The short answer is No, because of something called “fining agents”, which are often made with egg whites and animal proteins. Scroll down to get to the bottom of this!
First of all, yes – wine is made out of grapes and grapes are fruits, so it’s not wrong to assume wine is vegan. But if you look further down the production line, as the grape juice is being fermented in the cellar, you’ll see tiny organic compounds such as proteins, tartrates and tannins floating about. Although these compounds are all natural, they sometimes add a cloudy texture and bitterness to the wine, which doesn’t sound very appetising to most winemakers and drinkers.
Enter "Fining Agents"
In order to achieve the clear consistency, a lot of wine producers use something called “fining agents” to help with the filtering process. These fining agents are like magnets and they are great at sucking up all these molecules and turning them into larger particles, which makes them easier to be removed. Now whether a wine is vegan or not very much depends on these fining agents, because most of the time they are derived from animal products such as egg whites, milk casein or fish bladder protein. Even though these agents will eventually be precipitated out along with the molecules, the fact that the making of the wine involves animal byproducts takes away the vegan label.
Let Us Do The Filtering For You
The good news is, at Bodhi, you don’t have to squint your eyes to look for the vegan stamp, because our team only source wines that use vegan-friendly fining agents such as bentonite (formed from volcanic ash) and activated charcoal to ensure every bottle we pop and every glass we pour is cruelty-free. Cheers!
Click here to explore our vegan-friendly wine list.
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