What’s Lurking in Your Wine?
When thinking of wine, most of us don’t think about gelatin, milk, and fish bladders. But many wine producers do in fact use these animal products in their winemaking. With the growing trend and number of people going vegan, vegan wine has indeed become a thing.
Just this year, The UK’s Co-op retailer has said it plans to expand its vegan wine range to 100 labels this year and has challenged all of its wine suppliers ‘to make wines vegan where they can’. Rival retailer Majestic Wine has added vegan and vegetarian symbols to the wine information on its relaunched website.(1) Many other wineries are seeking to certify their wines vegan to respond to consumer demand, due to a population that is becoming more and more concerned with what ingredients actually are in their food and drink. The natural wine movement has grown in tandem with the whole, plant-based food interest and producers are paying attention.
What, you say? Isn’t wine just grapes?
Unfortunately, in many cases, no. We like to think about wine in a romantic sense as just containing grapes, a little yeast, some oak barrels and a lot of love. But making wine is challenging, especially so now with the climate changes around the world, the unpredictability of the weather and rising expenses. Hence, winemakers have to resort to additives and techniques to add and remove flavors, stabilize and making the wines look ‘pretty’, and taste consistent for the consumer.
Not all that is added to wine is natural. Examples of additives in wine include sugar, tartaric acid, copper sulfate, calcium carbonate, stabilizers such as acetaldehyde and dimethyl dicarbonate, powdered tannins, phosphates and hydrogen peroxide. More than 60 government-approved additives can be used in order to alter the texture, flavor, aroma and body of wines. 1 These aids are usually intended to save time and help control the winemaking process, particularly in larger wineries that make wines that need to be released within a few months of harvest for cash-flow purposes. Should you want to avoid these added ingredients in wine, it’s a good idea to look for smaller production wineries who priorities quality over quantity and allow for time to develop the wine naturally.
While it is common to use a number of the above-mentioned additives across the board, the best winemakers in the world all agree that additives should be used sparingly and let nature do most of the work. This is why it becomes important to learn about quality wines and choose “low-intervention” wines, or wines that have gone through minimal manipulation.
Where do animal-derived products enter in the winemaking process?
Animal by-products are often used in the fining process. Fining is a winemaking process with the aim of clarification and stabilization of a wine whereby a fining agent, often times animal-derived as mentioned above, is added to coagulate or absorb and quickly precipitate the colloids suspended in it. Fining is important because, by encouraging these microscopic particles to fall out of the wine, the wine is less likely to become hazy or cloudy after bottling. Consumers don’t want hazy wine, they like a clear and beautiful looking liquid.
Most young wines, if left long enough under good conditions, would eventually reach the same state of clarity as fining can achieve within months, but fining saves money for the producer and therefore eventually the consumer. (2)
In the fining stage of the winemaking process, oftentimes isinglass (fish bladders), albumen (egg whites), honey, rennet, crustacean shells, casein, skim milk, egg whites and gelatin are used to remove proteins, yeast, and other particles as well as get rid of any bitter flavors.(3)
Fortunately, many wineries are now electing to forego these animal-derived agents, not only because of the growing vegan movement and requests for vegan wines but because eggs, milk and fish products are also big allergens for many people. Using animal-based fining ingredients is also more expensive.
Animal-friendly agents include bentonite clay, carbon, ceramic filters, and activated charcoal, limestone, diatomaceous earth, kaolin clay, plant casein, silica gel, and vegetable plaques, to name a few. Vegetable-based gelatin are also becoming more popular. (4) These agents do exactly the same job as animal-derived agents and are being more frequently and widely utilized by vineyards.
Then there are also winemakers who choose not to fine at all, simply because they believe important flavors, aromas, and desired mouthfeel will be removed alongside the unwanted proteins and deposits. Instead, they rely on periodical racking, which simply is to siphon the wine must from one container to the next and leaving sediment behind. As a general rule, white and rose wines are more often fined than red wines, as any haze or particles are more visible in lighter colored wines.
So how do you know if a wine is vegan?
Wine labels typically don’t indicate whether a wine is vegan or not, although more producers are looking to get certified and label stating that they are. For starters, you can ask for “unfined” wines, which means no fining has taken place, and thus, no animal ingredients used in the process of making the wine. But beware, not everyone knows this information, so it does require some research. You can also look for wines from importers and companies who specialize in natural, low-intervention wines, like Jenny & Francois and Louis Dressner. I also recommend the website rawwine.com for a more extensive list of producers.
