First, let me ask…..after drinking too much wine, have you ever paid toilet tag the morning after?  There may be a good reason….but first……

I admit it….I am a wine snob!  Red wines for red meat and white for white……there is NO white Zin grape…it is a red grape without the skin…..and wines are NOT flavored with peach or raspberry…..

Years ago I attended a wine tasting affair….first of all, in Mississippi, the participants could not grasp the idea of not swallowing the sample….there were some lovely full bodied wines and a couple of the whites were somewhat good….but then I came to the Australian wine expo….I was given a sample of an Australian red….if my brain still works…it was from the Yellow Tail label……I went through the ritual of color, smell (body or nose) and taste……and I was not a popular sampler…..my rating was color was good, nose was that of a wet sheep dog and it had the flavor of dirty dish water……I think I pissed off the Aussies!  Oh well…..they got over it!

I tell my little tale because I saw something recently that made me laugh and after that I realized I finally had my answer of why Australian wines sucked…….

Those with delicate bowels may want to steer clear of wine from the Land Down Under. Winemakers there are now allowed to add sodium carboxymethyl cellulose to wine—a chemical lauded for its laxative powers. But in small quantities it can thicken liquids, and when it comes to wine, adding the chemical can eliminate crystallization and cloudiness from whites, reports California Watch. Dealing with the former is an expensive problem, explains the country’s winemakers, usually achieved using energy-draining methods like cooling and filtration.

Finally!  I have an explanation of why my body had a tremendous reaction when I got back to the house…..