Wine and Menopause
A candid story about losing (and regaining) my senses.
Drink deeply pilgrim,
But don't forget there's still a woman
Beneath this
Resplendent chemise.
-Leonard Cohen, Light as the Breeze
At 53 I have been dancing around menopause - or as I lovingly call it mentalpause - for three-plus years now. Last summer, with nine months of no menses in a row, I was close to officially being on the other side. Then suddenly, on a wine-soaked trip to Sicily, my body perked back up and re-set the countdown.
Thanks Leonard, had I known, I would have packed Tampax.
The Nose Doesn’t Know
I thought I had been moving through this, what shall we call it, “period”? Okay fine, “change of life” fairly well. No hot flashes, no night sweats, just good old fashioned insomnia and joint pain.
I had begun to notice, however, round about the summer of 2022, that wines were smelling and tasting fainter to me. At times I could get almost nothing from the glass. I would double down on the best practices for sensing wine: swirl the glass, bring it gently to just beneath your nose, close your eyes, breathe in naturally, allowing the aromas to lift towards you, take a sip, and open yourself to all the sense-data that flows in. Smells, tastes, sensations in the mouth, let it all come to you.
The acids were still present, the sugars, the tannins were there. These are all things we sense with our taste buds, they do not involve our sense of smell. But where were the aromas? And the tastes we think of as tastes but are actually aromas? (The roses, the spices, the fruit). Not much there. Gone AWOL.
I am a trained taster, I’ve spent years making wine. The science tells us that the more you exercise your sense of smell the better at smelling you are. I should be at my peak, yet my skills had taken a nosedive. (Last pun I promise).
The Red Herring
Because it was 2022 and Covid-19 was still very much happening, I assumed my inability to smell must be a symptom of a Covid infection. Slightly strange, because I had been triple vaccinated by then (yay science!) and had not experienced any other symptoms or tested positive for the virus. I was one of the fortunate few who had never, at least knowingly, contracted Covid. But here I was with a compromised nose. Not good for anyone, really not good when you’re a winemaker.
This went on for months. A low-grade panic began to set in. What if my sense of smell was never coming back? What would that mean for my work? Let alone my pleasure? In winemaking the two are intertwined. To be a winemaker is to be always in love with the promise of what the next harvest, the next bottle might bring. This is no nine to five assignation. We live and breathe wine. And now my glass was dull.
The strange thing was that every so often my sense of smell would improve a bit. I would think I was on the mend, and then it would wane again, and my worries would return.
Until one day, about eight months ago, my wine tasting abilities came back in full.
Estrogen, J’accuse!
By now you have guessed where this is going. I’m appalled that I did not see it sooner, but then I was too close to the problem.
Most anyone who has been pregnant will tell you that pregnancy is a time of heightened smells. This is caused by surging levels of estrogen.1 Estrogen is strongly linked to our ability to smell. On more than one occasion while pregnant I would step fresh out of the shower and within minutes become bothered by the smells emanating from my armpits. Yes, body odor. Yes, I had lathered up. And rinsed. It was just that my nose was on overdrive. Was this what it’s like for my dog all the time?
Postpartum, estrogen crashes down, and with it drops our ability to smell. When this happened to me I wasn’t busy sticking my nose in glasses of wine, I was staring lovingly at my child. Breast feeding continues to suppress estrogen, and also means abstaining from alcohol. If my sense of smell was compromised, I hardly noticed.
During a woman’s typical menstrual cycle, her estrogen waxes and wanes, and with that her ability to smell comes and goes, by just a bit. I of course have been aware of this throughout my life, but the deficit was never too great. Nothing compared to the steep dip in estrogen that perimenopause brings.
The penny did not drop until I was sitting next to the most wonderful of sensory scientists, Dr. Hildegarde Heymann, at a lunch following a series of wine-related lectures by her and her fellow UC Davis professors in Napa Valley last month. As I prepared to ask her about our sense of smell during pregnancy it smacked me in the face.
Why had it not occurred to me sooner that here lay the reason for my impaired tasting abilities in my early fifties? My estrogen had tanked.
And why had I not made the connection that it was the 0.375mg of daily estradiol I have been taking for the last two years, as part of my prescribed hormone replacement therapy (HRT), that had returned my sense of smell?2
Professor Heymann confirmed for me what I suddenly realized to be true, perimenopuase was most likely to blame for my loss of smell, and HRT most likely responsible for its return.
Don’t let this natural dip in estrogen throw you for a loop. Be aware, take it as it comes, love yourself, and if you are considering HRT, here is one more reason to possibly give it a try. (Obviously this is not medical advice, the role of hormones throughout a woman’s life is complex, varied, and individual. Consult your doctor, etc. etc.)
Postscript on Wine, Sleep and Menopause
Because it would be criminal not to address this:
You don’t need me to tell you that alcohol of any sort is a sleep disruptor and that during perimenopause and menopause the vast majority of women struggle with getting good sleep. Does this mean abstaining from wine during this time, possibly for the rest of one’s life? Perhaps.
Before you give up wine do this:
-Keep regular sleep/wake hours
-Get plenty of sunlight and exercise (in the morning if possible)
-Don’t start important conversations with loved ones right before bed
-Keep a sleep journal
-Sleep in a cool, dark, quiet room
-Limit your wine intake to one glass at supper, at least two hours before bed
-Avoid all other alcohol - it’s just empty calories if it’s not wine
-Give hormone replacement therapy a try.
A Haiku to Progesterone:
Because it really helps me sleep.
Creamy egg shaped pill
So suggestively fertile,
You crack me right up.
As always, thank you for reading and comments most welcome!
There are three main forms of estrogen: estradiol, estriol, and estrone. Getting into the weeds on this is beyond the scope of this article, so I am keeping it simple by using the blanket term “estrogen”.
I did not make the connection immediately because my sensory abilities did not come back right after starting HRT, it was not like a light switching back on. It took a while to normalize.