Wine Has Gluten In It?
I kept hearing about wine containing gluten on all these different celiac and gluten sites and I am not going to take some random person as gospel that there is gluten in wine and neither should you. I believe everyone should have control over their health and that means educating oneself on what works and what doesn’t for THEIR body.
If I say something it’s because I have researched it and will share with you HOW I came to that conclusion rather than just expecting you to blindly follow what I say. :)
Rather than trusting any random celiac/gluten sensitive response on if wine actually contained and how it was processed - I went to the WINE experts. I found this article with a quick Google search from a credible magazine with actual wine experts who explained HOW a small amount of wheat paste (that everyone is up in arms about) is used to seal oak barrels in some smaller operations, but even when that is used, when tested for gluten content it was less than 5 to 10 parts per million. Most wineries use wax seals now as it is a simpler and more sanitary process as well as using stainless steel containers for aging.
I do this a lot. If there is something that doesn't make sense to me I ask the Google. A fun little fact, my first job out of college was working in competitive intelligence, when Google was just another search engine. The main things to look for when researching something is how credible is this person? Do they actually share details, or are they just stating facts with nothing to back them up? Who are they and is there anything else that seems off? Is it something that is verifiable in multiple sources that don't just refer back to one another? Finally, are there any actual research articles out there on this. Another fun fact, I have a bachelor of science degree, which basically means I spent a lot of my college education breaking down horribly complex research into pieces of information that made sense to me, part of that was understanding if the research was sound. Whenever you see a research article mentioned try to at least read and understand the abstract to see if the methodology was sound. A research study conducted in a petri dish can be the major point someone makes, but how does that actual translate to a human population?
Back to wine.
If you are celiac and have a bad reaction to one bottle of wine, you just might not be able to drink that kind of wine. It doesn't mean that it's cross contamination, alcohol is actually a poison to the body, and there can be high levels of other chemical constituents like Sulfates that may actually be causing the issue. So please, if you get a headache, flushing or upset tummy from wine, don't immediately attribute it to gluten, it could actually be something else. We have enough things that we are told we can't have, so don't add to the confusion out there by including something that truly should be naturally gluten free and safe.
If you are still concerned, use your own judgment, it's your body and do some research on some wine makers that use stainless steel and quality finishing agents that work for you and enjoy those.