Your go-to guide on organic, biodynamic, preservative-free, and vegan wine.
Vegan wines are produced without the use of any animal products. Easy, right? Well, not quite. If you’ve ever looked at the back of a wine label and noticed that it may contain traces of eggs or fish and wondered how the heck it got into your wine, we’ll explain. Young unfiltered wines are pretty funky-looking (we’re talking floaties and the like - mmm, yum...), so to improve the clarity, many winemakers choose to use ‘fining agents’ which are usually animal-derived products. On the flip side, for vegan wines that are fined, the winemaker will use vegan-friendly fining agents such as bentonite clay, activated charcoal, limestone and silica gel. It’s important to note that the fining agent used doesn’t impact the actual taste of the wine, so it’s a level playing field based on the quality of the soil, winemaking techniques and processes. If you prefer a more ‘natural’ winemaking method, look for wines that have ‘not fined’ or ‘not filtered’ on the label. At the end of the day, if you can choose a wine that aligns with your vegan values, then why not - the more choices, the better! Taste the difference with our favourite vegan picks, The Vegan Wine Project Shiraz and Mil Historias Grenache.
And there you have it, an introduction to organic, biodynamic, preservative-free and vegan wines, which goes to show that there’s more than one way to make a wine without sacrificing great taste. The question is, what are you going to try next?
