You don’t have to be vegan to love these virtuous wines

As more of us embrace plant-based diets, Victoria Moore finds out how wines can be cruelty-free too – and recommends 15 bottles suitable for herbivores (and meat-eaters)

hat is a vegan wine? I thought I knew the answer to this question until I began to discuss it. The obvious issue for vegan oenophiles is the fining agent, which may be used to clarify and stabilise a wine before it is bottled. Not all wines are fined. Broadly speaking, if you are buying a very cheap supermarket wine, it is highly likely to have been fined to make absolutely certain that it’s not cloudy or unstable, and perhaps also to soften harsh tannins (in a red). Beyond that – I wouldn’t even like to apply any rules of thumb; some winemakers fine, some prefer not to if they can help it.

Possible fining agents include egg white, gelatin (derived from animal collagen), isinglass (derived from fish bladders), casein (a milk protein), bentonite (a vegan-friendly clay) and polyvinylpolypyrrolidone (PVPP, a synthetic polymer). The fining agent passes through the wine, collecting solid debris as it does so, and is then removed. There should be absolutely no trace of it in the finished wine, but a vegan wine is classed as one that has been made using only vegan-friendly fining agents, or no fining agents at all.

Why, you may be thinking, don’t all winemakers just stick to the bentonite and keep things simple? The reason is that different fining agents have different properties and make a different contribution to the process. For instance, the Australian Wine Institute advises its winemakers that albumen is a very good fining agent for red wines with some age, and tends not to remove protective colloids, and that bentonite gives only average clarity to white wines but can treat and prevent protein instability.

And so a range of fining agents continue to be used; and if you want to be sure you’re not getting a bottle made from one of those derived from an animal product, you need to look for a Page 14-15 wine that is marked as being vegan (or vegetarian for those who don’t mind casein or albumen).

On the high street, M&S is one of the leaders in the field of vegan wines. “There has been a move towards a more plant-based approach to eating,” says Hazel Macrae of the retailer. “It’s a major trend that we see not just in January but throughout the year, and at M&S we reflect it in both the food and the wine departments. Our wine buyer Sue Daniels has been championing vegan wines for years, and as a result, where it’s possible for us to make a vegan wine, we do. Over half our wine range is vegan.”

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