Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Dry farm wines: Organic, sugar-free wines you won’t feel guilty about

Are dry farm wines too good to be true?

Emily Caldwell
By
Hands toasting with red wine
rikkia hughes / Unsplash

If you love to drink wine but seek a cleaner, healthier option, dry farm wines might be right for you. This sugar-free, organic, and additive-free wine may sound too good to be true — yet it exists. Dry, warm wines have identified the major problems within today’s wine industry and sought to create a wine that is both delicious and guilt-free. Plus, they even offer a wine subscription membership so you can keep the natural wine flowing! Let’s dive in and explore what this new “healthy” wine is all about.

Close up of charcuterie board and glasses of wine on wooden table.
Cavan / Adobe Stock

Problems with the wine industry

The wine shelves at your local wine store might be full of different enticing labels and unique packaging, yet the majority of these brands contain significant levels of pesticides. Only 5% of all vineyards in the world are organically farmed, leaving the vast majority of consumer wines with harmful pesticides that most drinkers aren’t even aware of. Grapes are consistently part of the “dirty dozen,” an annual list by the Environmental Working Group that notes the produce that contains the highest level of pesticides. These pesticides used on grapes often include fungicides and insecticides, which ultimately end up in our delicious wine.

Recommended Videos

There are also 76 additives that winemakers in the U.S. are allowed to use in products, despite 12 of these being categorized as health hazards by the NIH. To make matters worse, wine bottle labels in the U.S. are not regulated. This means companies are not required to put ingredients or nutrition labels — so how do we really know what is in our wine?

Related

What is dry farming?

Dry farming is a specific type of farming that produces crops in the dry season without irrigation. These crops use the water retained in the soil from natural rainfall. This method is not commonly used by farmers, as it has a much lower yield when compared to traditional farming methods. Dry farming can result in grapes that have a richer, more complex flavor. Choosing natural wines like Dry farm wines guarantees your wine was sourced from grapes grown by farmers using dry farm practices and nutrient-rich soils that do not contain pesticides or herbicides.

Glass of white wine
StockSnap / Pixabay

Why choose dry farm wines

Dry farm wines may sound too good to be true, but they’re truly a better choice for your nightly glass of wine. Unlike commercial wine companies that use additives, dry farm wines use no additives to produce a quality, clean wine for your enjoyment. Each wine is lab tested to ensure it contains less than 1g/L of sugar, less than 12.5% alcohol, and less than 75 ppm sulfites. The rigorous lab-testing process ensures the consistency of these high-quality bottles of wine.

But this is only one of the many reasons to opt for dry farm wines. Another reason dry farm wines are so popular is their lower sugar content. The fermentation process of these wines allows native yeasts to convert the naturally occurring sugar in grapes to alcohol. This process results in a wine that contains less than 2 grams per glass. For people on a ketogenic or paleo diet, sugar-free wines are a safe option to consume. This also means diabetics can safely consume a glass of wine without a major impact on blood glucose levels. Furthermore, people who wish to consume only organic products now have the option to enjoy a glass of wine straight from small family farms that use only organic farming practices.

Dry farm wines also offer wines that do not contain toxic additives such as food coloring, high-fructose corn syrup, and ammonia. If you’ve ever had a bad wine hangover, these additives might be the reason why.

White wine in glass swirling
Big Dodzy / Unsplash

What is the alcohol content of dry farm wines?

Another unique difference between dry farm wines compared to conventional wine is their alcohol content. Each of dry farm wine’s products contains 12.5% or less alcohol per serving. In comparison, most store-bought wines have about 14% alcohol. By containing less alcohol, you can enjoy the delicious taste of wine without having to consume as much alcohol. This is an attractive benefit for those who prefer not to consume too much alcohol or cannot consume much alcohol for medical reasons.

