Remember to Drink Your Wine: Resveratrol May Reverse Alzheimer’s

May 15th, 2012 - Jill Ettinger

Drinking wine

Resveratrol, the potent antioxidant found in red grapes and wine—along with chocolate, nuts and tomatoes—may hold a key in treating Alzheimer’s disease, the fatal illness with no known cure and few effective treatments in easing the symptoms that currently affect more than 5 million Americans.

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Single? Organic Foodies Now Have Their Own Dating Website

May 10th, 2012 - Jill Ettinger

Love

If eating organic carrots while everyone else around you is gorging themselves on Cheetos ever makes you feel incredibly lonely, there may be hope. OrganicMatch.com is a brand new dating service for “certified organic people” who love the organic lifestyle and want to meet someone with similar values (we’re guessing the most common first-date meeting spot is somewhere inside a Whole Foods Market?).

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Whole Foods Annual Film Fest Embraces Low-Impact ‘Digital Theaters’

March 22nd, 2012 - Jill Ettinger

Whole Foods

In an exclusive Mashable.com report on March 21, 2012, Whole Foods Market, the nation’s largest chain of natural and organic supermarkets, announced that its third annual Do Something Reel Film Festival celebrating feature and documentary films focused on food and environmental issues, is taking the event online with streaming digital content that will help fund green filmmaking grants.

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Whole Foods Market to Carry First Sulfite-Free Wines from Italy and Spain

January 13th, 2012 - Jill Ettinger

Red wine

Whole Foods Market, the nation’s leading supermarket chain focused on organic and natural foods, household and personal care items, announced that it will become the first national retailer to carry USDA certified organic NSA (no sulfites added) wines from legendary wine-making regions in Italy and Spain.

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GMO Wine Coming to a Carafe Near You… Soon

July 1st, 2011 - Jill Ettinger

Cabernet grapes

University of Florida scientists have developed grapes used in wine production that are more resistant to insects and fungus, in what may lead to the first commercially available genetically modified wine.

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Go Green Expo Comes to L.A. This Weekend

April 13th, 2011 - Jill Ettinger

Go Green Expo Comes to LA

Go Green Expo makes its third appearance in Los Angeles this weekend at the LA Convention Center with hundreds of vendors and dozens of speakers, films and performances for the whole family.

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Argentinian Restaurant Recycles 5000 Wine Bottles Into Ceiling

March 3rd, 2011 - Jill Ettinger

An Argentinian  restaurant uses more than 5000 wine bottles in ceiling /></p>
<p>Ginger Restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina caught the eye of <a href=TreeHugger’s Paula Alvarado who reported on their use of more than 5,000 wine bottles plucked from the trash and turned into an impressive looking and acoustics-improving ceiling.

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Turn Organic Wine into an Elegant Sauce

September 6th, 2010 - Barbara Feiner

Scallops with Wine Reduction

Drinking organic wine: a pleasurable way to help protect your heart.

Cooking with organic wine: a quick way to add sophistication to any dish.

One of the easiest, but underutilized, ways to glaze meat, fish and seafood, salads and veggies, and desserts is to make a wine reduction sauce. As the name implies, you’re simmering wine over a low heat until it reduces by half and becomes syrupy:

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Organic Beer is Bubbling Up in New Zealand

May 18th, 2010 - Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Truth be told, any kind of beer is good beer – I’m not picky – but nowadays new types of beer are popping up…organic beer.

Go to your local vegan restaurant and you’re sure to find organic booze. They usually come in brown bottles with artsy labels.

And the organic beer trend is not only picking up steam in the United States, but a brewery in New Zealand is changing the countries perception of what good ale is.

Mike’s Organic Brewery is seeing a major up tick in sales, especially as more and more young people get hip to organic – those whippersnappers sure love their hooch!

Special beers or “craft beers,” like organic brews, are getting popular in New Zealand. So much so that Mike’s is having a hard time keeping local stores stocked.

Instead of slogging back pint after pint, people in New Zealand are drinking fewer beers when they go out, so they want a higher quality cocktail.

Organic beers are a lot like micro-brews. They’re all pretty different; usually stouter and darker, not watery like conventional drinks.

Mike’s brewery mixes it up, offering a porter, strawberry ale, pilsner, and others. And they’re so popular one retailer had to place an emergency order days after the store received it’s first delivery.

I chill out in New York City a lot and at my favorite vegan joint they sell a few organic beers. They taste interesting and they do the job too – wink, wink.

Image Credit: Mike’s Organic Brewery

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Do Certified Organic Wines Contain Sulfites?

December 14th, 2009 - Laura Klein

red-wineAs you start developing a trained green, consumer eye and become a savvy label reader, you’ll notice in the wine world there are quite a few wines that are “made with organic grapes,” and few carry the USDA’s certified organic seal. Certified organic wines are a rare find on store shelves. So what’s the difference between these two wine labels? I get this question all the time and here’s your answer.

The National Organic Program (NOP), has set the same standards for wine as it has for food. USDA certification is strict. It guarantees that grapes are grown without synthetic pesticides or chemicals; and the wine is processed without added sulfites or sulfur dioxide. Bottom line, you can’t add preservatives to certified organic food products or wines. And sulfites are considered by the USDA a preservative.

Certified organic wines, can have naturally occurring sulfites (all wines contain naturally occurring sulfites as a byproduct of the fermentation process), but the total sulfite level must be less than 20 parts per million. So for the for those who are super-sensitive to sulfites (asthma sufferers, for example), certified organic wines are the way to go. If sulfites are added to the wine and the total count of sulfites in the wine is taken above 10 parts per million, it must make the statement, “Contains Sulfites.”

There are four wineries in California that take the additional step of processing their wine without added sulfites and are certified organic. They are Frey Vineyards, Coates Vineyards in Orleans, La Rocca Vineyards in Forest Ranch, and Organic Wine Works.

If you want to buy organic wines that don’t contain added sulfites, my top tip is to read the label.  The ingredients and process used to make the wine will determine the label it carries.

Check out our articles and videos on organic wines:

Red Organic Wine Tasting – Episode 19

Wine and Cheese Tasting – Episode 23

Organic Vines for Better Wines

Interviews with Two Italian Organic Winemakers
Winter Organic Wine Pairings
Organic Wine Crush and Fermentation DIY Wine Making
Organic Wine-A-Tasting DIY Wine Making

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