Qu'est ce qu'un vin vegan ou végétalien ?

How can a wine be vegan or not ? The question may surprise, however the wines are not all vegan….

As many, you probably tell yourself that a vegan can relax peacefully with a glass of red wine on the way home from work. How could we find animal products or animal by-products in wine ? The latter is produced from grapes, fermentation is natural and the barrels are made of oak. Nothing can tell you that animals were used during the development of the cuvée. How can a wine be vegan or not ?

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What is veganism ?

We often tend to confuse vegetarian and vegan yet there is a small difference. Veganism is a food practice that excludes animal products such as meat, Fish, crustaceans and other molluscs, but also animal by-products - dairy products, eggs, gelatin, even honey —.

Vegans eat only plant-type foods, fungal (mushrooms and yeasts), bacterial (lactic acid bacteria like bifidus in fermented soybeans), and mineral (sodium salts, potassium, calcium).

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Is the wine vegan ?

Nevertheless, we can see that some wines are "vegan friendly" on the label, which raises a question regarding the development of other wines : what products are used in wine that can make it non-vegan ?

Collage, enemy of vegans

During the vinification, the wine must undergo a specific treatment to clarify it, this is called collage.

The objective of this operation is to eliminate suspended particles with certain products. Bonding improves clarity, the stability and taste properties of the wine.

The products used

A majority of wines undergo this clarification process, so be careful with your vegan friend's drink when you invite him to dinner.

Egg white : this ingredient is the one most often used to seal wines. This is the origin of Bordeaux cannelés - you had to use the yolks - technically, the wine is therefore vegetarian, but not vegan.
Fish glue : the use is the same as that of egg white, but this time the fish glue is original 100 % animated. This ingredient is made by melting the skin in water, fish head and bones.

Gelatin : this ingredient can be added to very tannic red wines to soften their texture. It can also be used for fining and filtering wine. Gelatin is obtained from the skins and bones of animals.

The PVPP - for polyvinylpyrrolidone — : this synthetic product, having a very strong affinity with polyphenols, allows to erase the astringency of young reds, the bitterness and yellow color of white wines. It is often associated with casein.

Casein : used for fining wine comes from milk. As for the egg white, the resulting wine is therefore vegetarian and not vegan.

Animal blood albumin : this product has been banned in the European Union since 1997 and the famous mad cow crisis. You can therefore still find it in wines from previous years.. It was used to paste wine. However, this method was not widely used, because the winegrowers more often used the albumin contained in the eggs.

How to know if a wine is vegan or not ?

This is where it all gets complicated… Since 2012, a European regulation obliges winegrowers to mention the presence of milk on their labels or back labels, eggs or products made from one or the other in order to prevent the risk of allergies to these products among consumers. However, fish glue and gelatin are not affected by this regulation and its application is rare.

To be considered vegan, the wine must be stuck with bentonite - a mineral glue used mainly for white wines - or not have been glued at all :

A winemaker will not hide from not sticking his wines. There is therefore a very good chance that the label mentions that the wine is « vegan friendly » or "Not glued". A wine bio is more likely to be unglued than other more traditional wines.
Bentonite bonding is the only one authorized for kosher wine, because animal products are considered unclean and cannot be mixed with wine. By buying a kosher wine, you will be sure that the wine is edible by a vegan.
The natural wine is often neither glued nor filtered. However, no regulations exist for natural wines, but as a general rule producers limit the number of inputs as much as possible.

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Many winegrowers point out that fining products are eliminated during filtration., except, perhaps, tiny amounts of these, but there we venture into an endless debate ...

Jean-Nicolas Mouretin