More winemakers opting out of animal-based purifiers to meet small but growing vegan market

Vegan wine is a growing market in Australia, according to an industry body, as consumers seek out the specific drop.

But despite being derived from grapes, most wines aren’t technically vegan-friendly.

That is because animal-based fining products are used to draw out imperfections such as colour, bitterness and odours while still in the cellar.

Winemaker Alexi Christides, based in WA’s Great Southern region, said he did not use any fining agents, making his wine naturally vegan.

“Fining products will pull different compounds from the wine that aren’t necessarily attractive, or you don’t want them there,” he said.

“They do that by binding proteins in the wine with a particular fining agent and different fining agents work differently.”

He said the agent was removed with the unwanted material before bottling.

“They bind with the compounds you want out of the wine, they drop out of the wine because they’re heavier … and generally it’s filtered beforehand, so you won’t get a trace of those in the one,” Mr Christides said.

Why aren’t all finings vegan?

Animal-based finings have been commercially available for a lot longer than vegan options.

They include products such as gelatine, milk, and egg.

Mr Christides said there were a few reasons why vegan clarifiers, such as copper, were not used with most wines.

“[Animal-based finings] have been tested and tried for many years, they’re definitely cheaper, we know what they do, we know how much to use in general,” he said.

He said the vegan products were generally newer to the market, more expensive and developed specifically to tackle the problem of using vegan fining.

Mr Christides said using no finings made winemaking more challenging.

“We can’t fix our mistakes later on down the track with fining, we can’t fix stressed ferments down the track,” he said.

“We want to express the fruit that we pick without mucking around with that too much, so there’s a lot of work up front to make sure that the wines are in good nick before bottling.”

Small, but growing market

Wines WA chief executive Larry Jorgensen said vegan wines make up a very small part of total production.

“I imagine that the market isn’t particularly large but I’m sure it’s growing,” he said.

“For the most part, producers will make a decision around making their vegan-certified based as much on their own principles as on market share.

He said he expected the vegan population of wine drinkers to grow and therefore the number of suitable wines available to increase with that.

Mr Christides said he had noticed more vegan wines entering the market.

“I’ve certainly seen a lot of marketed vegan wines on the shelf, like more in recent times, potentially, they’re from the bigger guys,” he said.

“I think that’s, more of a marketing thing … people are aware of what they want to put in their body, so they’re using that to their advantage.”