Vegan Wine…

Who knew, right?  Vegan wine. Well, that was exactly my reaction while perusing the wine list at downtown Saratoga’s Wine Bar. The Wine Bar is a cozy, upscale, bar/restaurant with an impressive rotating wine list, and great small and large plates if you come in hungry.  Some of my personal faves are the Warm Nut Medley, which I keep telling myself I will attempt to make at home, but never do.  This mix of cashews, almonds and pecans (maybe a peanut or two but I can’t remember off the top of my head) come right out off the stove, just slightly warmed, slightly sweet, slightly salty with a touch of rosemary.  So simple, but so delish.  My other recommendation is the Cheese Sampler…because well…I LOVE cheese.  This platter could honestly be a meal for two, it’s a real bang for your buck and it comes with 3-4 hard and soft cheeses, fruit, crackers and bread.

Not the Cheese Sampler, but an impressive cheese plate, none the less.

Anyways, what was I talking about, oh yes, VEGAN WINE.  So, I had the pleasure of joining a few of my lady friends for a couple of mid-week glasses of wine and while debating my options, I noticed a little asterisk next to a few of the wine options.  Gazing down to the bottom of the menu to discover what this little asterisk meant, I read that it noted which wines on the menu were vegan.  Well now, how could there be vegan wine? I’ve never seen any bacon sticking out of a glass. So we started surmising what “vegan wine” could possibly mean, and without coming to any sort of reasonable consensus, we decided it best to ask the bartender.

She described to us that some wine is filtered using materials such as… are you ready for this…it kind of makes my stomach churn...blood, egg whites or fish bladder.  Now, I am certainly not a vegan, nor a vegetarian. I enjoy ice cream, eggs, bacon, chicken, fish, and let us not forget CHEESE, with abandon, but the thought of wine being filtered with fish bladder momentarily gave me pause.  With information in hand, we all went ahead and ordered our various glasses, without being all that mindful of whether the wine was vegan or not.  I guess the momentary wave of nausea didn’t really have any long lasting impact.

So I’ve been thinking about vegan wine a bit over the last couple of weeks and I reached out to my friend Jenny, who’s younger brother Jon worked for a great online wine blog, Cork’d, and is now the Director of Operations at the Daily Grape. I was curious about what his thoughts were on vegan wine.  His response was that, in fact, most wine is actually vegan and those of us who care, actually have nothing to worry about.  Good news! I’ll go with Jon’s words of wisdom because I like him and he’s a sommelier.

If you are interested in doing a little research of your own on vegan wine, and the wine making process in general, you may want to check out this article:

http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2009/10/vegan_vino_sure_but_it_comes_w.html

I welcome your thoughts and comments on vegan….or not vegan wine, and of course new sipping suggestions are always welcome.

Enjoy! And drink responsibly!