For some time now the anecdotal evidence has been building and it finally reached tipping point this morning in the form of a front page Daily Mail headline: “Women who say white wine turn them into MONSTERS.” (The capitalisation is all theirs).

The women interviewed variously blame white wine (but only white wine, not any other sort of alcohol) for sending them into such a crazy rage that they smash furniture and break windows, or become belligerent, or trip up on the kerb, snapping their metatarsal in the process, and then forget where they live.

It would be easier to dismiss the quotes if I hadn’t heard many such stories myself, including, sometimes, from people I consider to be relatively sane and rational.
The contention is that white wine has special crazy-making properties. After just, “a couple of glasses,” say the white wine antis, they become as wild and uncontrollable as the maenads, the intoxicated female followers of Dionysus who would tear animals apart with their bare hands as they raved and danced through the forests.