Hey BA!

It’s Thanksgiving week, so let’s talk wine. I don’t know about you, but I love a glass of red wine with my Thanksgiving meal. Red wine contains wonderful antioxidants and I like to think of it as good for the soul. Picking out a good quality wine, however, matters. Conventional winemaking practices include mass amounts of sugar, additives, and other chemicals that are harmful to your liver and overall health. This is why some leave you with a headache after only a glass. To make matters worse, they are not required to list the additives they use on the label, disclose their farming practices, or even provide a completely accurate alcohol content. No one really knows all that those bottles of wine contain.

While you can’t control the wine that will be served at holiday parties, nor should this deter you from having a glass, you can control what you purchase and serve. Here’s a few things to look for and why -

Organic Wine
Grapes are always on EWG’s Dirty Dozen list because of the amount of pesticides sprayed on them. These pesticides remain in the wine. Buy organic in order to limit/avoid this.
Biodynamic Wine
This is in regards to the vineyard’s farming practices. It focuses on sustainability and the ecosystem as a whole, not just the grapes. It prohibits the use of pesticides and other chemicals.
Independently-Owned, Family Vineyards
These smaller vineyards put great care into their finished product. It is their passion. Therefore, this typically means that the end result is of much higher quality than mass-produced wines.

If you are in last-minute shopping mode running through the liquor store, the easiest thing to look for is a bottle that says organic. If you have more time to stroll, however, then you can look for these additional markers.

Want to save time and avoid the liquor store all together? I highly recommend Dry Farm Wines. It is a membership that curates the wine for you and delivers it to your door. They have their own purity and farming practice standards. Each of their wines have less than 1g of sugar per liter, lower alcohol percentage, lower sulfites, no industrial additives, and are fermented with only naturally occurring, native yeasts.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving BA fam!

Household Swap: Wine!