An interesting article by wine writer Max Allen in this month’s Gourmet Traveller magazine where he subjects himself to an informal experiment regarding the effects of drinking 19 standard drinks worth of expensive wines and cheap wines on him the morning after. The two nights were a week apart, and Max had the same meal with both sets of wines.

The expensive wines included bottles over $100AUD each with Dom Perignon, Petaluma Tiers, Penfolds 707, Single Malt Whisky and so forth, with the cheap wines mostly around $5AUD a bottle including Orlando Carrington Sparkling and Riverina Chardonnay from a two litre cask.

He reported that the morning after the expensive wines that he felt eager to get out of bed, with just a distant headache, slight nausea and not much else. Yet the day after the cheap wine he”felt like a vengeful gremlin had spent the night jamming beer-sodden drink coasters into the gap between my eyeballs and their sockets” experienced heart palpitations, a migraine and was struggling to get out of bed.

Personally, I find that I do tend to not have to write off the next day if I spend the previous night drinking wines or spirits of a “higher quality” but I’m interested to see if others have the same experience.

Have you found similar results even when the gap is not so wide, say $25 wines versus drinking $10 wines, does it take a bigger gap, or does it not seem to matter at all for you?

Posted under Wine Events