can even find trendy organic and natural wines in boxes. And things are only getting better—the uptick in popularity has caused many wine distributors to approach new wine makers to request that they start putting wines in boxes. McNeill loves these boxed options, all of which are available at Dandelion Wine's Greenpoint Brooklyn shop. Fuenteseca Tempranillo 2013 - $25 "It’s a little spicy, a fuller bodied wine.