Finally Start Drinking Wine Again!
What is Old World Wine and How Is It Different?
7/25/2026
I stopped drinking any alcohol beverage for well over a decade. Any alcohol gave me a hangover that lasted days. It didn't make sense to me that wine, which was something referenced throughout history and in the bible as good, could consistently make people feel that way. So I started asking questions nobody seemed to have answers to.
One question that stood front and center was this: If traditionally fermented foods — with nothing added, nothing removed — had been valued across every society in history for their naturally occurring live cultures, why would grapes fermented the exact same natural way be any different? Why would something made in the same exact way as foods valued for centuries cause the reactions that modern wine causes?
I began researching how wine was made before modern winemaking changed everything — and how it compared to traditionally fermented foods. What I found told the story. For thousands of years all wine was fermented completely on its own — no additives, no added yeast, no intervention of any kind. After Prohibition and World War 2, commercial yeast inoculation became standard practice and the entire industry changed direction. What had been done naturally for millennia was completely abandoned in favor of a chemistry concoction. Besides adding yeast, a myriad of chemicals and additives can be added to wine without any requirement to disclose any of them on the label.
That's when it became clear. The method is the entire difference. Not the grape. Not the region. The method.
So I began to make wine exactly like that. No added yeast. No sulfites. No intervention. Spontaneous fermentation only, which means it starts completely on its own, through a miraculous living process. The word ferment is derived from the Latin word "fervere" which means "to boil”. This is precisely what begins to happen to the juice, all on its own. Then, it is aged in pure clear glass only, so no other substance such as heavy metals can be leached into the win
This method is the way wine was made for thousands of years before the industry changed. The result is a living wine unlike anything produced in a conventional winery today. After over a decade of not drinking at all because of how I felt afterwards, I can now enjoy a glass of wine the way it was always meant to be. It is the only wine or alcohol I can and will ever drink.
Jonathan Tabler
Tabler Life Wine