What's the Difference Between Vegan Wine and Non Vegan Wine? (Fining and filtering, how to find Vegan wines, three Vegan wines reviewed)

Show Notes

Episode 41: What's the Difference Between Vegan Wine and Non Vegan Wine? (Fining and filtering, how to find Vegan wines, three Vegan wines reviewed) 00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my son - what?!? - and my wine pairing partner in crime for this episode once again, Giuseppe! And for today WE are The Wine Pair - albeit the father son version and not the normal husband and wife version that you all know and love. And, once again, we have given Carmela the night off - she is out of town with our daughter on assignment - and so I am thrilled that Joey is here again, and as an extra bonus, we have Giuseppe’s girlfriend Kiera with us. 

Again, I will use Joey and Giuseppe interchangeably, but it’s the same person. And Giuseppe is just the Italian version of the name Joseph - but it is his real name. 

Ok, a quick orientation for those of you who may be new to the podcast - in each episode we learn about, taste and review three wines that are reasonably priced - meaning under $20 - and are, or  should be, easy for you to find. Our goal is to have some fun, learn about some new wines you may want to try, maybe laugh a little bit, and expand your wine horizons while taking some of the stuffy and the boring out of wine. 

And, quick PSA, Joey and Kiera, can you please confirm that you are of legal drinking age in the United States of America?

So, this week we are tackling a subject that I honestly did not believe was a thing at first. Did you know that Vegan wine was a thing? Even for Mikey, the first thing he asked when we brought up this subject was “isn’t all wine Vegan?”

And, it’s a totally fair question to ask “isn’t all wine Vegan?” When I first started seeing wines talk about themselves as Vegan, the very cynical side of me immediately thought that this was just a marketing stunt. You know, something that wine companies would do to differentiate themselves using a descriptor that didn’t really mean anything. Right?!? Like 5G. What the hell is 5G? It just means 5th generation, but it doesn’t actually mean super fast cellular speeds. 

I mean, isn’t wine just fruit and yeast and maybe some oak if the wine is made in oak barrels? And, in case you were wondering, like, oh crap, I forgot about yeast, is yeast ok for vegans? Yes, yeast is ok for vegans. According to the interwebs, Yeast is not an animal and so it is ok for vegans to consume. Do you know what makes it not an animal? It is not considered an animal because it is a single-cell organism, does not move on its own, and does not reproduce sexually.

So, we got that out of the way, but then, why wouldn’t all wine be considered Vegan? Well, it turns out that there is a process in winemaking called fining and filtering that can add elements to wine that make it not Vegan anymore, or at least potentially not Vegan. Not all winemakers use this process of fining and filtering, or may not use it for all of their wines. So, today we are going to talk about that process, and we are going to taste and review three Vegan wines to see what we think, and see how easy they are to find. 

And, the topic is somewhat germane to our audience because Giuseppe, you are a vegetarian. You are not a Vegan though, are you? As a tangent, how long have you been a vegetarian, and why are you a vegetarian and not a Vegan? Kiera, you are not vegetarian, so do you find it challenging to find recipes or foods the two of you like? 

Are you curious about what makes wine Vegan?!? Me, too!!!

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug, right Joey and Kiera? If you like what you are hearing, we would love for you to subscribe to our podcast, and we would also really appreciate it if you would leave us a rating and review so that people who may stumble upon us will tune in to our podcast. 

If you want to reach out to us with ideas, or thoughts, or just to talk - you can DM us on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast or contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com.

And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast, and this week we think you should tell anyone you know who is or was a Vegan or a vegetarian - equal opportunity. How about that?!?

ARTICLES

• https://www.thespruceeats.com/can-vegans-eat-yeast-3378461 
• https://pix.wine/the-drop/fining-filtration/ 
• https://wineinsiders.com/wine-101/vegan-wine-guide
• https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-is-5g#:~:text=But%205G%20can%20run%20on,a%20broader%20range%20of%20frequencies. 

