Facts You Need To Know About Vegetarian Wine

You might have wondered in the past, while shopping at the wine retailer of your choice, about bottles labelled as ‘vegetarian wines’. Most people’s first reaction is that of wonder or disbelieve, all wine has got to be vegetarian after all, so how can this one be different?

If you are hosting a dinner party or are a vegetarian yourself, or simply concerned with the welfare and the treatment of animals in the food industry, then this post could proof helpful to you.

A lot of people are not aware of the process of how wine is actually made, the steps that are necessary to end up with that delicious bottle of marvellously full-bodied burgundy red, be it vegetarian or not.

There is a whole science and art in growing and selecting the grapes. Their type, the region they are grown in with its soil and climate, all these factors play their part in the final result. The higher the quality of the grape, the higher the quality of the resulting wine. This is true for all types of wine.

After the harvest, for which several methods are employed, from handpicking to mechanically aided harvesting and de-stemming; after the grapes are crushed and fermented for the first time, after the pressing, stabilisation, and second fermentation comes the fining. Here is the step which is important to us, which makes the difference between a vegetarian wine and a ‘normal’ one.

Fining is the process of removing unwanted particles in the batch before bottling and influencing the tannin content of the resulting wine. One could liken it to the use of a sieve in cooking. Tannin is a term used to describe a complex mixture of chemicals, which directly affect the taste, texture, colour and aging properties of a batch of wine. Vintners have been traditionally using gelatine for this step for ages, while egg whites, bone char, and even skimmed milk powder could all be used instead for this part of the process.

Vegetarian wine avoids products or agents that are derived from dead animals, while vegan wine, which can also be found at selected retailers, utilises a synthetically created fining agent called shortly PVPP (Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone).

The only difference is the type of sieve used to decrease the tannin content of the wine.

The qualities of these wines are en par with the non vegetarian ones, and while many lovers of wine have been blissfully ignorant of the distinction between gelatine based and vegetarian or vegan wines (after all we don’t need to understand completely how a computer works to use and appreciate it either), the informed drinker will know that this is not a choice for or against quality.

So next time you plan an evening of fine dining with friends and family, you know why some wines are vegetarian, why others are not, and how you can make sure that your vegetarian guests can fully enjoy the wonderfully rich and delicious glass of wine.