The CURE for the WINE HANGOVER BLUES?

NO ONE LIKES A HANGOVER – they’re awful. But even the savviest and most cautious of wine enthusiasts can succumb to overindulgence with the result being the dreaded wine hangover. Headaches after drinking wine are usually caused by sulphites – sulphur dioxide added to the bottle to kill off unwanted microbes and yeasts and limit oxidation. Now a new machine by L’Ormarins Winery, near Stellenbosch in the South African Western Cape wine country, is working towards greatly reducing the volume of sulphites by using ultraviolet rays. Called Surepure, the technology is being tested by various South African wine estates including Steenberg, Alluvia Stellar Organics, Clarius, Bouchard Finlayson, and L’Ormarins, as well as winemakers in California, Chile, New Zealand, and Australia. Roughly the size of two refrigerators, the new machine has wine piped in and out through two pipes while the passing liquid is exposed to UV-ray lamps. This way, Surepure can process 4OOO liters in an hour and the process can be repeated as many times as the winemaker wants.