Topic: What is Vegan Wine?  07:07

Ok, so let’s talk a little about what makes a wine un-Vegan. Is that a word? What would you call something not Vegan? Again, in wine, it generally comes down to a process in winemaking called fining and filtering that is, at least among some wine nerds, a somewhat controversial topic in and of itself - regardless of whether or not it is un-Veganing the wine. 

What is fining and filtering, you ask? Well, it is something that winemakers have been using for centuries to improve the final product - at least some people think it improves the final product. Some people think that it takes away some of the more natural aspects of wine. 

The simplest way to describe fining and filtering, and there is an excellent article about it from - pix.wine that I have a link to in our show notes -  that explains it this way:

A winemaker stirs a small amount of a fining agent into a vat of wine, and this material attaches to microscopic particles held in suspension. The whole mass then precipitates out, an action called flocculation.

Which sounds like a dirty word.

So, do you get it? Basically, the winemaker adds this fining agent to the wine, and the fining agent binds to particles in the wine, and these bound particles then become heavier and sink. After they sink to the bottom, the winemaker is then able to filter these particles out of the wine.  This is generally done near the very end of the winemaking process before a wine is bottled but not always. 

Any ideas why winemakers might do this? Winemakers do this for a few reasons: it gets rid of proteins, tannins, pigments, microbes, and other things that could 
turn the wine cloudy
cause the wine to potentially ferment again in the bottle, or 
create flavors or textures in the wine that they want to avoid - especially flavors that may make the wine astringent. (Acidic or bitter taste)

A lot of white wines and sparkling wines go through this process, and many red wines are as well. This process is most often used on lower quality wines. More on that to come. 

Now, this is where the whole Vegan thing comes in. There are several fining agents that are made of animal products:

• Egg whites
• Caseins from potassium caseinate, which are proteins in milk.
• Isinglass which comes  from the swim bladders of fish.
• Gelatin which is commonly made from animal byproducts (And what is a byproduct exactly? It ain’t pretty. “animal byproducts, sometimes called offal, are the parts of an animal that are leftover after a butcher or slaughterhouse has harvested meat.” In the EU, this is what they say: materials of animal origin that people do not consume.” Yikes)

All of these are proteins that reduce tannins and clarify the wine, again by binding to particles and making them heavy so they sink and can be filtered out. Technically, these particles should be absent from the wine because they are filtered out, but even so, if you are a Vegan, you would want to make sure that you are not consuming products that may have animal products. What are the options?

So, this is where Vegan wine comes in. Vegan wines that are fined and filtered will use fining agents that are not derived from animal products, and include substances like 

• Chitosan which used to come from shellfish but now comes from a fungus.
• Pea protein
• Clay
• Charcoal.
• Silica.
• Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone (PVPP), a binding agent, also used in aspirin

Wines that are not fined and filtered are Vegan friendly. So, most natural wines are generally considered Vegan because they are usually not fined or filtered - in other words, not clarified. This also means that they may be cloudy or have sediment. And, there are some people who feel very strongly that all wines should be produced in this more natural way, and that the fining and filtering process is an artificial process that affects or alters the taste and look of wine in ways that are over-produced. We won’t go into any depth on this subject on this specific episode, but this feels like a good topic for a future episode. 

Now, back to Vegan wines. I will admit that finding Vegan wines can be challenging. This is not because there are not a lot of Vegan wines - there are actually a lot of wines out there that are Vegan - but more because most winemakers are not labeling or identifiying their wines as Vegan on store shelves even if they are. Some specialty wine stores will either have Vegan wine sections or you can ask the wine steward. Some stores, like Total Wine, will have Vegan wine as something you can search for in their online store. I also found a website called barnivore.com that is a really good Vegan beer, wine, and liquor site, and you can get a huge long list of Vegan wines there. But, with over 5,000 wines listed at Vegan friendly, you have to hone in a little. But even websites like wine.com which you would think could add this to their wine descriptors does not do this. 

So, you can find Vegan wines, but you may have to do some research first. I do have some good links on the website in our show notes to help you find Vegan wines, even one from PETA that gives a list of winemakers who make Vegan wines - so head over to the website and look for this Episode and then look in the show notes. 


