Un petit poison, well chilled

The taste of summer in Provence: tomatoes and tapenade, cherries and Cavaillon melon, pastis and chilled rose.

Naturally, when I arrived home on a warm afternoon at the beginning of July, I quickly opened a cool, pink Tavel 2011 to drink while I unpacked.  Two sips later, I had a sudden headache so massive the word "stroke" bubbled up from my hypochondriac soul. I recorked the bottle, tried not to panic and went straight to bed. The headache lasted three days. 

I did not immediately attribute the headache to the wine.  I figured it was fatigue, some poisonous pollen generating an allergic reaction or just the routine migraine that strikes from time to time. But I have to admit,   that lovely, ruby-red liquid with a sketch of a Provencal Mas on the label, suddenly did not look so rosy.

After a few days it was time to pour it out.  As I dumped three-quarters of the bottle down the drain, the fumes rose from the sink and I inhaled. Once again, I was struck with a sudden, massive headache. Again, the headache lasted nearly three days.  Suddenly, that seductive bottle of wine looked malicious.  I didn't mention this to anyone, but I quietly switched to whites, reds, water and the periodic cold Coke Light for the rest of the month.

Last weekend, the August 4-5 edition of the International Herald Tribune carried a story on wine additives, the international debate over the terms "organic" and "natural" and new European Union rules on wine labels. Halfway through Eric Pfanner's fine piece, "The lack of veritas in vino," I ran across this:

"The new labeling comes with stricter rules, including a reduction in the permitted levels of sulfur dioxide, which can cause allergic reactions in asthma sufferers. (Some critics say sulfur dioxide, low levels of which are naturally present in many wines, also causes headaches, though I have yet to see conclusive evidence of this.)"

There may be an absence of randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical studies, but I gathered the only evidence I need standing over my kitchen sink.  Whatever was in that wine -- sulfur dioxide or some noxious combination of other ingredients -- made me very sick. Twice.

I'm going to choose more carefully. I'm going to read labels.  But here's the problem: unlike most foods and beverages sold in France and the United States, wine is not required to list ingredients on the label. And, as it turns out, there are a lot of potential ingredients to list. In fact, the EU permits 59 things to be added to wine.  Even wine labeled as "organic" in the States just means the grapes were farmed without using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides but it does not indicate what other mysterious additives may have been used.

On the label of my toxic rose was quite a bit of info, including a little map of Tavel, the eight grape varieties blended to make the wine, a list of the foods most suitable to the wine and a description of the wine's flavor, "raspberries and white flowers."  I'd describe it now as "slightly sulfurous with just a hint of Bhopal."

Happily, in the United States, sulfur dioxide is one of the additives that must be disclosed with the nearly ubiquitous footnote, "contains sulfites." I'm going to be quite careful about searching for "cleaner" wines. And I'll also be monitoring closely the discussions between Europe and the United States over wine labeling which are continuing this fall.   

Cheers.