The comments from my vegetarian question brought up an interesting issue - vegetarian wine. There’s meat in wine you say? Is that why it goes so well with food? Actually it has to do with the ‘fining” of wine, or the clarifying process. From this article in the Vegetarian Journal:
“Some clarifiers are animal-based products, while others are earth-based. Common animal-based agents include egg whites, milk, casein, gelatin, and isinglass. Gelatin is an animal protein derived from the skin and connective tissue of pigs and cows. Isinglass is prepared from the bladder of the sturgeon fish. Bentonite, a clay earth product, serves as a popular fining agent. “
Not a vegan? Don’t care if there’s a little fish bladder in your Chardonnay since your going to be drinking it with trout anyway? Well there may be other benefits to vegan and organic wine. From Superplonk’s article on Organic wine:
“Many times I have let my views known to winemakers. At Fetzer, the world’s largest organic grape grower, my views, expressed a few years back, did encourage the wine making management to abandon egg-white fining on certain of their reds. This was due to my experience of tasting their zinfandels and cabernets in barrel and finding them thrilling, but less thrilling when, many months later, they turned up in bottle. The difference was solely due to the fining process which was removing personality and exuberance from the wine. If it doesn’t sound too fanciful, a wine can lose its soul when fined or heavily filtered.”