ARTICLES

• https://morewinemaking.com/articles/Fining_filtering_reds 
• https://primalwine.com/pages/what-is-vegan-wine#:~:text=Unfined%20and%20unfiltered%20wines%2C%20such,%2C%20are%20therefore%20vegan%2Dfriendly.
• https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/10/18650601/natural-wine-sulfites-organic 
• https://blog.publicgoods.com/what-are-animal-products-and-byproducts/ 
• Vegan Wine, Beer, and Spirits Directory https://www.barnivore.com/wine?vfilter=Vegan 
• Affordable Vegan Wines https://thetreekisser.com/resources/vegan-wines/ 
• Vegan Wines https://www.thekitchn.com/as-it-is-vegan-week-136676 
• PETA article on Vegan Wines: https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-wine/

A review of the Vegan wines we chose for this episode 16:53

So, I actually had to do a bit of research before I went to buy Vegan wines. Again, there are many well known, easy to find, and reasonably priced wines that come from easy to find winemakers that are Vegan, but - you kind of have to know ahead of time because this information is not really on the label. I wanted to choose some of these wines to show just how common Vegan wine actually is, and also how you have to plan ahead to pick them out because they are usually not labeled as Vegan.

Here are some winemakers that are well known that make Vegan wines:

• Layer Cake
• Bogle
• Michael David
• Sutter Home 
• Seghesio
• Daou
• Charles Shaw (2 buck chuck)
• Stella Rosa

So, I went to the grocery store with a list, just the local Fred Meyer which is a Kroger store, and was able to find quite a few of these wines. But, I did have to keep checking the winemaker site or the barnivore site to research the specific wine to make sure I was choosing the right one.

The first wine is a wine I know you can find all over the place. It is called Kris Pinot Grigio spelled with a K, it has a very recognizable label with a handprint, and is usually easy to find around $10 or so. I actually have a link to a page on their website where they talk about how to put together a Vegan charcuterie board. They talk about being Vegan on their website, but they don’t put it anywhere on the bottle I can find. 

The next wine is from a producer whose wines you find all over the place called Layer Cake wines. Layer Cake makes tons of different varietals that are pretty inexpensive, and many of them are Vegan. We will find out tonight what we think of this wine, but I have to admit I am a little worried about this wine because mass-producers of wine just don’t make me super confident. The wine we chose from them is a Malbec whose grapes are sourced from Argentina. So, they buy grapes from Argentina, and then they ship those grapes up to California where it is made into wine and bottled. 

According to the website Barnivore.com, this is a wine that is Vegan because they do not use animal products for fining, although they do filter the wines. So, we’ll see what we think about this wine. 

The final wine we are going to try is one that I wanted to try just because of the outrageous nature of the label. Again, there are a whole bunch of wines by Michael David winery, which is actually run by two brothers named Michael and David Phillips, and a lot of their labels are really interesting and crazy. Their wines are also wines that you should be able to find pretty easily. They are based in Lodi California which is in Northern California, south of Sacramento and east of San Francisco, so also east of Sonoma and Napa. And according to Barnivore, all of their wines are Vegan. I expect this wine to be very oaky and high in tannin. They do say they use 97% French oak with 20% of that new, and then 3% American oak. (New and American oak tends to be more powerful, tannic, and just strong tasting)

Alright, enough with this jibber jabber - let’s get to the wines we chose for this episode because I wants to taste them!


ARTICLES

• https://kriswine.com/tips-and-tricks/the-ultimate-vegan-charcuterie-board/ 
• https://www.honestwinereviews.com/layer-cake-malbec-review 
• https://www.barnivore.com/products/10564-layer-cake-malbec
• Barnivore https://www.barnivore.com/products/19629-freakshow-cab#:~:text=%22Yes%2C%20I%20can%20confirm%20that,not%20use%20any%20animal%20products.%22 

Pinot Grigio, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon wine pairing tasting and review 21:44

Wine: Kris Pinot Grigio (Click here to buy this wine - affiliate link)
Region: Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Producer: Kris
Year: 2020
Price: $11.99
Retailer: Fred Meyer (Kroger)
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Pinot Grigio


What we tasted and smelled in this Pinot Grigio: Apple, apple pie, spice, cinnamon, cloves, perfume, tropical fruit, pineapple, citrus, slate/stone, berries, peach, honeydew melon,

Vegan and vegetarian food to pair with this Pinot Grigio: Avocado, apple pie a la mode, salad with apple in it, spicy Indian food, spicy lentil curry, do well with spicy food, crudite.

