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Low-histamine alcohol

FoodRatingCategoryPublished diets excluding it
Gin1Mostly lowAlcohol—
Vodka1Mostly lowAlcohol—
Whisky1Mostly lowAlcohol—
Beer · disputed2ModerateAlcohol10 of 10
Cider2ModerateAlcohol—
Red Wine · disputed2ModerateAlcohol10 of 10
Sparkling Wine · disputed2ModerateAlcohol10 of 10
White Wine · disputed2ModerateAlcohol10 of 10
Wine · disputed2ModerateAlcohol10 of 10

Alcoholic drinks raise two separate questions: how much histamine is in the glass, and what the alcohol does to your body's ability to clear histamine. The second matters at least as much as the first, and it applies to every drink on this page, whatever its histamine content.

The measurements come from a University of Barcelona team's surveys of drinks sold in Spain. Wine had histamine in all 299 bottles tested, averaging 3.63 mg/L, with 95% at 12.3 mg/L or less. Split by colour in the team's 2020 review, 260 red wines averaged 3.81 mg/L (median 1.90, highest 55.00) and 83 white wines 1.24 mg/L (median 0.45, highest 13.00). Beer was lower again, averaging 1.23 mg/L across 176 beers. For scale, cured cheese in the same survey averaged 33.10 mg/kg, and the 2021 review says plainly that wine and beer carry much less histamine than other fermented foods. A 2022 review of beverages explains the gap between red and white: red wine is fermented on the grape skins and at higher temperatures, and the second, bacterial (malolactic) fermentation, in which amines can form, is short or absent in white wine production.

Then the alcohol. Alcohol and its breakdown product, acetaldehyde, compete with histamine for aldehyde dehydrogenase, an enzyme the body uses for both, so histamine builds up. The 2020 review adds that DAO deficiency, the shortfall in the gut enzyme that breaks down histamine from food, can be a temporary and reversible condition caused by substances including alcohol. All ten published low-histamine diets in the 2021 review exclude both wine and beer.

Sparkling wine, cider, vodka, gin and whisky were not measured in our sources, and a 2025 review of alcohol and migraine found that very little has been published on amines in spirits. Their pages are rated from how each drink is made and are marked "not measured". For every drink here, the alcohol effect described above applies in full.

Sources

  1. Sánchez-Pérez S, Comas-Basté O, Veciana-Nogués MT, Latorre-Moratalla ML, Vidal-Carou MC. Low-Histamine Diets: Is the Exclusion of Foods Justified by Their Histamine Content? Nutrients 13(5):1395, 2021. doi:10.3390/nu13051395
  2. Comas-Basté O, Sánchez-Pérez S, Veciana-Nogués MT, Latorre-Moratalla M, Vidal-Carou MDC. Histamine Intolerance: The Current State of the Art. Biomolecules 10(8):1181, 2020. doi:10.3390/biom10081181
  3. Visciano P, Schirone M. Update on Biogenic Amines in Fermented and Non-Fermented Beverages. Foods 11(3):353, 2022. doi:10.3390/foods11030353
  4. Zduńska A, Cegielska J, Zduński S, Domitrz I. Migraine and Alcohol—Is It Really That Harmful? Nutrients 17(22):3620, 2025. doi:10.3390/nu17223620