It is not, however, only in the fining process you may be concerned that the wine is 100% vegan. A large number of producers utilize fertilizers containing fish meals, fish bones, eggshells, and manure. The latter might be acceptable for vegans if it has come from animals that are roaming free and not used for food, as manure is a natural byproduct of a living animal.
Other winemaking methods such as biodynamic farming, frequently utilize animal by-products such as cow horns and hoofs, manure, snails, slugs, blood, and bones as well as using animals to plow the soil. It is important to note that not every biodynamic farming uses animals or animal by-products, as there are many interpretations of this way of growing grapes and produce. Even so, biodynamic does not equal vegan.
Animal-based agents are not exclusive to winemaking. Most conventional, organic and backyard garden produce is commonly grown with factory farm and slaughterhouse by-products, such as bone meal, blood meal, feather meal, fishmeal, egg byproducts (ground up to live male chicks), and tankage (a euphemism for everything leftover), plus animal manures from these and other sources. This is obviously not vegan, but even non-vegans should be concerned with these ingredients being fed into the soil.
Why is this a problem? Using these animal by-products can create a potential public health risk for spongiform encephalopathies and possibly other zoonotic diseases. Contamination of produce by E.coli, salmonella, campylobacter, and listeria, to mention a few examples, becomes a concern, not to mention the potential residues of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, heavy metals, and parasites commonly found in manure.
Many farmers will tell you they need animal by-products to properly nourish their soil. This is not at all necessary. By using a no-till/rotational method of cultivation, with top dressings of compost and mulch, plus incorporating green manures into the soil will provide a healthful, easy and healthy method of growing produce and vines. 2 Kelp tea, alfalfa meal, beans, and flowers are just a few examples of plant-based agents farmers can use to cultivate a proper growing environment.
The website barnivore.com will list vegan-friendly wines, and you can try typing in a wine that you see in their search engine to see if it pops up. The list is ever increasing, so it may be a hit or miss if you find the wine you are looking for.
Vegan Wines, an online wine club and shop, personally visits each vineyard and asks questions to the owners and vineyard managers of each place, ensuring that the wines not only have not employed animal-based agents in their fining but also that no animal parts are used in their soil or fertilizers.
A couple of examples of wineries that produce vegan wines include:
- Albet i Noya (Spain)
- Amista Winery (CA)
- Argyle (OR)
- Billsboro Winery (NY)
- Hermann Wiemer (NY)
- Seghesio Family Vineyards (CA)
- Querciabella (Tuscany, Italy).
In addition to seeking out vegan wines, you might also want to be mindful of other additives hiding in your wine that may be harmful. Unfortunately, even organic wines can contain copper, which is essentially a heavy metal – not exactly ideal to ingest. The best way to go about finding wines that have as little as possible added to them is to seek out natural wines and wineries that farm as close to nature as possible.
As the popularity of veganism continues to rise in 2019, the demand for vegan wines are increasing, and more wineries elect to certify or label their wines vegan. While this gives consumers some comfort, it’s always best to check with wineries to find out their actual winegrowing and winemaking practice to make sure it’s in alignment with your own personal standards.
References
1 Vegan Trend Raises Questions for Wine, Decanter Magazine. January 16, 2018. Web. August 1, 2018.
2 Fining Agents. The Australian Wine Research Institute. Web. July 31, 2018.
3 Robinson, Jancis. The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2006. Print.
4 Is Wine Vegan? PETA. Web. August 1, 2018
5 ECFR.GOV, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, December 31, 2018. Web. February 7, 2019.
6 Veganic Gardening PDX Facebook Group, Veganic Overview February 7, 2019
Sunny is a vegan lifestyle consultant, chef, wine educator and food blogger. She works with both private and corporate clients, helping people transition to a plant-based diet and vegan way of life, as well as operating as a consultant for restaurants and other food establishments who are looking to veganize their food menus and wine lists. Sunny is the wine director for Vegan Wines, the first vegan online wine club in the United States, and is passionate about animal advocacy. She lives in Beacon, NY with her husband and three dogs: Scooby, Tofu and Nacho. You can contact sunny by email sunny@sunnygandara.com.
