Is the Wine You're Drinking Harming You?

There's nothing like coming home after work and having a nice glass of the finest cabernet sauvignon...you know that red juice from the gods... that good old wine.

I wanted to talk to you about whether the wine you're consuming is really healthy for you. Let me tell you about my own experience. I used to come home and go to Trader Joe's and buy that two buck chuck. You know that $2 bottle of wine that's on sale.

Well once I learned about the wine industry and once I learned about the red juice of the gods, it really changed my perspective and it helped me have a more global view of the wine I was consuming.

I was told my whole life that the Mediterraneans lived forever and they didn't have chronic illness and they drank wine every night. Well let me tell you why the wine that you're consuming is not the wine that they're consuming. So it could be hurting you and not helping you.

#1 Additives in Wine

The wine made in our country, in the USA, can add up to 76 additives in the wine without putting it on the bottle. Holy cr**! That means formaldehyde, red dye, sugar, chemicals, etc. are used to make the wine taste better and they are to speed up the fermentation process so the growers can make more money.

So if you're drinking wine from the USA, you have to be careful with the wine you're buying and you have to be careful of the added ingredients to the wine.

#2 Sprayed with Pesticides...Buy Organic!

The majority of wine that is made here in the USA are sprayed with pesticides, so nothing like enjoying that fine glass of wine... but just wrecking your gastrointestinal lining. There are 200+ chemicals right there for you causing havoc on your entire body.

So when you consume wine that has been sprayed with pesticides, even though compared to food it's not as much because of the fermentation process, you're still getting a wide range of man-made chemicals that are known carcinogens. So I recommend buying organic wine more expensive better for your health always got to weigh those odds point

#3 Old Vines > New Vines

The majority of grapes that are grown in our country to produce wine are grown on what are called "new vines". People in the wine industry have a different variation of timeline here but I would say it's anywhere between 7 - 15 years would be considered "new vines" and the majority of wine that is consumed in Mediterranean cultures or cultures that have been known to consume wine for almost every night and still have impeccable health...their vines are somewhere between 40 - 100 years old.

When you use old vines, there are much higher antioxidants in the wine and the minerals that are absorbed through the vines because the vines have withheld the stresses of everyday life for so long.

So what can you do to make sure you're drinking the best quality wine?

I recommend buying organic old vine wines. There are two great companies out there. Dry Farm Wines are a subscription-based company that does testing and does a very good job of supporting local traditionally made wines. There's another great company if you haven't heard of them yet called Thrive Market. It's an online marketplace of a whole bunch of goodies, and they also sell selections of white and red wines that are traditionally made without any chemicals.

The last tip here is that if you're out with friends and you're ordering a bottle of wine, nobody wants to be the guy that orders the $120 bottle. And you don't have to. I recommend ordering wine from other places, meaning ordering wine from places besides the states such as Italy, France, or Greece.

Why? Because their standards and their farming practices are much more stringent and strict compared to ours here in the states so they can't add additives to the wine unless they've been approved by the government.

Hope these tips helped. Cheers!

Dr. Alex Orton, ND
N A T U R O P A T H I C D O C T O R
F O U N D E R & O W N E R