Believe it or not, although wine is made from grapes, that doesn’t necessarily make it vegan (or vegetarian). This is due to a winemaking process called fining. After fermentation, all wines are cloudy and contain tiny molecules such as proteins, tartrates, tannins and phenolics. Despite all these being natural and harmless, they are not so much desired from wine-drinkers who prefer their wines to be bright and clear.
Vegan wines
Most wines will self-stabilize and self-fine if left long enough. However, modern wine styles and market pressures demand a faster process and producers use fining agents to speed up the process along.
They essentially act like a magnet – attracting the molecules around it – they coagulate and create fewer but larger particles, which can then be more easily removed.
These additives can contain animal-derived products such as:
- Gelatine (derived from animal skin and connective tissue)
- Isinglass (derived from fish bladders)
- Albumen (egg whites)
- Casein (milk proteins)
These fining agents are known as processing aids, that means they are not additives but they are just added to wine in order to remove unwanted substances, all of which are then filtered out.
This is the reason why fining agents are not labeled as ingredients on the final bottle of wine. However, tiny traces may be absorbed into the wine during the fining process making it not vegan-friendly.
So how do you make a vegan wine?
As we have already said, vegan wines are made without animal products, so winemakers either leave the sediments to sink naturally to the bottom of the barrels, or use non-animal fining products. The most common ones are:
- Bentonite clay
- Activated charcoal
- Silica gel
- Pea gelatine
With the rise of veganism, an increasing number of wine producers around the world are adopting a more natural approach to not fine or filter their wines.
How does the customer understand that the wine is vegan?
Generally speaking, it can be difficult to figure out if a wine is vegan by looking at the label alone.
The term Unfined/Unfiltered is sometimes used on bottles to show that the wine was made without the use of fining agents, so look out for this if you’re on the hunt for a vegan-friendly bottle.
You should also look out for variants of this in other languages, for example: non-filtre (French wines), sins-filtrar (Spanish wines) or non-filtrato (Italian wines).
Even though natural wine is vegan, it doesn’t mean that organic and biodynamic wines are always vegan-friendly.
Organic and biodynamic purely refers to the way in which the grapes are grown, not the processing involved.
So, if in doubt, always look up the producer, as they will make it clear on their website whether their wines are vegan.
Why choose a vegan wine?
Many wine lovers believe that vegan wines taste different. Of course not! This is just like any other wine except it does not contain any animal derived substances.
So here are some good reasons to choose vegan wines:
- It is a wine for everyone: vegan wine can be drunk by any person, whether omnivorous, vegetarian or vegan and the combination with food can be among the most refined and interesting.
- It is as good as the others: as already mentioned, there are no differences with conventional wines in terms of flavours or alcohol content.
- Prices are very often the same and so the winemaking process. The difference is in the passion that leads producers to create an authentic wine, without using any components derived from animals.
Good news for vegans
Recently there has been a rise of veganism along with a considerable increase in desire for organic and biodynamic wines. According to Decanter, “wine bars and retailers have started to market some wines as vegan friendly in response to the growth of veganism in several countries, including the UK and US. According to The Vegan Society, 600,000 people in the UK were vegan in 2019, compared to 150,000 in 2014.
Veganuary is increasingly part of the New Year calendar, slotting into the post-festive detox trend. In January 2019, 250,000 people signed up to take part in the UK, according to The Vegan Society”.
