Wine isn't vegan?!?

When I first went vegan (yes, here I am, a vegan talking about veganism, typical, I know), I thought I simply needed to avoid about meat, dairy, and eggs. Turns out, the world is a minefield full of animal products: leather, honey, beeswax in lip balm, cosmetics that are tested on animals, cashmere, sugar that is filtered in bone char, and the list goes on. But one of the biggest shocks? Wine isn't always vegan.

It has nothing to do with the grapes, of course; but it turns out, some wines are filtered using animal products. The clarification process is called fining, and many popular fining agents are animal derived. The most frequently used culprits are bone marrow, gelatin, egg whites, casein and fish bladders. However, fining agents don't need to come from animals, two herbivore-friendly fining agents are activated charcoal and clay-based bentonite.

Unfortunately for strict vegans, most wine bottles don't list the filtering agents used, they'll simply list whether or not the wine was filtered at all. Instead, the best resource to use is Barnivore.com, which allows you to search a directory of over 5,000 wines. I decided to look into a few of the wineries who visited class to check their vegan status:

• Wente - vegan friendly
• Kingston Family Vineyards - vegan friendly
• Inniskillin - unclear, in 2016 they said they sometimes casein or geletain , but in 2019 they stated "we do not use animal products in our wines"

The site is mediocre at best, I couldn't find Far Niente or Charles Krug. I'm not a strict enough vegan to worry about any of this (I just hope the vegan police don't come find me after this post), but still, the thought of my wine being processed through fish bladders gives me pause.