The Daily
Pulse.

Is Your Wine Actually Vegan? The Fining Process Most Drinkers Never Hear About

It has nothing to do with the grapes or the grain. Many wines, beers, and spirits use animal-derived ingredients during production through a clarifying step called fining, which most drinkers never hear about.

Fining removes the particles that make a beverage cloudy, and traditional fining agents often come from animals: isinglass from fish bladders, gelatin from animal bones, egg whites (common in red wines), casein from milk protein, and chitin sometimes sourced from crustacean shells. These ingredients usually do not remain in the final product, but because they touch it during production, the beverage is not considered vegan. Watch for it in red wines fined with egg whites, white or sparkling wines using casein or isinglass, craft beers and ales using gelatin, ciders clarified with animal agents, cream liqueurs made with dairy, and spirits flavored with honey.

• Frey Vineyards: a pioneer in vegan and organic winemaking with clear labeling.
• Our Daily Red and Our Daily Bread: affordable, widely available, and consistently vegan.
• Vieuxtera Organic Vineyards: many wines vegan-friendly and marked on the label.
• Menage a Trois: select bottles are vegan, worth double-checking on Barnivore.
• Yellow Tail: several varietals now labeled vegan on the back of the bottle, easy to find in most supermarkets.

Manufacturers are not required to list fining ingredients, so labels can be confusing. Look for bottles marked vegan, unfined, or unfiltered, and be cautious of casein, albumin, honey, lactose, or isinglass on any label. Natural or organic wines are often, but not always, vegan by default. When in doubt, Barnivore.com is the classic vegan alcohol database, the Abillion app carries community reviews that often flag vegan alcohol, and Vegans Explore keeps a running guide as well. The flavor stays the same and the experience stays the same, you just skip the animal-based production methods most people never knew were there.