Vine Social: Vegan Wine. Gluten

Aug 27, 2023

"Good evening! Would you care for a glass of cabernet sauvignon?"

"Hmm … that depends. Is it organic, gluten-free, vegan, soy-free, sustainably farmed and wild-yeast-fermented, with minimal winemaking intervention?"

"Um, uh … let me go get the sommelier."

Sign up for our free newsletter to receive the latest Coachella Valley news every Monday and Thursday

Back in the heyday of Starbucks coffee culture, we saw a new lingo emerge: People would stand in line and order things like a venti cup of double ristretto with an iced vanilla double shot, nonfat half-breve blended upside-down with whipped cream and foam, extra hot, please.

Having no idea what that means, I felt like some sort of barbarian asking for a large cup of black coffee.

It seems there is a Starbucks-like language now emerging in the wine world, and it's just as head-scratching and perplexing as the paragraph-sized coffee order.

Over the years, the term "organically farmed" has become a mainstay in our culture, and I think it's safe to say that most people now recognize what that entails. Restaurants across the country have created special vegan and gluten-free dishes to satisfy their customers’ growing lists of dietary restrictions, recognizing that people are choosing to monitor more closely what they ingest. I get it. It makes sense to me. If you’re a vegan, you don't want to eat anything that came from an animal. If gluten is a deal-breaker for you, zoodles and rice crackers are your jam.

But things get confusing when something like—oh, I dunno, say, wine, for example—is labeled vegan and gluten-free.

Yes, wine is made from grapes. No, grapes are not animals. No, grapes are not wheat.

So, what gives? Is this just pandering to the followers of the trends du jour? Are companies simply marketing the latest buzzwords? Sort of, but not exactly.

Admittedly, I was stumped by the concept of gluten-free wine. Before I turned to the all-mighty Google for an answer, I couldn't figure out how a wine could contain gluten. I thought: Maybe it was an additive in composite corks? Maybe it was a new form of an organic pesticide? Nope. Turns out, the gluten culprit is a wheat paste, which is sometimes used as a sealant for oak barrels. Who knew?

The more I read up on this wheat paste, I discovered that it's not commonly used anymore, and even when it is used, the PPM, or parts per million, is only about 5-10, well below the Food and Drug Administration threshold for something to be labeled gluten-free, which is 20 parts per million.

As I continued to fall down the rabbit hole of my internet wheat-paste education, I learned some other interesting facts:

Given there's no way to know if a winery is using barrels from a cooperage that uses wheat paste to seal the oak, the only real way to know if a wine is completely gluten free is to drink wine fermented in something other than oak. Problem solved.

If we accept the fact that insects and other creatures are always going to be a factor in agriculture and viticulture, can anything natural be truly vegan?

So what about vegan wine?

As I mentioned above, an optional part of the winemaking process is the act of filtering and fining out the particulate matter—or floaties, as I like to call them. In a wine that hasn't been filtered, you might see what almost looks like powdered sand floating in the bottle. In the glass, it can look gritty, hazy and even a little dull. This does not mean the wine is flawed or "gone bad." Quite the opposite, actually: Just like in cooking, when you leave the little bits of cooked fats and protein in the pan (called fond), they add flavor and depth to whatever goes into the pan next. The floaties, or hazy matter, in the wine act much in the same way. If a winemaker chooses to remove those particles and create a wine that is brilliantly clear, shiny and radiant, they must strip away those particles. This is where the vegan part comes in.

Some of the more common agents used to get rid of floaties are egg whites, isinglass (which sounds much prettier than "dried fish swim bladder") or gelatin. They can act like a magnet, attracting the hazy, sand-like sediment to the point where it can be filtered out. While none of these ingredients stay in the wine, vegans want nothing to do with them. Fair enough.

There are now alternatives to using animal products to clarify wine, like bentonite clay and carbon, which would make the wine vegan. Or would it?

I had a great conversation with a fellow somm (who happens to be a vegetarian) about this topic. When you think about how grapes become wine, and the journey they take from the vineyard to the winery, one could argue that it's impossible for a wine to be vegan. When grapes are harvested, they’re tossed into open-top bins, then transported via tractor or lift to a crush pad at the winery—which is almost always outdoors. When I worked at a winery, I learned that bugs and bees love fermenting liquid. I mean L-O-V-E. I couldn't give you a casualty list or a death count, but a lot of little bugs and critters lose their life in those bins. (It's a pretty good way to go, if you ask me.) So if we remove the element of egg whites, fish swim bladders or gelatin from the winemaking process, but accept the fact that insects and other creatures are always going to be a factor in agriculture and viticulture, can anything natural be truly vegan?

The most important aspect of this new wine lingo is that winemakers are doing all they can to create transparency with a product that doesn't require an ingredient list. Just how committed the consumer is to their diet is up to them. While I’m all for getting nerdy and cerebral about wine, at the end of the day, it's nice to sit back, pour a glass of wine—and just enjoy the drink.

Coachella Valley Independent's award-winning journalism is available to all, free of charge. Help keep it that way.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Katie Finn drinks wine for a living. As a certified sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers and as a Certified Specialist of Wine, she has dedicated her career to wine education and sharing her... More by Katie Finn