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

How To Drink Red Wine and Stay Healthy During the Holidays

By

With parties and dinners on the horizon, we need to start thinking about how to make healthier choices this season. Winter and the holidays go hand in hand with the consumption of red wine. We’re here to enlighten you on how to make health-conscious decisions about the wine you choose to drink.

Red Wine Health Benefits

A glass of red wine with vineyards.
kym ellis

Red wine has long been thought of as a heart healthy drink…as long as it’s consumed in moderation. According to the Mayo Clinic, the antioxidants which are found in red wine may help prevent coronary artery disease, the condition that leads to heart attacks.  Antioxidants in red wine may help protect the lining of blood vessels in your heart. Doctors believe part of the benefit might be that the antioxidants in red wine may increase the level of “good” cholesterol and protect against cholesterol buildup which leads to blockages.

Recommended Videos

Let’s educate ourselves on the plant-based, healthy compounds a glass of red wine contains:

  • Antioxidants – Balance or counteract free radicals.
  • Flavonoids – The largest type of antioxidants developed from the seeds and skins of grapes and found in red wines.
  • Polyphenols – Inflammation reducing compounds. Resveratrol is part of this group of compounds.

Resveratrol in red wine comes from the skin of grapes and because red wine is fermented with grape skins for longer than white wine, red wine contains more resveratrol. Alternatively, red and purple grape juices have the same benefits of red wine.

Related: 
Upgrade your daily routine with the best smartwatches for men

Scientific terminology aside, balance is always key when it comes to red wine (and alcohol in general). When consumed in moderation, red wine can present cardiovascular and anti-inflammatory benefits. When consuming a few servings of red wine daily over an extended amount of time though, health problems, poor sleep, hypertension, liver damage, and difficulties with your pancreas can arise.

How to Approach Wine During the Holidays

Glass of red wine at Christmas time, close-up.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you lead a healthy lifestyle (we highly recommend trying to!), it can be confusing to determine the right approach to wine. With that being said, some wines are healthier than others. Did you know that the FDA does not regulate alcoholic beverages and winemakers are not required to create ingredient labels; therefore, you could be drinking wine that has over 50 different additives? By additives we mean stuff like fish bladders and gelatin. Not sure about you, but we are having second thoughts about drinking wine at the next function.

This holiday season we are resorting to natural wines. Organic is usually what comes to mind when we hear natural in front of a product, but natural wines are so much more than that. The very minimum requirements for a wine to be labeled as a natural wine is that it undergoes a native-yeast fermentation process and has no additives other than nominal sulfuring.

Dry Farm Wines, Naturally Grown and Made

Wine bottle from Dry Farm Wines.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Enter Dry Farm Wines, a health-focused, low-alcohol, natural wine club, curating high quality, clean, no sugar, healthy wines. Each wine has no additives and is friendly to every diet, including Paleo, low-carb, and Ketogenic. They’re doing things differently.

The company was founded in 2015 and sources wines from small sustainable organic farms across Europe and South Africa. Unlike most commercialized and processed wines, these are wines that are naturally grown and naturally made. We’ll put it this way; they make wine from the same fruits they’d give to their children.

Natural is only a sliver of their criteria. Dry Farm Wines are organically farmed on healthy soils and are always fermented with wild native yeast. Even the company’s name signifies it’s healthy because Dry Farm Wines only rely on rainfall (no extra irrigation) which preserves the antioxidant content in the grapes. With less than 1 gram of sugars and carbs in wine, it’s a much healthier wine option. They take pride in lab testing to select and verify the purity of their products.

Natural wines are not for everyone, but they’re definitely for those who care about what enters their bodies, who don’t want groggy days, and who want better all-around performance.

But, don’t start over-indulging in natural red wine for its heart benefits. Too much red wine and alcohol in general can have harmful effects on your body. For healthy adults, men ages 65 and younger should have up to two drinks of red wine a day while men older than 65 should have up to one drink a day. A drink is defined as 5 ounces of wine. Cheers to healthy wine drinking this holiday season.

Latifah Al-Hazza
Latifah Al-Hazza
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Latifah is an Emmy Award-Winning travel journalist and documentary filmmaker, as well as the Cofounder of Femscape Sojourns…

Editors’ Recommendations

How to steam milk: Perfect your technique for rich, creamy coffee drinks
Learn to steam milk like a Barista
steamed milk

As an aspiring barista, I've grown to understand the importance of steamed milk in making all of my favorite drinks. To learn how to make a cappuccino at home, I had to master the art of making steamed milk. Learning how to steam milk at home is difficult, but you'll need to commit to learning if you want to expand the types of coffee drinks you can make at home. Teaching yourself how to steam milk will allow you to experiment with all kinds of elaborate espresso drinks just like you order at the café -- from the cafe au laits to cappuccinos.
Steamed milk vs. frothed milk

As you experiment with how to steam milk, it's key to understand the slight differences between steamed milk and frothed milk. In the world of coffee-making, these two are often confused -- and I completely understand why. To help you know the difference, consider how you'd make a latte. The ratio of espresso to milk in a latte is usually 3:1, with espresso on the bottom, steamed milk on the top, and a light layer of frothed milk on the top.

Read more
How to use a milk frother: Simple tips and tricks to elevate your drinks
Here's how to use a milk frother with ease
Cappuccino

Once you've mastered brewing the perfect coffee at home, the next step in every home Barista's journey is to learn how to use a milk frother. You'll need frothed milk to enjoy specialty-type coffees from your kitchen, such as lattes and cappuccinos. At one point, I was intimated by the concept of frothing my milk, as it can sound more complicated than it is. Learning to use a milk frother is easy enough for coffee lovers of any skill level. Here are two of my favorite ways to froth milk for coffee at home, ideal for those who do not have an espresso maker with a steam wand attachment.
How to use a milk frother: Hand frothing

Using a handheld wand milk frother is one of the easiest methods for frothing milk at home. A handheld milk frother can be used in your mug and is an excellent option for those who don't have an espresso maker at home. Before I had an espresso machine with a steam wand at home, I found the handheld milk frother to be my go-to for frothing milk for coffee. I like this method because it requires minimal skill and clean-up (always a motivating factor when making coffee at home instead of ordering it out at a cafe).

Read more
How to read a wine label: Decoding symbols, numbers, and certifications
What to look for on the bottle
Multiple wine bottles sitting on surface

With wine labels, the prose is not always straightforward. In fact, there are nouns, numbers, and symbols you might not be fully familiar with. But it pays to have some context, as the last thing you want to do is shell out your hard-earned money for a wine from the wrong American Viticultural Area or made in a way that doesn't agree with your dietary restrictions or environmental stance.

You can probably locate the alcohol content or even the grape varieties that go into the blend, but can you pick out the region? How can you tell if it's made from organically farmed grapes? Did they add sulfites? These are valid questions, especially in an age where we very much want to know about the companies we fund, let alone what exactly we're putting into our bodies. Keep reading to learn how to read a wine label.

Read more