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 Spanish wine can be good for you!

So many people move to Spain to improve their quality of life. Did you know that Spanish wine, organically farmed, can be good for you?

There are benefits to living here on the Costa Blanca- a lower cost of living, no commute to the office, better weather and lifestyle but without a healthy body, what use is any of it?

Part of the attraction of living here on the Costa Blanca is sipping a tasty glass of red wine while overlooking the marina in Cabo Roig or down at the La Mirada overlooking La Zenia beach.

What though if we told you that you can make that experience even better for you?

The wine industry has changed worldwide since the recent explosion in the popularity of wine, especially amongst more mature drinkers. Of course, many producers value profits above a healthy product and that is bad for us consumers.
You need to be careful when you drink your healthy alternative beverage because despite all the talk of Red wine in particular being good for you, there are pitfalls.

Most people don’t realise how much sugar is in wine, especially the sweeter Australian, Californian, South African brands. The producers hide the taste of the sugar with tannins but the wrong wines can have as much as three times the amount of sugar in as a Coke!

Not in Spain though, where you can find wine lower in sugar than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

One of the things you must look out for in choosing your Spanish red wine is the alcohol levels. The wine should be less than 12.5%- Producers add sugar to get the alcohol levels higher than this- plus they allow a 1.5% buffer zone.

This means a wine with an alcohol volume of 14% printed on the bottle can actually have a real alcohol volume of 15.5% – not only speeding up the time it takes you to get messy, it also means a whole lot more sugar consumed by you.

What else do we look for in healthy Spanish wine?

Most foreign, especially American wines are constantly sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and more to protect their crops- In the north of Spain, and apparently in Murcia, most vineyards don’t use them. So, no chemicals in the soil, on the grapes or in your wine glass. There are up to 800 grapes in a bottle of Spanish wine- that’s a large surface area of thin porous skin but not a problem if you choose biodynamic, natural or organic Spanish wine.

Restrictions and a conscious decision by many Spanish wine producers mean Spanish wine tends to have less additives than its foreign counterparts.

In California for example, wine makers can use 76 additives without putting them on the ingredients list- 76!!

Sugar
Artificial colours to make the wine look purple.
Corn syrup.
More sugar
Ammonia 
De-foaming agents
Velcorin- an additive so potent it can only be applied by workers wearing hazmat suits- a deadly product that will burn your skin if applied directly- but they can add it to wine!

Much Spanish wine is dry farmed- this means farmers in Spain rely exclusively on normal natural rain fall- the way it was supposed to be.

As well as a healthier environment, this technique produces a better wine – a wine with greater flavour than those produced on an industrial scale.

The very best part is yet to come…

Much of the wine produced and consumed in Spain is carb free- that’s right, it fits in with Keto diets, low carb diets and can actually be good for you.

Many restaurants on the Costa Blanca are selling tasty healthy red wine.

You can really impress your waiter (or totally melt his head) by asking for wine with the following characteristics:

• Minimal intervention in the growing process- the less touches on the wine the better.

• Alcohol content less than 12.5%- this alone is a key to finding healthy wine.

• Sulphites under 75ppm. This means very little added, mostly naturally occurring.

• Mycotoxin and Ochratoxin A free.

• Organically farmed in Spain. (if you buy organic wines from South Africa, the environment suffers by the fact it needs to somehow get here!)

• Dry farmed- only natural rain.

• Sugar levels under 1 g/L. No sugar or carbs means you don’t have to let your belt out an extra notch!

• Ideally older growth vines. Many vineyards in Murcia are 35-100 years old.

• Native to Spain yeasts

• Minimal filtering. You´ll actually find some bottom sediment in your glass.

The last thing I forget to mention about this healthy Spanish wine

If it meets the points above, you don’t get a hangover after drinking a whole bottle- that’s right, no hangover wine.

What are you waiting for? Get on a flight to Alicante, buy a property on the Costa Blanca from the nice people at Comaskey properties in La Zenia, and pop the cork on a bottle of Spanish wine!