Couch Potato America reclined and recoiled the other night upon learning that the Reality TV stars of Jon & Kate Plus 8 have filed for divorce. The split can not come as too great a surprise, what with mounting tabloid rumors, not to mention the cumulative stress of raising twins and sextuplets amid the relentless glare of cameras. What may come as a shock, however, is the real reason for their split: namely wine.

Indeed, the Wine Skewer has learned that Jon and Kate Gosselin’s woes stem not from complications related to raising their eight young children, nor from alleged infidelity. Rather, according to our unnamed source {actually a low-level sound technician who likes to hang around the $1.1 million Gosselin home even when not working}, the rift relates directly to the couple’s “irreconcilable differences” in wine preference.

“She likes whites,” our source told the Skewer. “He drinks only red.” When plied with some 1er Cru Burgundy, our source went into further detail, describing tense arguments—always related to wine. “He’d say things like ‘How can you drink that insipid Pinot Grigio, and that sweet oak juice they call Chardonnay?’ Then she’d be like, ‘Just because you sit there and gloat about overpriced, high-alcohol Cabernets that get 95 points from the Wine Whatever doesn’t give you any right to berate my personal taste!’”

Neither of the multiple-multiples parents’ wine affinities had ever been visible in the actual TV show simply because producers were concerned with viewer backlash. Apparently, TLC executives were equally worried about raising the hackles of anti-alcohol groups, and about boring America to tears. “Nothin’ worse than a wine bore,” said the Wine Skewer’s source. “She would always just say the same thing over and over: ‘It makes my food taste better.’ And he’d go on and on about guys named Barker and Loudy. Also got into the habit of calling the sextuplets by winey nicknames like Margaux and Grange and Super Tuscan. Ane they’d have to cut the scene. Drove the director nuts.”

In fact, as the vinous discord accelerated over the past season of Jon & Kate Plus 8, TLC even attempted an intervention of sorts. Our source explained: “We sat the two of them down with a sommelier and a marriage counselor and two glasses of rosé wine. The sommelier described how this dry pink wine was really a happy medium, being that is was made from red grapes, but in the style of a white wine. And the marriage counselor urged them to try to think of this as a perfect compromise. Kate seemd to like the wine just fine, said it made her caponata taste better. But Jon took just one sip before asking what the wine was rated, and when the sommelier said 88 points—adding that’s a great score considering hardly any pink wine ever gets over 90—well, he just took one more sip, spit it out and walked off grumbling.”

If there is any silver lining in the storm clouds now amassing over the suburban Philadelphia Reality-TV estate, it’s that the couple’s complete opposite taste in wine will make dividing the family’s wine collection quite simple: he gets the reds, she gets the whites. And while TLC is insisting that the show will go on, it remains to be seen whether custody arrangements moving forward will result in the show being renamed Jon Plus 3 and 1 & Kate Plus 3 and 1.