Does wine contain histamines?
This is a commonly held belief that is inaccurate. Histamines are molecules released by the human body when exposed to some types of allergen which might be pollen or dust, and that includes the sulphites in wine. 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 cause the familiar redness to the skin or results in headaches and so on. Histamines are a part of your immune system but they are not in the wine. Some wines may contain small amounts of ‘amines’ but these are different from histamines. Wine does contain other trace phytonutrients such as tannins, salicylates and other compounds, and there are some adult people – statistically around 1% of the population – who have heightened levels of chemical sensitivity. If this is you, then one option is to reduce the chemical load by drinking wine that is ‘organic and preservative-free’ and seeing whether
