Wine hangover: this color vino will give you the worst morning after

The dreaded wine hangover—ooh girl, we’ve all been there. 

When choosing our drink for the night, sometimes it’s not just the taste or price that we need to think about. We should also take into consideration just how much of a hangover said drink is going to give us the next day and how much H2O we're going to have to chug from our best reusable water bottle to combat the boozy effects of the previous evening.

That's why we’re thrilled to announce that we now officially know which color wine is the most hangover-inducing and morning-ruining. 

It’s an argument that’s been going around seemingly since the beginning of time. Some think red wine is the clear winner when it comes to bringing on a cracking headache the morning after, while others think white wine is way worse, thanks to all that acid nestling in your stomach 12 hours later.

But a study conducted by Professor Steve Allsop from the National Drug Research Institute in Perth has found out which kind of vino is the worst culprit once and for all.

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Which wine gives you the worst wine hangover?

Allsop explains that the intensity of your hangover is down to something called congeners. These are what determine both the color and flavor of alcoholic beverages. 

Basically, the more congeners in a drink, the worse your hangover will be. And lots of congeners equal a darker colored liquid. So yep, you guessed it, red wine is the real killer when it comes to the wine hangover.

A congener is a “toxic byproduct of the fermenting process” that hangs around in your body, and that’s why you feel like absolute death the morning after a wine-filled evening.

Of course, this isn’t the only thing that can bring on a strong headache. There are plenty of other factors that contribute, which will explain why many of us have suffered horrendous headaches the night after drinking white wine and spirits, too.

While those lighter-hued beverages are technically meant to be less damaging the next day due to lower levels of congeners, you should also be mindful of all the usual hangover culprits such as mixing too many drinks, the speed with which you drink, and also how well your body metabolizes alcohol, which varies from person to person.

Ultimately, we’d advise drinking cocktails with lighter hues or more of the white stuff, while keeping all the other factors in mind if you don’t want a banger of a headache the next morning. Or, you know, you could try not going crazy and avoid binge drinking altogether—but we’ll leave that one up to you!