What spawned the idea for this article was a dinner date with a girlfriend of mine at a must-go-to location in NYC, The Corner Store. I arrived early to secure a seat at the bar, and my natural curiosity for the cocktail menu had me down two martinis before she arrived. Naturally, every time I see a new cocktail menu I am inclined to want to try everything—in the name of R&D, of course!
Three hours later, I had consumed about four cocktails and a beer. However, when I woke up in the morning, there was not an iota of a hangover. Why? Because The Corner Store makes clean, low-sugar cocktails with additive-free alcohol. I am 5’2″, 110 lbs, and I assure you I would definitely have had a wicked hangover had I been drinking at just any corner bar, ordering the same cocktails—even with the most expensive “top-shelf” base alcohols.
So I got to thinking: maybe, just maybe, hangovers don’t just come from ethanol, but from the hidden ingredients in the bottle. And I got to work.
There Are No Safe Assumptions
Most people assume a bottle of alcohol contains little more than spirit, water, and perhaps botanicals. In truth, modern production depends on a quiet architecture of additives: stabilizers, preservatives, sweeteners, and colorants designed for efficiency and shelf life. It is a system shaped less by craftsmanship than by chemistry—and one that most consumers will never see. Unless you decide to kick off your own alcohol brand, you’ll likely never wonder: What am I really drinking?
What’s happened instead is that consumers’ bodies began telling them that alcohol is bad. They’ve shifted to CBD-based cocktails, micro-dosing mushrooms, or abstaining altogether. It’s no secret that the decline in alcohol consumption could easily be linked to the lack of transparency and additive-free alternatives. The alcohol industry took for granted that people will always drink due to the addictive nature of booze. But what we see, ultimately, is that the body never lies—and behavior adjusts accordingly, eventually.
Bye-Bye Booze
The global decline in alcohol consumption is often credited to wellness trends or changing social norms, CBD lobbyists creating smear campaigns about the damaging effects of alcohol, and the rise of non-alcohol brands. But a subtler story sits beneath the data. According to the International Wines & Spirits Record, sales of low- and no-alcohol drinks grew more than thirty percent in 2023, while traditional spirits flattened. What is eroding loyalty may not be the desire to drink, but rather the consumer’s desire for transparency—especially when considering the next generation’s fondness for controversy.
Once they become of drinking age and begin to ask what is really inside a bottle of “standard practice” booze, any growth in the alcohol industry feels less reassuring.
Now let’s take some time and really understand some of the most common ingredients found in conventional alcohol brands—and come to our own conclusion. Is it possible to deduce that your hangover is just about the booze?
No Beets About It — Beet Sugar
Beet sugar illustrates this exact point. It sounds pastoral, like something you can grab at Erewhon and throw into your coffee for a rose tint. However, what’s important to note is that ninety percent of U.S. sugar beets are genetically modified and treated with glyphosate, an herbicide linked by the World Health Organization to environmental degradation and possible carcinogenicity.
The refining process of beets to sugar uses lime and carbon dioxide to strip the plant of every mineral until only pure sucrose remains. Combine this with alcohol, and refined sugars accelerate blood-glucose swings and liver stress—an invisible contribution to next-morning fatigue that has little to do with quantity consumed.
Sugar, But Not Really Sugar
Another commonly used ingredient in alcohol products is inverted sugar. Inverted sugar, a syrup formed by splitting sucrose into glucose and fructose, produces a smoother mouthfeel and blends easily in cocktails. However, it is also metabolically demanding.
Fructose converts directly to triglycerides in the liver, and when consumed with ethanol, doubles the organ’s workload. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that pairing alcohol with fructose led to twice the fat accumulation in hepatic tissue compared with ethanol alone. These sweeteners are economical for producers but physiologically expensive for drinkers—so you can imagine, as consumers gain insight, why choosing alcohol brands that use real sugar instead of these cheaper alternatives will contribute to a massive shift away from conventional alcohol brands.
Smooth Criminals
Texture enhancers such as glycerin and propylene glycol serve a different purpose. They lend viscosity and “roundness,” masking rough edges in lower-cost spirits. Both compounds are generally recognized as safe, yet they are derived largely from petroleum and function by drawing water molecules toward them—one reason spirits containing them may feel smoother going down but leave the body more dehydrated. The American Diabetes Association notes that chronic exposure to propylene glycol can interfere with mitochondrial energy metabolism, contributing to the post-drinking exhaustion that many assume is merely part of aging.
Preservatives Not Preservative
Preservatives occupy another quiet corner of the industry. Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, and sulfur dioxide are routinely added to prevent spoilage and oxidation. In acidic mixers or citrus-based cocktails, benzoate can form traces of benzene, a compound associated with increased cancer risk. Sulfites, essential for long shelf life in wine, can provoke headaches and respiratory irritation in sensitive individuals. These ingredients are approved within defined limits, but they were never evaluated in combination with ethanol.
The World Health Organization has noted that concurrent exposure to multiple oxidative agents may intensify inflammation—a likely explanation for why similar amounts of alcohol can leave people feeling vastly different depending on what they drank.
