The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson,

and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

The definitive guide to wine.

For years, wine was my stress reliever at the end of a long day.

Having given up grains and grain-based beverages over a decade ago, I swapped beer for wine.

It was my frequent dinner companion.

Grilled, grass-fed ribeye wasn't grilled grass-fed ribeye without a glass of California

cab.

And then I suspected my one to two glasses a night habit was impairing my gut health and affecting my sleep. I ran a quick experiment,

determined that the nightly wine indeed was having a bad effect, and stopped drinking altogether.

It worked. My gut health and sleep improved, yet I still missed

wine. I missed pitting the crunch of an aged Gouda's tyrosine crystals against a big red,

lingering over a glass with an old friend, clinking glasses, giving toasts. I missed what Hemingway

called one of the most civilized things in the world

and one of the most natural things in the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection.

But I didn't miss the poor sleep and gut disturbances. Then I met Todd White of dry farm

wines at the Bulletproof Conference. He introduced me to natural wines, which use organic,

dry-farmed grapes, interesting varietals, and ancient low-input fermentation methods to produce lower

alcohol wines with greater complexity and fewer adulterants than mass market wines. When I drank some of the

wines Todd suggested, I experienced none of the gut

or sleep disturbances. Wine was back. Still, I was cowed. I'd been guilty of doing what I've

always recommended against, blindly accepting wine without doing due diligence. So, let's do that

...