In the most basic sense, wine making is a natural process. There are five basic steps in wine making: harvesting, crushing and pressing, fermentation, clarification, and aging and bottling.

Out of these, clarification is further a two step process, Filtration and  Fining. Filtration removes larger sediments. 'Fining’, on the other hand, removes smaller sediments, unwanted color, haze, bitterness, excessive astringency, off-flavors, unpleasant odors, dead yeasts. Fining uses proteins obtained from animal products. These proteins when put in wines, coagulates with the particles, and settles on the base as sediment which are then filtered out.

Most commonly used fining agents are Isinglass, Egg white and Gelatin. These compounds are obtained from animals and normally bought by winemakers from meat industry. Following is a description of these proteins.

Isinglass: Isinglass is a compound obtained from swim bladder of fishes. It is also called gelatin in the winemaking industry.

Egg White: Egg white is a pure protein and acts as coagulating agent.

Gelatin: Gelatin is obtained from bones, cartilage, and skin of animals. Gelatin is prepared by partial hydrolysis of the collagen extracted from skin, bones, cartilage, ligaments, etc. Most of the gelatin used in the wine industry comes from Leather or meat industry. 

Casein: It is a protein obtained from milk.

Chitosan:  It is a protein derived from shells of crustaceans.

If you are a strict vegetarian (like me!), you certainly would want to go for other options. One such option is to drink wines that use “Bentonite”. Bentonite is a kind of clay, chemically it is aluminium phyllosilicate which solves the purpose of fining in wines.

Today due to awareness for vegetarian and organic products, there are plenty of such wines available in the market.

Article written by:

Primrose Gandhi