Vegetarian and Organic Wines © by Nigel Lelew
Think about the way in which the market in fresh produce has changed to embrace organically grown vegetables for example ... so why not take the process one stage further and have wine made from organically grown grapes. As the supermarkets have found with the fresh produce, the market for organically grown produce isn't huge, but there is significant demand. And so it is in the wine business. Now whether the organic wines taste any different is hard to judge. It's a bit tricky to have both organically and non-organically grown grapes in the same vineyard ... that's what you'd need to really tell if there was a difference in taste in a particular wine! What I can tell you is that across the board, organic wines do tend to have a more concentrated flavour ... And that's because without the chemicals you tend to get less fruit from each vine, so the grapes have a little more flavour ... and that gets passed down into the wine. Now let's look at what else can get into wines and try and unravel why you could possibly want vegetarian or even vegan wines. Surely there's no animal products in wine is there? ... Well yes actually! To get wines that are clear of all solid particles, so they look clean and bright, some wines are filtered - other wines have a fining agent added to them. It's the job of this fining agent to attract all of those small particles in the wine and drag them to the bottom of the barrel where they can be easily removed. So what's the matter with doing that I hear you say ... nothing really until I tell you that things like egg whites, gelatine and milk are regularly used as fining agents. Until not so long ago some winemakers would use dried Ox blood to fine their wines ... pleasant thought! So labelling the wine vegetarian, or perhaps even vegan, doesn't seem so daft after all. It means that none of these products have been used in the winemaking process. So go and have a look at some of the back labels along the supermarket wine aisles and you'll notice one or two wine labels use the words vegetarian or vegan ... now you know why! If you have any comments or questions please e-mail me at nigel@vinrouge.co.uk Sept. 26, 2000
|
