Wait, Not All Wine Is Vegan?
Wait, Not All Wine Is Vegan?
The winemaking process is complicated and multi-leveled. One step renders many wines unfriendly to vegans, and we discuss how that happens.
I know this is a relatively small culprit in the grand scheme of things, but I figure there are people out there who would want to know about this (lest the Vegan Police remove your vegan powers).
When wines are freshly fermented, they typically have particles suspended in the liquid, like tannins, yeast, and proteins, giving the wine a cloudy look. Over time, these will settle on their own [...], but that can be a slow process. So, winemakers often use the fining process to clarify their wine, making it a nice, clear, non-cloudy color. Certain proteins are added to the wine and effectively latch onto those cloudy particles before dropping to the bottom of a wine barrel, where they can be filtered out. It's these proteins that are the culprit here: The most commonly used fining agents are milk or animal proteins (specifically casein and gelatin), isinglass (a gelatin derived from fish bladders), and albumin (from egg whites). [...]
There are vegan-friendly fining agents, like activated charcoal and bentonite [...]. To confirm whether a wine is vegan, you may need to contact the winemaker or company directly. You can also consult a certification organization called BevVeg, which lists legitimate vegan wines. Alternatively, if wines are labeled as "unfined" or "unfiltered," this means that no fining agent has been used, so it should be a safe bet.
My husband is extremely allergic to eggs. We’re not vegan but we often eat vegan and buy vegan products to make our lives easier. He doesn’t drink red wine because of this. I’m kind of shocked that they don’t need to divulge this on their labels. Sulphites are labelled, but for an allergen that can actually make people very ill it’s so weird that it’s not a requirement like with food products.
He notices this with craft beer as well, though not to the same extent as red wine. We used to go to craft beer fests all the time and sometimes he would get a terrible stomach ache and heartburn out of nowhere. We looked it up and egg white albumen can be used to increase the foaminess of craft beer.
I really wish we could improve the labelling requirements in North America. We often see food that is labelled vegan but “may contain” egg or other very non vegan products. I don’t think that’s good enough for vegan people and it’s certainly not good enough for my husband as cross-contamination is a very real concern. Just Egg has this issue - it shares equipment with things that contain egg.
Vegans 💪 egg allergic people
the just egg cross contamination is totally ridiculous as its the only egg alternative found in most stores. hope they soon realize that people with allergies need their products too!! im lucky my egg allergy isnt bad enough that the cross contamination bothers me, but im grateful for the vegan movement. ive been vegan only 6 years but havent eaten eggs since i was younger.
Oh my gosh, I didn't even think of it, but I'm guessing this is because in the US, the ATF rather than the FDA seems to regulate wine labeling. That seems genuinely awful to have to account for. I guess at least "may contain" seems pretty robust for the FDA-regulated stuff. My understanding has been that it's vegan if it's just in "may contain" since that's more related to cross-contamination, whereas that sort of trace contamination can be life-threatening to those with severe allergies.
Same with beer. Fortunately there’s a great website at https://barnivore.com which lists alcoholic drinks from tonnes of manufacturers and details their vegan-or-not-ness. An invaluable resource for veegs who like booze.
I read an interview a while back with an wine expert (I can't find it anymore of course..), who said that recently more wine producers have started to use bentonite (which is a sort of clay) instead of animal products to fine the wine, because it is readily available and cheaper. So more and more wines are vegan even though they're not labeled as such. It's still good to be thorough though and hope more wine producers start using bentonite.
Came here to say something similar. At this point very few wines are fined with egg, but the lack of labeling is a problem for those concerned about it.
I just learned some mezcals use meat in the distilling process after speaking with a distiller. You'd never know by looking at the labeling.
https://vinepair.com/articles/theres-a-kind-of-mezcal-thats-made-with-raw-chicken/
All Cannabis is vegan tho. They may use Chicken manure for fertilisation.
Veganism is about reducing one's own animal exploitation as much as is practicable, and because there are third-parties who track which alcohols use animal products, it should for most people be practicable to cut out non-vegan alcohols. On the other hand, with crops grown on a farm, it's not really practical to my understanding to avoid animal manure. If you do use cannabis and live in a place where growing your own is legal, then sure, you can grow it yourself, but you're never really going to fully and practically avoid animal manure without systematic change.
Manure will always be waste though. We actually have a pretty big unseen crisis, that makes us dependend on animals if we want to fertilize organically.
Our sewage is too filled with heavy metals, drugs, hormones and antibiotics, as that we could use it to fertilize fields. In germany this is prohibited by law.
So we need Animals, which is a pretty insane idea as the food that humans eat and shit out will always be lost in the process, a leaking circuit.
Small scale recycling is a possible solution.