Is natural wine better for you?

The alcohol industry is undergoing a sea change.

Since the 1980s, the craft beer movement has gradually eroded the market hegemony once held by the likes of Budweiser and Miller. More recently, craft distillers have shouldered their way into the spirits game. Many of these craft producers found footholds by emphasizing their devotion to small-scale and artisanal modes of production, and now some of these same trends are stirring up the wine business.

While not everyone likes the term or agrees on its definition, “natural wine” is the de facto name for what could be viewed as craft wine. “It’s wine made from organic grapes that are fermented naturally with no additives or filtration,” says Bradford Taylor, a natural wine advocate, wine store owner, and organizer of Brumaire — one of the Unites States’ most popular natural wine fairs.

By “fermented naturally,” Taylor is referring to wines made using yeasts that are native to a winemaker’s vineyard or cellar — as opposed to commercial yeast strains that are selected because they bring out certain flavors or aromas in a wine. “When you let wine ferment without intervention, there’s a huge range of unpredictable things that can occur,” he explains. “These wines can taste different than what you expect wine to taste like.” Depending on a person’s wine-buying budget, natural wines can also induce some sticker shock. Affordable options are out there, but not many under $20.

Yeasts aside, producers of natural wine tend to eschew additives and processes that are commonplace in commercial winemaking. “I think the generally accepted definition of natural wine is ‘nothing added, nothing removed,’” says Bianca Bosker, author of Cork Dork, a book that explores some of the techniques used in mass-market wine production.

“I think most of us live in this collective fantasy where wine is made with grapes and yeast and love, and that’s it, and there’s a lot of reluctance in the wine industry to pierce that fantasy.”

Bosker says “nothing added” refers to the more than 60 substances winemakers are legally allowed to use. These include a kind of grape juice concentrate known as Mega Purple, which some winemakers use to pump up a wine’s color and sweetness. Bosker also mentions the use of wood chips to simulate oak barrel aging, tartaric acid to enhance acidity, and liquid tannin to provide velvety, mouth-drying texture.

This list of allowed wine additives also includes sulfites, which are chemical compounds that occur naturally in wine, albeit in small amounts. Many producers often add extra sulfites to preserve and stabilize the wine.

If a wine contains added sulfites, which are an allergen, its makers must disclose this on the wine’s label. But they’re not required to mention any of the other additives. “We don’t know what winemakers are putting in, because legally they don’t have to tell us,” Bosker says. “I think most of us live in this collective fantasy where wine is made with grapes and yeast and love, and that’s it, and there’s a lot of reluctance in the wine industry to pierce that fantasy.”

It can be startling for a wine lover to learn that their favorite drink may be manipulated with additives. But some of these same techniques — such as the use of commercial yeast — are common in craft beer brewing. And when it comes to the potential health or hangover effects of sulfites and other wine additives, the evidence is mixed or nonexistent.

“A small percentage of consumers are allergic to sulfites and will have allergic reactions from drinking wine,” says Marco Costanigro, an associate professor of economics with the Colorado State University College of Agricultural Sciences who has studied the science on sulfites and the way people view them.

He says that based on his and others’ work, sulfites don’t seem to be the culprit when people get headaches or hangovers from wine. “Whenever someone has a negative experience after drinking wine, they attribute it to sulfites, because it’s the compound listed on the label,” Costanigro says. But research has found that breathing problems and flushed skin — not headaches — are the sorts of symptoms associated with a true sulfite allergy. “Sulfites are used as preservatives in many food items — dried fruit, for example,” he says. “But did you ever hear people complaining about getting headaches from dried fruit?”

When it comes to the other additives used in conventional wine production, experts say there could be some health or hangover effects. But all those are open to debate.

Research from Brown University has linked the presence of congeners in alcohol to headaches and other symptoms. Congeners are basically any toxins in an alcoholic beverage besides the alcohol itself. Grape skins — as well as barrel aging and additives — can increase a wine’s congener content, the Brown study finds. And so it’s possible that some of the additives or processes that natural winemakers eschew could increase a conventional wine’s congener content, and therefore its headache- or hangover-inducing potential. But it’s also possible that many unoaked conventional wines may have fewer congeners than oak-aged natural wines. None of this has been studied directly, so no one knows.

On the other hand, there’s evidence that consuming foods or drinks treated with pesticides and other agricultural chemicals could have negative health effects. Glyphosate, for example, is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and there’s some preliminary research linking it to increased rates of cancer and issues related to brain and microbiome health, as well as prenatal development. Informal reports have turned up glyphosate in wine — albeit at levels that government regulators have deemed safe. But some researchers argue that more independent research is needed to confirm that the current safety limits are adequate.

“Grapes do tend to be sprayed a bit more than some other crops, so if you’re drinking wine made from organic grapes, they may have fewer [pesticide and herbicide] residues,” says Liz Weinandy, a staff dietitian at Ohio State University’s Food Innovation Center. She says there’s “a lot of controversy” when it comes to the health effects of glyphosate and other agricultural chemicals, and that the research to date offers few hard-and-fast answers. “But I think it’s prudent to get organic and additive-free products if they’re in your budget, and that includes wine,” Weinandy says.

In other words, there could turn out to be some true perks associated with a switch to natural wine. But they’re far from established.

The potential health benefits of natural wines aren’t the only reason people are drawn to them. “For me, it’s more a social and economic issue,” Taylor says. By purchasing natural wine, people can support small, independent producers who adhere to organic and sustainable farming practices, he says. “I personally believe that [natural wine] is better for me than drinking something with additives in it, but focusing on the physical health effects is kind of missing the point,” he says.

The sense of adventure and discovery that comes with drinking natural wine is another selling point. “There’s a huge range of styles in natural wine — way more than in conventional wine,” Taylor says. Exploring all of them “is part of the fun,” he adds.