As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and in-between we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it.

Rating:
Joe: 7/10
Giuseppe: 6/10
Kiera: 6/10


Wine: Layer Cake Malbec
Region: Argentina, Mendoza
Producer: Layer Cake Wines
Year: 2021
Price: $9.99
Retailer: Fred Meyer (Kroger)
Alcohol: 14.5%
Grapes: Malbec

What we tasted and smelled in this Malbec: Jammy, blackberry jam, grape jam, plum, blackberry leaves, pepper, wood box, spiced plums, plum pie, dark chocolate, black cherry. A lot of alcohol. Punches you in the face with fruit.

Vegan or vegetarian food to pair with this Malbec: May not need food, kind of a cocktail wine. Bread and vegan margarine. Baked goods. Mushroom dish. Italian lentil soup. Arrabiata. Pasta puttanesca.

Rating:
Joe: 5/10
Giuseppe: 6/10
Kiera: 5/10


Wine: Freakshow Cabernet Sauvignon
Region: California, Lodi
Producer: Michael David Winery
Year: 2020
Price: $17.99 but on sale ($20 on their website)
Retailer: Fred Meyer (Kroger)
Alcohol: 14.5%
Grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon

What we tasted and smelled in this Cabernet Sauvignon: Stevie Nicks, ripe red cherry, incense, cedar, leather, plum, perfume, clay, grape juice, cherry juice, rose perfume, leather. A lot of tannin. Very fruit forward.

Vegan and vegetarian food to pair with this Cabernet Sauvignon: Vegan cheese. Pasta with marinara sauce. Vegan pizza. Vegan lasagna.

Rating:
Joe: 5/10
Giuseppe: 5/10
Kiera: 8/10


Which one of these are you finishing tonight?
Giuseppe: Layer Cake
Kiera Freakshow
Joe: Kris

What is your overall impression of Vegan wine?
Tastes like wine! Vegan wine is more common than you think, you just need to do research to understand which wines are Vegan.


Taste profiles expected from Pinot Grigio, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon: 48:24

• Pinot Grigio taste profile
  • White peach, lemon zest, cantaloupe, raw almond, crushed gravel, lime, lemon, pear, white nectarine, apple, honey, honeysuckle, saline.
  • From the winery: Aromas of acacia flowers, lime, tangerine and hints of apricots and almonds, on the palate orange blossom and honey.
• Malbec taste profile Argentina
  • Red plum, boysenberry, red pepper flake, prune, raspberry leaf, blackberry, vanilla, sweet tobacco, cocoa
  • From the winery: wild berries, mocha, flint, minerality, blackberry, cassis. Ripe fruit
• Cabernet Sauvignon taste profile Lodi California
  • Black cherry, black currant, cedar, baking spices, graphite or pencil lead, tobacco, blackberry, mint, herb, dill, smoke, rose petal
  • From the winery: black cherry, strawberry and toasted hazelnut aroma, flavors of plum, chocolate truffle and butterscotch with an oak-inspired finish

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 50:44
As always, thank you so very much for listening to us, The Wine Pair, and you know, while you’re thinking about it, we think you should subscribe and give us a nice rating! 

We would also love to hear from you. Please reach out to us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, you can email us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com, you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, and we would be so happy if you DM’ed us and told us what you think, if you have ideas for future episodes or wines you are curious about or wine styles you are interested in or ways of growing wines you are curious about! And, we hope you tell your friends and family and loved ones and your mom and everyone who ever said anything nice to you about us!

Thanks for listening to the Wine Pair podcast, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine