Today, regular wine is not a natural product like it used to be. Why not?
Wine is over 7000 years old, and used to be made from one simple ingredient: fermented grapes.
Unfortunately, wine followed the same path as our modern food industry for the last few decades. In order to meet skyrocketing demand, wine companies started mass producing and processing wine to stock retail store shelves and restaurants.
In the United States, this means many wines contain a lot more than just grapes.
Dry Farm Wines is different. It’s actually pure Natural Wine, grown just like it used to be.
Here are the main 10 ways that sets Dry Farm Wines apart:
1) NO ADDITIVES
In the United States, wine producers can use 76 different additives in wine, without disclosing any of them on the bottle [*].
Some additives are harmless and natural, while others are far more toxic. The most dangerous offender is dimethyl dicarbonate (DMDC), which is strongly toxic to humans in its raw form [*].
Other legal additives include:
- Fining agents that reduce wine’s haziness and make it less bitter
- Defoaming agents that prevent wine from foaming
- Preservatives that prevent wine from spoiling
- Fermentation enhancers that speed up and standardize the fermentation process
- Colorants that unnecessarily change a wine’s color
Modern wine companies can use these additives to produce a shelf stable product that is consistent year over year and cheaper for the consumer. For example, virtually every red wine under $20 has the colorant “mega purple”[*].
Additives offer companies tight control over their wine so they can overcome Nature’s unpredictability. Every wine will taste consistent, year after year and bottle after bottle.
2) NO SUGAR
Most commercial wines are bottled with sugar in the bottle before they fully ferment to speed up production and maximize profits. It’s quite common to see 10 grams of sugar per bottle (sometimes more) in store bought wines.
Sugar levels in wine are often hidden by other flavors, so you may find sugar in wine even if the wine is not technically a “sweet” wine.
Every wine from Dry Farm Wines contains less than 1 gram per liter (which is statistically sugar free). This is possible because our wines are “fully fermented,” which means the natural yeasts turn all the sugar in the grape juice into alcohol.
3) LOWER ALCOHOL
Commercial winemaking favors higher-alcohol wines. Average alcohol content in wine has been rising over the past couple decades, currently sitting around 14% ABV [*]. Our wines are, at most, 12.5% ABV, and many are lower.
Alcohol drowns out the finer notes in wine. Studies find casual drinkers enjoy low-alcohol wine more for aromatic experiences [*].
(And by the way, don’t trust wine labels for accurate alcohol content. By law, the alcohol stated on a wine bottle is not required to be accurate; it may be as much as 1.5% different from true levels [*]. Since producers pay taxes for higher alcohol, many of them make higher alcohol wines but label them lower.)
4) ORGANIC, BIODIVERSE FAMILY FARMS
Commercial vineyards have one main goal: produce the highest volume of grapes for the lowest cost. They often use two techniques to achieve this: monoculture and farming chemicals.
Monoculture vineyards are just one kind of crop planted for miles and miles, which maximizes capacity but can also destroy the soil. Farming chemicals like pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides have been shown to destroy natural ecosystems and end up in the finished wine [*] [*].
Dry Farm Wines only works with growers who prize the exact opposite: biodiverse farming without man made chemicals. Biodiverse farms are wild ecosystems. Grape vines grow with other natural life like almond trees, native bees, local flowers, herbs, and so on.
Dry Farm Wines all come from organically farmed land. That means no pesticides, herbicides, or any other “-ides.” Organic farming creates resilient grapes with a wide array of aromatic compounds, imparting a beautiful personality to our wines.
5) LIVING WINES
Look at these two images of wines under a microscope:
The top one is a commercial Sancerre wine that’s been sterilized and clarified. The bottom is a Natural Sancerre that’s been grown organically and bottled without filtering.
The commercial Sancerre is dead in the bottle. All the living organisms in it have been killed and removed.
The natural Sancerre is alive, rich with bacteria and wild native yeasts. The result is complexity of aroma and flavor. (By the way, the photo above is borrowed from Isabelle Legeron’s book, Natural Wines. It’s a masterful exploration of biodynamic wine; we recommend it!)
6) NO IRRIGATION
Man made irrigation systems are common in modern farming. Irrigation is meant to give vines more water so they grow faster and bigger.
Our name, “Dry Farm Wines,” comes from another form of farming called “dry farming.” This means our growers do not irrigate their vines. Instead, their vines use natural rainwater and groundwater to nourish themselves.
Why is this better?
Dry farming increases the health of the vine and the grapes. While irrigation encourages roots to stay near the surface where there is water, dry farming forces roots to dig deeper to search for their own water. That means dry farmed vines absorb more nutrients with increased soil surface area [*].
It also saves a lot of water: we estimate our dry farming growers save over 7 billion gallons of water every year by not using irrigation.
7) NATIVE YEAST
Wine, like sourdough and kimchi, is a fermented product produced by yeast. Yeasts turn the sugar in grape juice into alcohol through fermentation.
Generally, there are 2 types of yeast: lab grown and native. Lab grown yeasts are created in a lab and engineered to produce certain flavors and profiles of wine.
Native yeasts are naturally found on the skin of every grape. Most wine companies don’t use native yeast to ferment their wines because they are too unreliable and they will die at higher alcohol levels.
Dry Farm Wines are fermented with native yeasts because it’s the way wine has been made for thousands of years! The less man made manipulation, the better.
8) RARE VARIETALS
Most modern wine companies choose to plant the same varietals because they are famous: Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc.
Natural Wine growers take a different approach. They plant and encourage the growth of ancestral, local grapes that grow naturally in their regions. Grapes like Zweigelt in Austria and Pineau d’Aunis in France are rare in the wine market, but you can find unique grapes like these in the Dry Farm Wines collection.
9) LAB TESTED TRANSPARENCY
In virtually every other consumable good industry—food, beauty, personal care products—ingredient lists are mandatory. You can look at the label and know exactly what you’re getting.
But because wine is taxed as alcohol, not food, the government doesn’t require producers to disclose ingredients. This includes even basic nutritional facts like sugar content.
With Dry Farm Wines, we send every wine to a certified third party oenologist to make sure we know exactly what is in the wine before we send it to our Members. Every wine also undergoes a special 7 step criteria process to make sure it’s ready to share with the world.
10) TASTE
Ultimately, our obsession with quality comes down to taste. Every Dry Farm Wine needs to taste delicious, plain and simple.
Dry Farm Wines will also taste different from regular wines. Without heavy additives and artificial flavoring, the wine goes down smoothly. It tastes fresh, and it pairs better with food. It’s wonderfully drinkable and soulful, since it hasn’t been sterilized, either.
At the end of the day, wine is meant to be enjoyed and to bring people together in love.
