Most beer is vegan. But many wines are not vegan.

Now, it’s absolutely up to you to decide how vegan you want to be. You get to draw your own line. If you want to ignore trace ingredients, and eat “nearly vegan,” by all means go right ahead.

I’d much rather you be “nearly vegan” than not vegan at all.

But in case you do want to avoid wines that aren’t technically vegan, here’s a good description of exactly how some wines aren’t vegan:

“For the record, both conventional and organic wine makers use ‘animal products’ during production to clear or ‘fine’ the wine, to keep it from turning cloudy or to remove off tastes. Fining works by electrostatic attraction, if the element in the wine that needs to be removed has a negative charge, then a fining agent with a positive charge will be added. The fining agent acts as a magnet and collects the unwanted matter in the wines which sinks to the bottom of the tank. The then clear wine is racked or decanted off the sediment into a clean tank. Since the wine is finally filtered at the time of bottling no traces of the fining agents (made of long molecular chains) are left in the finished product. Fining agents of animal origin commonly used are egg whites, egg albumin, casein (milk protein), gelatin (derived from animal bones) and isinglass (derived from fish ).” (source)

Here’s a more concise description:

“Brewmasters, winemakers, and distillers may include animal ingredients in their products directly, or they might use them in the processing and filtration.”

“These ingredients don’t usually show up on the label, so the only way to find out is to ask.“

In fact, I remember hearing once during a winery tour about how the winemaker “tossed in a batch of steaks” during the wine making process to give the final product a unique flavor. Ewwww.

Luckily, some wines are now featuring a “vegan-friendly” label indicating that their wines haven’t used animals in the process. For those wines that don’t bear the label, you can ask them yourself, or you can search barnivore.

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Sections: Vegan Food
Topics: veg, Vegan, wine