Vegan wines in Tesco

Making sense of vegan wines can boggle the mind. I’ve been vegan for a long time now, but wine has always been somewhat of a grey area because sometimes there is just no way of knowing. This is something I have wanted to tackle for ages. I’ve searched and searched in the past and come up blank (I’m not the best at searching online, it’s true) but I’ve never made sense of any vegan wine lists online, I’ve tried apps that didn’t work and I just became increasingly frustrated. I really wanted to find a way to make buying vegan wine quick and convenient.

“WINE ISN’T VEGAN?!”

Some of you may be shocked to learn that not all wines are vegan. Yuck, I know. But DON’T PANIC – loads of wines are!

“What makes wine NOT vegan?”

It’s all to do with the process of filtering the liquid through “fining agents”. Popular animal derived fining agents include; casein (milk protein), egg albumen (derived from egg whites), fish oil, gelatine (protein from boiling animal parts) and isinglass (gelatine from fish bladder membranes).

Luckily there are plant-based alternatives, as with most things! Such as carbon, bentonite clay, limestone, plant casein and silica gel. Hopefully, as the demand grows for vegan alcohol we might see changes being made. Guinness lead the way the way a few years ago switching their filtering process from isinglass to a vegan alternative, proving it is possible! So there is hope.

Some supermarkets make it a little easier than others and do label a variety of wines on the back. I’ve found Marks and Spencer to be a good one for this and often Sainsburys too. “But I live near a Tesco?” I hear you say! Well, it’s taken me too long but I’ve finally found a whole load of vegan wines in Tesco too. After lots of research and standing in the wine isle, searching high and low I’m really relieved to find lots of lovely wines lurking on the shelves that would make a vegan very happy. So to save anyone from standing in the wine isle and getting very overwhelmed in this lead up to Christmas, I thought what better time to share my discoveries with you. In no particular order (and excuse the scruffiness, but I just wanted to get a clear and simple list up online) here are the wines I found that are suitable for vegans:

Mountain Vineyards Shiraz – £5

Bellingham Pinotage – £11

Ring-Bolt Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon – £10

 

Tesco Finest Fair Trade Shiraz – £7.50

 

Tesco Vina Del Cura Rioja Crianza – £6.75

 

Baron De Ley Reserva Rioja £10

 

Tesco Finest Chenin Blanc – £6

 

Tesco Finest Pinot Grigio – £7

 

Tesco Argentinian Malbec £7

 

The Pebble Sauvignon Blanc £8

 

 

Casa Roscoli Organic Pinot Grigio – £5.50

Tesco Chilean Sauvignon Blanc £12.75

Bella Cucina Prosecco Frizzante £6

 

Tesco Finest Picpoul de Pinet – £7.50

.. and there are definitely more, but these are the ones I could find for now. So I hope that helps and at least there’s a bunch you can choose from knowing that they contain no animal ingredients. Phew!

Happy wine shopping! x