It all started out so innocently. At a recent Otago Daily Times' regional reporters conference, Mr Kirkness asked: "Why does cheap champagne give you a hangover?"
I thought I would take one for the team and find out. Off to the supermarket I trotted, looking for the cheapest bubbly I could find and successfully located a bargain deal.
There's nothing quite like the sound of a cork popping out of a bottle of bubbles, and the sound of the bubbly being poured into a glass fills me with joy.
My research had begun.
Before long I had fully embraced the holiday season, painting fingernails and applying a facemask in an effort to look semi-respectable for New Year's Eve, simultaneously supping on my party-in-a-glass.
Eventually, I toodled off to bed, delightfully woozy and marvelling at how great my job is - getting to consume wine and calling it research.
However, the next morning I was cursing Mr Kirkness and my brilliant idea.
An entire Scottish pipe band had marched into my head to practise Auld Lang Syne, while the partridge from the pear tree and the two turtle doves - turfed out by the people they were given to at Christmas - had apparently crawled through my mouth, tracking sawdust in with them, before settling in my stomach, flapping about and attempting to call it home.
It was the beginning of a very long day.
However, my investigations had only just begun.
While I had discovered the cheap bubbles did have an adverse reaction with my entire body, the actual question remained unanswered. To the University of Otago I went, with my first call to Dr Allan Blackman, of the chemistry department.
A practical man, Dr Blackman believes because my bottle of bubbles was cheap, I felt I could drink more. Touche, Dr Blackman. However, scientifically, there is a chemical reaction which occurs after consuming any kind of alcohol.
"The thing that's doing it is the acetaldehyde. That turns into acetic acid, which is vinegar," Dr Blackman said.
"[Alcohol] turns into those two molecules, but it's the acetaldehyde which is the particularly nasty stuff, that ends up giving you the hangover."
While I now know what causes the hangover, I am still not sure why it's worse with cheap bubbly.
I turn to Amisfield Wine Company's assistant winemaker Sam Hambour. He says cheap wines follow a similar manufacturing process to Coca-Cola.
"It's just carbonated [wine].
"From a wine-making perspective, cheap wine is made in the same way as Coke ... while methode traditionnelle, which is the way we make it, is made through primary fermentation.
"We make a normal-style wine, put it in a bottle, add a little bit more sugar [and] the yeast will ferment that in the bottle."
The bottles are left for two to three years and turned occasionally with the secondary fermentation process causing bubbles to be formed, as opposed to having carbon dioxide forced into the wine, "which is how they do it for cheaper sparkling wines".
"It's an industrial way to make it - it's like having a Soda Stream [machine] ... on a larger scale."
This helps explain why when I've been the sober driver, consuming fizzy drinks to keep me going, I still feel hungover in the morning.
Apparently, a hangover is caused by the combination of sugar and carbon dioxide. And the hangover cure?
"Personally, a swim and some pineapple juice and maybe some bacon and eggs," Mr Hambour said.
The hangover
• Some aspects of a hangover are viewed as symptoms of acute ethanol withdrawal.
• Ethanol has a dehydrating effect by causing increased urine production, which causes headaches, dry mouth, and lethargy.
• Dehydration also causes fluids in the brain to be less plentiful.
• This can be mitigated by drinking water before, during and after consumption of alcohol.
• Alcohol's effect on the stomach lining can account for nausea.
• Another contributing factor is the presence of products from the breakdown of ethanol by liver enzymes.
• Ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde ... and then from acetaldehyde to acetic acid.
• Acetaldehyde (ethanal) is between 10 and 30 times more toxic than alcohol itself.
Source: Wikipedia