(WSJ) - THE LATE SENATOR Strom Thurmond was famous—some might say infamous—for a good many things, including a marathon filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, but the South Carolina congressman’s most lasting contribution may be the two words found on every bottle of wine sold in this country: Contains Sulfites.

The fiercely anti-alcohol senator successfully lobbied for this particular warning to be part of the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, a continuation of the so-called War on Drugs. Never mind that the average bottle of Cabernet contains far fewer sulfites than, say, a can of tuna or a bag of dried fruit, products that carry no warning at all. (A glass of wine contains roughly 10 mg of sulfites; two ounces of dried apricots, 112 mg.)

This back-label notification has led to a great many misunderstandings among those who attribute health problems, primarily headaches, to sulfites in wine, specifically red wine. Over the years, I’ve received many letters from readers lamenting the headaches they’ve suffered due to their alleged allergy to sulfites.

Often as not these readers wrote in the hope that I could recommend a “sulfite-free wine.” Alas, I could not, since there is no such thing as wine completely free of sulfites, which are inorganic salts produced as a byproduct of the fermentation process.

It is important to note that sulfites are also commonly added post-fermentation to combat oxidation and stabilize the wine. Many winemakers use sulfur dioxide, potassium metabisulfite or some combination of both. The latter is also used in a broad range of foods, from potato chips to shrimp (fresh and frozen) to lemon juice, like that in the small plastic lemon I have in my refrigerator—and perhaps you do too.

My plastic lemon doesn’t carry a sulfite warning, and until approximately 10 years ago, neither did wines sold in Europe. This may be why some American wine drinkers who’ve traveled abroad believe European wines contain no sulfites (another issue I am asked about quite often).