Red wine glass in vineyard
Grape Things / Pexels

Types of dry farm wines available

Dry farm wines offer something for everyone to enjoy with a vast collection of red wines, white wines, rosé wines, and sparkling wine varieties. The red wine collection offers healthier variations of the classic wines you know and love, such as Pinot Noir, yet also includes delicious yet lesser-known wines such as Sangiovese. If you prefer white wine, the white wine subscription box includes Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, and other favorites. There is also a box dedicated to all rosé wines and a box for sparking varieties as well. Unlike other wine brands, dry farm wines clearly label how much residual sugar is in each bottle, so you’ll know exactly what you’re consuming.

What’s unique about dry farm wines is their red and white mixed box, giving you options to select a variety of wines for every occasion. Whether you’re purchasing it for yourself or gifting a dry farm wine box, there’s certainly a great selection of guilt-free wines to choose from.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Emily Caldwell
Emily Caldwell
Contributor
Emily is a full time freelance writer with a special focus on health, fitness, lifestyle, food, and nutrition topics. She…
Bourbon snifters: What they’re good for, which bourbon you should drink from them, and more
Why you should have bourbon snifters, and what to drink from them
Snifter

If you’re new to bourbon, you probably pour your favorite whiskey into a rocks glass with or without ice and sip it while you binge-watch the newest show du jour on Netflix and call it good. And while that’s all well and good, as we aren’t here to tell anyone how to imbibe whiskey, you might not be enjoying it as much as you could be. That’s to say that there are whiskey glasses designed to elevate and heighten your whiskey-tasting experience.

Don’t believe us? Just take your classic rocks glass, for example. It’s fairly uniform and unexciting. It’s designed for cocktails. That’s because when you drink an Old Fashioned. Sazerac, or Whiskey Sour the experience is all about the various flavors the ingredients (when combined with whiskey) create.

Read more
When you see “Cru” on a wine label, here’s what it means
Admittedly, it can be a little bit con"cru"sing
Wine bottles

Wine labels can be incredibly confusing. Many of them are in languages we don't speak, or organized in types we aren't familiar with. Often, the only loose guideline we have to understanding a wine's quality is the level of the shelf upon which it sits and the price tag posted underneath. We're all guilty of judging wines in this way, reaching for one on the second-highest shelf and thinking something along the lines of, "This one's probably pretty good." If you have a little more knowledge on the subject of wine, you might know that the word "cru" on a label is a good thing, even if you aren't sure why. We're here to explain this word and what it means in terms of a wine's quality.

The French word "cru" literally means "growth," and in wine, it references a superior growing site or vineyard. This practice was put into place in France hundreds of years ago, and is still used today. Wines with a "cru" classification are ranked according to their soil, altitude, climate, growing practices, and many other factors that make them superior.

Read more
How many glasses of wine are actually in a bottle? You might not like the answer
Apparently there should be more than two glasses in a bottle of wine?
Wine being poured at dinner table

If you're anything like me, you've never paid much attention to rules or regulations. Even as a child, I didn't pay any mind to those telling me what I should or should not do. Of course, there were and are rules of common sense put into place to keep us safe, and even my younger self could appreciate and abide by those. But if my teacher told me to use a red crayon, you could bet I would use a green one. If my piano instructor told me to play the white keys, I would only play the black ones. I wouldn't say I liked being told that there were lines and limits; honestly, I still don't. I get a little irked when given a guideline or a box, which is, perhaps, the reason I fell in love with food and wine. With food and wine, there aren't any limits...with two exceptions - baking (because it's either science or witchcraft, and I still don't know which) and how many glasses of wine there are in a bottle.
My evening routine tells me that there are approximately two to three glasses of wine per bottle, depending on the glass or mug I've selected from the cupboard, but apparently, this is not the case.

How many glasses of wine are in a bottle?
The sad truth is that there are five whole glasses of wine in one standard 750-milliliter bottle. This may come as a shock to those of us who could have sworn that an entire bottle contained only two glasses, but here we are. Don't shoot the messenger.

Read more