#126 Christine Fitzgerald – SmartVine Wine

Meet Christine:

I’d like to start with a confession, For the past 20yrs, I have been a very mean Nutritionist. Ha! It’s true, this nice face was mean! Why, because I told my clients NO wine.

It was very black and white. Having been a former competitive gymnast training for the Olympics I took that no pain no gain approach into my nutrition practice. I didn’t see it any other way. If my clients drank wine it would erase all of the hard work they were putting into their diet and exercise.

There just wasn’t a wine out there that I approved of that would keep a client on track with their health as well as allow them a full social life without the guilt and side effects of headaches, weight, bloating, blood sugar problems, etc.

So instead of creating a complete wine initially I created a day after the remedy (organic turmeric, chicory, muscadine grape skin, and lemon peel) to meet clients halfway, drink your wine, here is something for the day after symptoms which erased them all but the base wine was still not healthy.

I got a little nicer!

BUT You can’t inject a twinkie with Vitamin C and call it healthy!  Right?!

I set out to figure out to infuse my day after remedy into an organic wine. I bought a bunch of organic wines and started doing the infusions in my kitchen!

Sadly, it took a lot of time and money – I had to not only find a winemaker that would help me create this new idea and do multiple lab tests on it but I had to find a vineyard whose practices met my standards. I thought, this will be easy, I’ll just find multiple organic vineyards to source from and start calling winemakers.

Wrong!
Organic wine has more chemicals in it than I agreed with including high levels of glyphosate, the cancer-causing ingredient in the weed killer roundup.  

After many lab tests on vineyards up and down the coast, we found a vineyard in Santa Barbara that was glyphosate free and adhered to organic standards.

And an amazing award-winning winemaker in the same area willing to take on my idea and make the wine taste delicious!

Smartvine was born! Smartvine launched on my daughter’s due date 16 months ago! I became a mom and started a business all at once. Being a mom is incredible! Watching my daughter learn and challenge herself everyday inspires me.

SHOW NOTES:

ABOUT CHRISTINE

• I grew up as a former competitive gymnast training for the Olympics 
• The importance of diet and nutrition were pounded into my head to have the most perfect body, physique, and mental capacity to take on the world and be confident and healthy and making people do the same
• I became a nutritionist and I have been for 20 years and I create a wine
• I was a mean nutritionist and when they ask why I am mean, I told them that it is because there’s no wine
• I took that no pain, no gain approach nutrition practice and that I am never going to meet my goals if I drink my wine
• Because I knew what was out there, I knew it is loaded with sugar, chemicals and we really don’t know what we are drinking
• And when we drink to eat, we get a headache, we are bloated and who wants to work out the next day, who want to do the keto diet, who wants to do anything to help themselves that is the compound effect of drinking unhealthy wine
• I started creating a day after remedy
• I created this 4-part day remedy which has turmeric, chicory, muscadine grape skin, and a lemon peel, and I put it all together, and it was working
• Over time, I thought, I got to do the whole product
• So, my research started, and I started buying a bunch of organic wines and thought on how am I going to this, how is it going to work, how is it going to taste
• There is the purpose behind everything I put in there
• For example, the chicory is prebiotic
• As we know, alcohol depletes the bacteria in your gut which is our immune system, helps us absorb nutrients, digest and when that gets low or compromised by diet, then we get loaded and we start gaining weight in the belly
• The chicory root actually is a prebiotic and it feeds the good bacteria back in so that the gut is no harm and does not create the side effects that the alcohol is creating
• The lemon peel is also great for the liver
• It helps flush the toxins, bad fats, protects the liver
• Muscadine grape skin increases the resveratrol content by 30% in the wine
• People did not realize that you need to drink a thousand gallons of wine or 30 bottles in one sitting, to get the amount resveratrol you will need to create a healthy heart, anti-aging – all that good stuff
• And now it’s in there and you don’t have to drink 30 bottles
• It also has something called, ellagic acid that helps us to burn fat
• It is very well-known that the grape skin is very powerful in helping us metabolize fats in our body and liver
• Turmeric is a liver protectant and helps us balance the sugar
• All of these 4 things are incredible antivirals and antihistamines
• It’s powerful when you get really healthy base products and then you add really good goodies into it which you can’t even taste
• There is a lot of gluten in wine and it’s because it’s aged in oak barrels and they use a flour paste to seal the barrels, and we use stainless steals so, it’s gluten-free
• We are certified vegan, we do not have gluten in our wine, we just know what goes on
  
• The resveratrol is all in our three wines because we put the same for herbs into every single bottle
• Our wine has less sugar
• Wine has 130 grams of sugar per bottle, that is what we are calculating when we were lab testing
• There are 400 types of white grapes and these grape varietals, they can taste sweet but they won’t increase insulin, blood sugar and cause that blood sugar roller coaster
• People get a headache from wine because it’s like having a bad fruity drink in a bar
• We do not add any sugar, what we have is natural
• My favorite is the rosè because people are drinking it now all year not just during summer
• The TTB where the alcohol regulation is, is 72 fewer chemicals in a bottle of wine and we have zero, and we are glyphosate-free
• We are transparent, we work with integrity
• We want people to know that what they eat is as important as what they drink – it all goes together
• Our wine has 2 grams of carbs per glass or 5 ounces, 110 calories per glass and 1 gram of sugar in the bottle
• We have just been to California
• We have been up and down the coast
• We do local events here in my area, East Bay

WORDS OF WISDOM

• Just pay attention
• You’re worth it
• Always pay attention because you are smarter, wiser, and you know what’s good and what’s bad
• You need to be here to hug people because they need it
• They need your kiss, your encouragement, they need you to be well and they need you to stand up and fight the further children and your health
• The way the world is right now, you need to figure out what you can control and that’s by keeping your eyes open

WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• Website: smartvinewine.com
• enter code heg for 15% off
• Instagram: smartvinewine
• Facebook: Smart Vine

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