Here, in case you needed it, is one more reason not to become a vegan: the wine.
Extreme-vegetarian wine -- as in 100 per cent animal-friendly -- is harder to find than you might think. And I'm not referring to stray deer that might have slobbered on a grape cluster or the mice that often get trapped in machine harvesters (and become known euphemistically in the fermentation room as NVOs, or non-vinous objects).
I'm talking about the intentional use of animal products in winemaking. Like egg whites, milk and fish bladders.
These are used in fining, a common practice in the industry designed to clarify wine of large, solid protein particles that can bind together and turn the liquid cloudy. It's distinct from filtration, a much more aggressive procedure that strips wine of finer particles that can contribute flavour and bestow longevity.
Quality winemakers, in particular, often like to fine wines without filtering. The process is simple. You just pour the fining agent into the barrel and wait. Because the stuff has an opposite polarity to the protein, it bonds with it and coagulates into a clump that eventually drops to the bottom.
Among the other fining agents used around the world: gelatin, blood and bentonite, a type of clay.
Gelatin, one of the most popular, is made from the connective tissue of large mammals, such as cows and pigs. As for fish bladders, they contain a substance called isinglass, which, for obvious reasons, is the preferred term in the industry. You may have noticed the occasional back-label qualification that a wine "contains fish products." Some countries with big vegan lobbies, such as New Zealand, have passed laws making such warnings obligatory. There's no parallel requirement in Canada. Blood, however, has drastically declined in use and been outlawed by many wine-producing countries, including the United States and France.
Bentonite and gelatin are particularly popular in lower-priced wines. But eggs remain popular with many high-end producers, notably in Burgundy, where they have plenty of use for the leftover yolks in all those cholesterol-rich foods. Two or three eggs can do a whole 225-litre barrel.
Grossed out yet? There's good news. The likelihood of finding traces of egg or fish in a wine is minuscule. The stuff generally doesn't show up on lab tests.
But if your concern is ethical rather than nutritional, and you don't want to sponsor the use of animal products at all, then you should check with the winery itself. Or you can save yourself the trouble and pick up a very nice red in today's Vintages release at Ontario liquor stores, Albet I Noya Lignum 2003 ($15.95, product No. 001313). It comes from one of Spain's leading organic wineries, located in the northeastern Penedes region, and is a blend of cabernet sauvignon, carignan and grenache. It was lightly filtered, but, as the winery likes to boast, completely unclarified. So you can be sure no fish were harmed in its production.
And, yes, it's organic, as are 17 other wines in the special organic spotlight in today's Vintages release. This one happens to be fully organic (yes, there are degrees of organic in the wine business).
While all wines carrying the organic designation were made with grapes grown free of chemical pesticides and weed killers, this one is also relatively free of chemical additives in the production process. Namely, it contains negligible levels of sulphur dioxide, widely used in wineries as an antiseptic and antioxidant. Sulphur dioxide, which is smelly but harmless in small concentrations to the vast majority of people, can be dangerous to a small percentage of asthma sufferers, which is why many countries insist on sulphite warnings on wine labels.
