This is a very detailed and technical discussion, the kosher aspect of which I touched upon in a friends blog a few weeks ago regarding wines from Israel. That post can be found at http://vinoverve.blogspot.com/search/label/Israel. The topic was also touched upon by a new cyber friend at http://israelwine.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/israeli-is-not-a-synonym-for-kosher/
The reason I am re-visiting this topic again here is that I received one of the many emails I get from Wine Spectator today, this one being their “Wine & Healthy Living” email.
Contained in this email is a question from “Jane”, whereby Jane asks about ingredients in wine which Vegans might not want to consume. The exact question and answer should be contained in the following link, but it appears not to have been posted there yet http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Free/WS_Health_QA_Index .
Since it has yet to be posted, I’ll include it here: “How could a vegan find out which wineries use egg whites for fining their wines?“.
For the record, wineries also use other products for “fining” which are problematic for both kosher observers as well as vegans.
As someone who observes a KOSHER diet (albeit leniently), this is a question which I have researched and that has led to a tremendous dilemma – one I still grapple with.
To keep things as succinct as possible, the truth is that many wineries use one of a few ingredients in SOME wines to “fine” or “clarify” the wine. While this is most common in whites, it is done with many reds as well. How do you know when one such ingredient was used? Well, as Wine Spectator answered Jane, “Current labeling regulations do not require the producer to list the fining agents on the bottle“.
Without getting into the gory details of what ingredients are at times used as fining agents, I’ll end this post with the url provided by the fabulous people over at Wine Spectator. I am not sure how much of a help it is, but it allows me to sidestep this topic for the time being.
Happy Holiday Season…
WTG
I understand that the enzymes, yeast, CO2, and filtration media must all be kosher. In addition the equipment requires kosherisation to prevent cross contamination from non kosher wines. Making kosher wines is very complicated and is very much a hands on job for the kosher supervisors. more info can be obtained from http://www.badatz.org
Another site also about kosher wines. http://www.koshercertification.org.uk
The style of writing is very familiar to me. Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?