Are your Christmas wine and beer suitable for vegetarians?

Is wine suitable for vegetarians?

Not all wine is always suitable for vegetarians or vegans. While wine is always made primarily from grapes, many wines contain a fining agent to help filter and clarify the appearance of the drink. Many of the most common fining agents are produced from animal products or byproducts, including gelatin, isinglass, albumen and casein. These are often used in commercial wine production and render the final product unfortunately unsuitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Is beer suitable for vegetarians?

Beer is made from a variety of plant-based ingredients, including malt, hops and yeast. Besides water, however, many beers also include fining agents to help clarify the final product. Like with wine, these are often not suitable for vegetarians. This is particularly true of unfiltered beers, like traditional cask ales. As cask ales are not filtered, they can sometimes have a yeast residue in the barrel, that can cause a cloudy appearance and sour taste. Finings are often used to treat this, such as isinglass.

What is isinglass?

Isinglass is a type of collagen, made from drying out the swim bladders of various fish. Isinglass was traditionally made from sturgeons, although now it is made from a range of tropical fish. Isinglass collects yeast particles together into a mass, which sinks to the bottom of the cask.

What is gelatine?

Gelatine is a type of gelling agent, usually produced from processing animal body parts. Gelatine is most often made from cow or pig bones, skin and connective tissue. It is used to help clarify liquids, by binding together particulate matter, yeast and other remainders of the production process before filtration.

Vegetarian wine and beer

This is not to say that wine and beer are all unsuitable for vegetarians and vegans, or that they cannot be suitable. Indeed, increasing numbers of producers of both beer and wine are moving away from using any animal products in their drinks.

In fact, many popular and widely available beers are vegan, including: Amstel, Becks, Cobra, Guiness, San Miguel, Stella Artois, Tyskie and more.

Many vegetarian and vegan wines are readily available, often using a variety of naturally occurring fining agents – such as carbon, bentonite, clay and others.

How can I tell if my beer and wine is vegetarian?

As we have covered, many types of alcoholic drink are suitable for vegans and vegetarians – but the labelling is not always consistent or clear. In bars and pubs, you may be able to ask the staff – they should be able to cover what allergens the drink may contain, but may not always know whether they are suitable. In the shop, many drinks have vegetarian or vegan labelling on the packaging, but this is not always consistent. One option is to check the product out online. The producer may have information on the website, or have previously answered similar queries before. Barnivore (https://www.barnivore.com/) is a detailed resource on which alcoholic drinks are suitable.

Finally, our vegan, vegetarian and plant-based trademarks are a trustworthy way to know a product fits your personal ethics and lifestyle choices. They guarantee that a product meets our standards, both in the final product and in the production process.