I do love a nice glass of wine! A great meal can be complemented with the right wine, elevating the dining experience.
The thing is, as I’ve struggled with autoimmune health issues, and got a little older (being candid here folks!), I’ve realized that wine doesn’t really love me back! Just one glass could leave me with a stuffy nose and waking up feeling groggy and pretty awful.
That is, until I stumbled upon the clean crafted difference, smooth, delicious, headache-free wine, and realized the problem was actually the toxins in the wine I had been drinking!
My mission at Taste of Healing is ‘Inspiring you to cook, eat, and live a deliciously healthy life’. I believe we can enjoy, in moderation, better choices of treats such as chocolate, coffee and of course, wine!
This week I got to interview expert wine consultant Cyndy Bouthillette, the lovely lady who introduced me to Scout & Cellar, the better choice clean crafted wine.
Here is an edited transcript of our interview, the full video is available here.
Clean Crafted Wine Interview with Scout & Cellar
Carol Q: Scout & Cellar has coined the phrase ‘clean crafted’, what does that mean?
Cyndy A: Clean crafted wine, is wine that is created with no added sugars, synthetic pesticides, chemicals, it’s toxin-free. We partner with vineyards that farm organically or biodynamically from seed to cellar.
Carol Q: It’s a relatively new company Scout & Cellar , just had its third birthday, share with our viewers how it all started.
Cyndy A: Sarah Shadonix, the CEO and founder was an attorney and her dream job was to work in the wine industry. She studied to become a sommelier and began to realize that certain wines gave her awful side effects (I can relate!).
Intrigued, she had a bottle of wine tested and found over 350 chemicals in that single bottle! This is the ‘potion’ that is used to create consistent flavor and used to produce the wine in record time, instead of allowing the wine to create naturally.
Carol Q: So conventional wine, are they using these flavorants and additives to make the wine taste the same every time?
Cyndy A: In a mass-produced setting, large machinery is used to harvest the grapes, instead of by hand, which means that the grapes can get damaged, and moldy grapes, small rodents, insects, and debris can end up in the barrel.
To combat the oxidation from the damaged grapes, and to speed up the fermentation process, yeast, sugars, and additives such as mega purple dye are used to create a consistent product.
Carol Q: I found this image online of conventional wine which is heavily sprayed, which obviously leads to the toxin load right?
Cyndy A: This image of the person in the hazmat suit really struck me, these grapes are being heavily sprayed with chemicals, and then are going to be crushed to make wine loaded with roundup! We pay so much attention to what we’re eating, but not always to what we’re drinking.
The Scout & Cellar wines are grown without pesticides and are properly fermented without added chemicals and sugars.
Carol Q: I came across this infographic, which struck me that some people may not realize their wine isn’t vegan because of the animal by-products used in the process!
Cyndy A: You would never imagine the products that are used to achieve consistent texture and taste! Wine is clarified through a process called “fining”, this removes tiny naturally occurring particles with fining agents which could include casein (a milk protein), albumin (egg whites), gelatin (animal protein), isinglass (fish bladder protein) and bentonite (clay).
These fining agents are not additives to the wine: they are filtered out along with the haze molecules, however, the end result is not vegan. A natural fining process is achieved by the particles being allowed to naturally settle.
Carol Q: One of the first things I noticed with S & C wine is no ‘allergy’ type response, is this due to no sulfites?
Cyndy A: All wines will have some sulfites, these are naturally occurring antioxidant and antibacterial compounds in grapes and protect the wine from oxygen until it reaches your glass. Because of the slow-crafted, intentional way Scout & Cellar wines are made, they require very little sulfur additions to remain stable. Most have less than 50ppm, all must have less than 100ppm. As a point of reference, the FDA allows up to 350ppm
Carol Q: The name ‘Scout & Cellar’ is literally because she’s sourcing wine around the world right? How does she verify the wine is clean crafted?
Cyndy A: Integrity is everything to our founder Sarah, she builds relationships with small growers, to understand their practices in the vineyard and verifying the viticulture and vinification process behind each wine.
Each wine is tested with at least three distinct lab tests to confirm that there are no synthetic pesticides or chemicals present and there is less than 100ppm of total SO2. Less than 3 % of the wine world wide meets this criteria!
Carol Q: Wine sales are up 30 % nationally, people are drinking a lot of wine! Wine could be sabotaging your diet with added sugars! I believe this wine is actually great as part of a low carb diet right?
Cyndy A: Some wines have as much sugar as a glazed donut! For example, this pinot noir has 15 grams of sugar versus 0.9 grams in Scout & Cellar wine!
*** UPDATE*** FLASH SALE!!!
This amazing clean wine deal just came cross my desk and I had to share right away!!
The celebration continues at Scout & Cellar with a BIRTHDAY SALE , starting today, August 27th at 11 AM CDT through Monday, August 31st at 11 AM CDT, you will receive a 13% discount on all a la cart bottles and mixables, no code required!!
Click here to learn more about Scout & Cellar and order a bottle to try!
