Vegan Wine and culture

When it comes to food and wine, how can we forget the Shakespearean “binges” Falstaff with the future King Henry VI enjoyed in the inns and the taverns in all England? Yes, once carousing and being foodies were pretty much the same thing, only in modern times food and wine have become strictly tied with the culture and the well-being, and not only with physical and sensory pleasure. As a part of the vegan culture, food is at the forefront to show everyone you can feed good, tasty and healthy, without killing and exploit animals. In the US, a blogger  has created the expression “culinary activist” to emphasize the importance of those who defend the rights of animals, cooking dishes of “fair” food.

More delicate is the wine talk, even the wine now has a strong regional culture and tasting; in Italy each region has its wine tradition that starts with how and where grapes are grown and ends with the aging in bottle after being passed from to a balanced aging in the oak barrels.

Is the wine vegan?

Is the wine vegan? It is made with grapes, so it would seem so: but …

Everything starts from the soil: many vineyards are fertilized with manure , which is an animal product, from those animals exploited in the farms. A well treated vineyard does not need fertilizers because the vines are not stressed to produce more, in ancient times the vineyard was never “enriched” because it could be “recharged” during the winter rest thanks to a natural process of soil and remineralization dues to the wild herbs that grow on its surface, then dried and decomposed by the action of the weather and climate. In some cases, the winemaker can use a sort of green fertilizer, for example using green plants, which replicates in a short time the action of the grasses that grow spontaneously among the rows.

Vegan wine is pure

In wine production the process of clarification is very important. One of the characteristics of a high quality wine is its clarity, i.e. the absence – at the bottling stage, and afterwards – of particles suspended in the wine itself. In some conventional organic productions they use eggs white, gelatin, isinglass, bones glue, casein, and serum albumin to clarify the wine. The vegan wineries producing vegan wines of course not and use instead the bentonite, a very pure clay that it is great for the process of clarification and for preserving the organoleptic qualities of the wine.

Then there are other steps in the production and bottling that require to pay special attention: many use fish gelatine or isinglass to attach the labels to the bottles, while the vegan wineries use rice or corn starch paste, equally effective and more easy to recycle with the bottles.

Vegan wine tour in Tuscany

If you take the Vegan wine tour with us to visit a vegan winery that produces vegan Chianti wines, for example, you can feel a unique experience, tasting all-natural vegan wines. You will immediately appreciate the aroma and flavor, more complex and sophisticated, and your vegan wine tasting will go back to the sources of Nature and the Earth, in a past where the man had reverence for Nature and the Animals, and he did not think to manipulate them.

At the same time you will be the protagonist of a present time that has the flavor of the future, what we all hope: animals and men equally free, and we really will make a great