Why I call my wine vegan and why nothing can be as vegan as you want it to be. Probably.
I feel like I should preface this article with two key points:
1. I am not a writer.
2. I am not a vegan.
These are not points I need to raise very often but as I’m about to write about vegan wines I think it’s an important admission. I do make what I consider to be vegan wines and I have a lovely vegan wife so maybe I am more qualified than some to discuss the subject but I’ll leave that for you to decide.
So, why am I writing this in the first place? Obviously, I’ve been triggered by Aaron Ayscough’s piece that I read yesterday but to be honest I’m often pushed on why I consider my wines to be vegan. This usually works in two ways; Customer A has no idea that wines aren’t all vegan while Customer B challenges me on how my wine can be vegan when there’s a chance some animals get hurt during harvest. Both points require a person to have their own, very personal, opinion of what veganism means but I’ll come back to that in a bit.
The quick response to Customer A is to explain about clarification processes, egg whites and so on. That is usually an easy turn around with them either delving further into the subject of their own accord or not giving it a second thought because they don’t really care. These outcomes don’t require any forensic analysis of my own beliefs or my own wines and everyone goes home happy. Customer B is a more problematic discussion and typically from someone who has decided that my use of the term vegan has been an egregious attack on them and an open invitation to debate, criticise or belittle me. (As I’ve mentioned I’m not vegan, but I do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time defending veganism). This is what I found so utterly deflating about Aaron’s article, the whole piece felt like an attack from a provocateur aiming to get clicks, arguing against a subject of which he’s clearly not a fan. Maybe I’m the wrong voice to go up against him. He has much more clearly defined ideals on wine than I do and is much more involved in the academic side of wines than I will ever be. But I want to defend my position as a producer of vegan wines, and I want to push the conversation away from headline grabbing hot-takes which only serve to reduce any sensible discussion about the production of vegan wines to a deluge of whataboutery.
Veganism isn’t a closed loop system. No matter what you’ve based your understanding of veganism on, it’s not a black and white doctrine. You only need a perfunctory glance into the vegan community to see that, like most things, there are endless shades of grey. People have their own interpretations of veganism. There’s actually no legal definition of ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ either at UK or EU level when it comes to food. The vegan society themselves, on their very first page of the section ‘becoming vegan’ says :
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."
So while we can agree that there needs to be some serious work done to justify labelling a wine vegan, doing so isn’t
‘a smokescreen regularly deployed against the interests of veganism’.
It’s a helpful guide to show people who are interested in vegan wines where their best options lie. If the vegan society themselves aren’t holding vegans to a series of indoctrinated absolutes, why should the wine industry be enforcing them on me?
I make my wines without any animal derived products and we’re currently farming under a strict organic programme as we look at what we can do to reduce our negative impact on the environment. We will never reduce this to zero though. We try to use preventative measures rather than herbicides and pesticides, but we do use sprays and they will have detrimental effects. And, while I can’t believe I’m commenting on the ludicrous argument against using machine harvesters for vegan wine, no matter how gentle our hand harvesting is, we will never be able to pick without disturbing local wildlife. Does all that mean we don’t deserve to describe our wines as vegan? Is a carrot farmed the same way not vegan? Maybe not. Maybe your view of what constitutes a vegan product is for it to exist in a hermetically sealed biosphere but according to every vegan certification company I approached we fit the bill perfectly and then some.
People need to understand that using the term vegan is not a claim that the product is healthy or has been made in a bubble with no contact with anything or anyone that isn’t vegan. It simply says that you’ve produced it without the direct exploitation of animals and done everything you can to ensure that’s the case throughout production. We can debate the intricacies of how responsible it is to farm monocrops and the agricultural morality of certain farming techniques, but I feel comfortable calling my wines vegan. Everything I’ve done to make that wine and everything I’m trying to do in the vineyards is held up against the ambition of avoiding harm to animals and preventing lasting damage to the environment. I use the word vegan as a flag for people who are looking for better provenance in their wines, a better understanding of what’s gone on to make their wine and I see it as a part of the story not the final chapter. But if that’s not good enough for the standards you’ve set then fine, you fight the good fight and tell me I’m wrong. You’ll just have to explain to me why that carrot isn’t vegan too.