Color or Carcinogens
Color has its own chemistry. Many dark spirits rely on caramel coloring to reproduce the amber tones of barrel aging; some liqueurs use petroleum-based dyes such as Red 40 or Yellow 5. The WHO has identified certain caramel colorants, notably E150c and E150d, as containing 4-methylimidazole, a possible carcinogen. The colorants themselves are not what make a drink harmful, but they are reminders of how modern marketing has replaced the patience of time with the precision of tint. Their manufacture releases aromatic compounds into waterways, and synthetic dyes persist in soil for decades.
Flavor Fever
Flavors, too, are not always what they seem. Under U.S. regulations, “natural flavor” simply means the base molecule originated from something once alive. The solvent used to extract it—often propylene glycol or hexane—need not be declared. These concentrated esters can reproduce the aroma of fruit or flower exactly, yet they bypass the natural compounds that help the body metabolize alcohol more gently. Studies in Environmental Health Perspectives suggest that chronic intake of synthetic flavoring agents can alter gut microbiota and slow detoxification—subtle effects that compound hangover intensity.
Vegans Beware
Perhaps the least discussed additives are animal-derived. Isinglass, a collagen extracted from fish bladders, remains a common fining agent for beer and wine. Gelatin, albumin, and casein—derived from pigs, eggs, and dairy—are still used to clarify and soften tannins. Some red spirits obtain their color from carmine, a pigment made by crushing cochineal insects; others use chitosan from shrimp shells as an antimicrobial. Each leaves only trace residues, yet together they bind alcohol to the environmental footprint of industrial fishing, livestock farming, and animal rendering. The European Food Safety Authority notes that while plant-based alternatives such as bentonite clay or pea protein can achieve similar clarity, they are slower and costlier to use.
The Hangover Is Environmental
These ingredients are not scandals; they are efficiencies. They allow producers to replicate a consistent product anywhere in the world, to maintain color and texture in shipping containers crossing hemispheres, to guard against spoilage and oxidation across seasons. But efficiency has its own price.
The Environmental Health Perspectives journal estimates that beverage production contributes more than six hundred million tons of CO₂ equivalents annually once additives, packaging, and transport are included. Many of the compounds that keep spirits stable are derived from petroleum, and refining agents from animals or fish add to global biodiversity loss. The hangover, it turns out, belongs not only to people but to the planet.
Europe has begun to address the issue. Since 2023, wine producers there must list ingredients and calories—a modest step toward the kind of transparency already expected in food. The change was met with resistance but has quickly become normal. In the United States, by contrast, ingredient disclosure remains voluntary under the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The World Health Organization and the European Food Safety Authority have both called for harmonized labeling, noting that consumer right-to-know should not end at the bar.
Calling All Additive-Free Alcohol Brands
As a producer, I understand the tension. Every additive removed requires new methods, equipment, and time. Real fruit oxidizes; natural colors fade; absence of preservatives shortens distribution windows. Clean production is slower, riskier, and more expensive. But it is also what consumers increasingly want.
Data from IWSR show that additive-free and “clean-label” spirits are among the few categories still growing. The shift is not driven by moralism but by modernity: people expect the same transparency from alcohol that they already demand from skincare or food.
For drinkers, the implications are simple but profound. A hangover is not solely the body’s reaction to ethanol; it is the result of everything that travels with it—refined sugars, stabilizers, colorants, preservatives, and residual agricultural chemicals. Reducing those factors will not eliminate intoxication, but it can change its aftermath. For producers, the lesson is equally clear: the future of alcohol is not abstinence but accountability. Why wouldn’t producers want their drinkers to feel better when they wake up after a night of drinking and pontification?
Taking It Personal
When I began this journey, I believed I was building a brand. What I discovered is that I need to be an evangelist, an investigative reporter, and wipe the dew off the alcohol consumer’s eyes—eyes glued shut with bright orange umbrellas and flashy brand activations in legacy brands’ embarrassing attempts to stay relevant.
Yet the path forward is not to vilify the dusty brands your great-grandparents drank; it’s to inform, to pull the truth out of the shadows, and to teach moderate drinkers that drinking doesn’t need to be as bad for you as it is. If brands stopped using chemical ingredients that, when combined with ethanol, intensify the negative effects on the body and the environment, perhaps the joy of drinking would return. Hangovers wouldn’t be as intense, the body could recover from natural ingredients, and the memory of the night before wouldn’t be of regret—but nostalgia.
If alcohol is to remain part of contemporary culture, it must evolve with the same honesty consumers now expect from every other product they bring into their homes. The move toward additive-free production is not a rejection of progress; it is its natural continuation. The real luxury in a drink is no longer age or exclusivity, but integrity—the confidence that what you are tasting is precisely what it claims to be.
Sources
World Health Organization, Alcohol and Health Report (2022); American Diabetes Association, Diabetes Care Guidelines (2023); American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 104 (2019); Environmental Health Perspectives (2020–2023); European Food Safety Authority, Microplastic and Beverage Additive Risk Assessment (2023); International Wines & Spirits Record (IWSR 2023).