
Image courtesy of boozenews.com
Surely Wine is just grapes, right? Oh dear, how we have been duped over the years. Unfortunately not. During the wine making process, the liquid is filtered through “fining agents” to remove the protein, yeast and other nasties. These fining agents can come in the form of bone marrow, fish bladders and gelatine among other delights. So some wines are not even vegetarian!
The good news is that there are many non-animal derived fining agents meaning that finding a great vegan wine is getting easier.
The website vegan wines online is a great resource and they also have an online shop. http://veganwinesonline.co.uk
Another good tool when you’re out and about is the ibarnivore.com app. Just type in the brand name of the wine (or any other alcoholic beverage) you are looking at and it immediately tells you whether contains animal products. Unfortunately, although this is an extensive list, not all wines are listed but this is a good first stop. http://www.barnivore.com
Supermarkets are getting slightly better at vegan friendly labelling but it’s still a bit of a minefield. Here’s some picks from the UK’s leading stores:
Marks and Spencer
Not easy to find but product is labelled individually.
http://www.marksandspencer.com/l/food-and-wine/wine-shop/wine-beer-and-spirits
Tesco
Not the best online system as not many of the wines are labelled vegan even if they are. Best bet is to check against this list. http://realfood.tesco.com/media/docs/vegan-list-march-2014-2a5b40bb-0c52-439d-b9ef-8ee908fb0665-0.pdf
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/browse/default.aspx?N=4294792557&Ne=4294793660
Ocado
Here, you can actually search for “vegan wines” and an extensive selection appears. Magical!
Majestic Wine
Another good search facility using the term ‘vegan’ and approximately 42 varieties to choose from.
https://www.majestic.co.uk/vegan-wine
I would love to know you you’re favourite vegan wines.
Thanks for reading.
London Vegan Bird.
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I find COOP is great for vegan wines 🙂
Great tip, thanks. 🙂
Searching vegan wines on Ocado comes up with a few non vegan wines!