Vegan Wine: What Makes Wine Vegan?
- During traditional winemaking, wine is filtered using animal-derived products, which is why wine typically isn't vegan.
- Making vegan wine means skipping clarification or using alternative clarifying agents.
- Vegan wines let you enjoy wine while following a vegan lifestyle.
- Vegan wines aren't always labeled. Look for certification seals, choose unfiltered wines, or ask the winemaker directly.
Vegan wine keeps growing in popularity. And the same question keeps coming up: what's animal-derived about wine, anyway? Isn't it just grapes? Well, not quite. Here we'll explain how vegan wine is made and how you can identify vegan wines.
How Is Wine Made?
Before we dive into vegan wine, let's quickly recap how wine is made. Put simply, grapes are harvested, pressed, and then fermented into wine. During this process, yeast converts the sugar in the grapes into alcohol. So far, so vegan, right?
Is Wine Vegan, or Not?
Up to this point in production, wine really is a vegan product. But now the cellar master gets to work. If they bottled the wine exactly as it is at this stage, drinking it would be a questionable experience. The yeast, which so helpfully converted the sugar into alcohol, is still floating in the wine, making the liquid quite cloudy. That's not exactly what you want in your glass. So in the next step, the wine is clarified and filtered so it later looks appealingly clear and bright. But what's actually animal-derived in wine? It's precisely during this clarification step that animal-derived products traditionally come into play. Winemakers have relied on animal proteins to clarify wine for centuries. This usually means egg whites, but protein from fish bladders, skim milk, or gelatin can also be used to clarify wine. These animal-derived products bind the cloudy particles in the wine and settle at the bottom, so the clarified wine can be drawn off from above. Since the wine comes into contact with these animal-derived products, traditionally made wine isn't vegan.
How Is Vegan Wine Made?
To get a vegan wine, one option is simply skipping the clarification step altogether. This is actually the case for many red wines, which is why they can often be considered vegan red wine. To do this, the cellar master simply gives the cloudy particles enough time to settle to the bottom of the barrel during production. But to get a crystal-clear white wine, alternative clarifying agents can be used instead. These include mineral clay, bentonite, or activated charcoal. Some winemakers are also experimenting with plant-based proteins derived from peas or wheat. Clarifying these vegan wines takes a bit longer, but is otherwise just as reliable as with traditionally produced wines.
Are Vegan Wines Better?
When it comes to whether vegan wines are better, there's really only one clear answer: no! Aside from the choice of clarifying agent, vegan wine doesn't differ from other wines. No better grapes are used, and the production process isn't different in any other way. But of course, vegan wines are the perfect way to bring a vegan lifestyle into your glass, not just onto your plate.
How Can I Identify Vegan Wine?
Just like with food, wines can be labeled as vegan on the bottle. However, this isn't required by law, it's a decision each wine producer makes individually. Common labels include the vegan label from the Vegane Gesellschaft Deutschland e.V. or the V-Label from the European Vegetarian Union. If you see this logo on a label, you can be confident it's a vegan wine in your glass. The term "unfiltered" can also be a hint that a wine is vegan. If you want to be absolutely sure, simply contact the winemaker directly.
Vegan Wine: Trustworthy Certifications to Look For When Buying:
- The vegan label from Vegane Gesellschaft Deutschland e.V.
- The V-Label from the European Vegetarian Union
- The Vegan Flower from the Vegan Society of England
