Day 18 - Booze Part 2 - Wine

This is part two of our vegan booze series. After we covered beer's potential traps, we are going to look at wine and what makes it vegan or not.

Now, I can't claim to be an aficionado of wine. Actually, I know the difference between red and white, and that's about it. Generally wine makes me cringe when I drink it, so I tend to not drink it all that often. This is a shame, because wine is fancy. If I drank wine, maybe I would be more fancy and people would tell me that my shirt is on inside out instead of letting me walk around work all day looking like an idiot.

That's what fancy people get. Respect.




However, I realize that many out there do NOT share my indifference towards grape juice's grown-up brother, so it's worth looking at.

Just like with beer, the problem vegans have with wine is the fining process. Fining is adding a material to the wine to make the tiny particles drop out. The particles can be filtered and the wine is much more clear, which I suppose is a good thing. The material used to clarify wine, again just like beer, is really the make-or-break as far as vegans go.

Some of the non-vegan materials used for fining wines:
- edible gelatins (made from bones)
- isinglass (made from the swim bladders of fish)
- casein and potassium caseinate (milk proteins)
- animal albumin (egg albumin and dried blood powder)

Ok, but really. Blood powder? They use eggs and BLOOD in wine? And you thought it was just grapes. Ha!

If you didn't catch the first edition of our three stop trip through boozeland, the site that we use for finding vegan beverages is Barnivore. They have a HUGE list of wines that are and are not vegan.

An important thing to note. There is a lot more discrepancy about wines being vegan or not. A lot more of them are off-limits when compared to beers, so don't assume that it's ok. That's a tough part about being vegan, you gotta actually look stuff up.

A couple examples of non-vegan wines are the immortal Charles Shaw (red is ok), Columbia Crest Vineyards and Ernest and Julio Gallo. These were just a couple that jumped out at me, so I'm sure that there are many more on the list that are familiar to folks.

Not Two-buck Chuck!!!




Unfortunately, being vegan doesn't mean that the wine will make you feel any less horrible if you partake too strongly. So be smart about it!

The third and final installment will cover hard alcohol in all the many forms it takes. Some might not come as a surprise to you that they aren't vegan (Bailey's, I'm lookin at you).

Be Healthy,
Brendan